GDC Europe 2011 sessions from Harmonix, DICE, and Ernest Adams announced

New sessions for GDC Europe have been announced, and the talks include ones on game designs, Dance Central, and the lighting effects in Battlefield 3.

Harmonix's Matt Boch and Dean Tate will speak regarding the tech used to build Kinect's Dance Central, and how the team accomplished its task in one year in a session titled: "Break It Down! How Harmonix and Kinect Taught the World to Dance; The Design Process and Philosophy of Dance Central."

DICE's Christina Coffin will provide a lecture titled: "SPU-based Deferred Shading in Battlefield 3 for PlayStation 3," where she will speak on the SPU-based lighting system included in the Frostbite 2 engine.

Ernest Adams, a GDC staple,  will speak on issues with creating an online persistent world in MMOs in a session titled: "Making MMOGs More Storylike." The talk will focus on how players in MMOs cannot meaningfully affect the game world, and how developers could implement ways to make it so.

GDC Europe is August 15-17 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost and runs alongside gamescom.

Thanks, Gamasutra.