Android sessions and phone offers in 2010 GDC San Francisco

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the world’s largest professionals-only game industry event. Google Android Developers team will be presenting a number of Android technial sessions at the Game Developers Conference on March 9th and 10th 2010 in San Francisco. The motivations for the team to hold those sessions and for the developers to participate is based on the fact that 7 out of the 10 most popular paid applications on Android Market are games.

Some of the top paid Android Apps are listed in Android Market and it is clear that most of them are games. These games include Abduction! World Attack (casual), Baseball Superstars 2009 (arcade & action), Jewellust (brain & puzzle), Tangram Pro (brain & puzzle), Aevum Obscurum (brain & puzzle), Retro Defense (arcade & action), WordWrench Full (brain & puzzle), Air Hockey (brain & puzzle), Spira Defence Pro (brain & puzzle), Plox: Tower Defense (arcade & action), AlphaMixr (brain & puzzle), Kidd GBC (cards & casino), BreakTheBlocks Full (arcade & action), Nesoid (arcade & action), Mahjongg Solitaire Pro (brain & puzzle), Buka (casual), Archipelago (arcade & action), Bejeweled (brain & puzzle) etc.

During the event, complimentary Android phones including Motorola Droid and Google Nexus One will be offered to qualifying mobile game developers. The details of the offer can be found in GDC 2010. It is so thoughtful for Google to let the participants quickly apply what they have learned from the various Android sessions, it is almost impossible to test a game on Android Emulator if it is based on accelerometers input.

The interesting fact about the technical sessions is that the team not only focus on the development with the normal Android SDK using Java, they will also talk about development with the Android Native Development Tools (NDK) using C++. The Android technical sessions available are:

* Bootstrapping Games on Android by Chris Pruett (Google Japan)

* Bring Your Games to Android by Jack Palevich (Google)

* Get the Most Out of Android Media APIs by Dave Sparks (Google) and Jason Sams (Google)