Assassin's Creed 3, micro-transaction, card and board game sessions added to GDC 2013

GDC 2013 organisers have begun the long serious of session announcements leading up to the San Francisco event's March kick off.

Although it might seem a little early for an Assassin's Creed 3 talk, this one's part of the Programming track so fair game. Lead graphics programmer Jean-Francois St-Amour will speak on the game's weather system, lighting solution, and "some of Ubisoft's tricks for improving current-generation titles when porting them to DX11 PC hardware".

Both of the other two sessions announced today come from the Business, Marketing, and Management track. In a panel called The Beauty and Challenge of Mixing Physical and Digital Games, the subject of discussion will be games which span the divide between digital and physical - Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Harfield is attending, for example.

The other is a roundtable about micro-transations called Free to Play, Pay for Stuff: Virtual Goods Win and includes speakers from the Spiral Knights team and Iron Realms. This roundtable is on its ninth year and remains popular.

GDC 2013takes place from March 25 through 29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Early bird registration is now open.