With the 2008 Austin Game Developers Conference coming this September 15-17 and registrations now open for the Austin, Texas event - which includes both 'Online Gaming' tracks and a special Worlds In Motion Summit for businesspeople and brands looking to get into virtual worlds, it's time to start highlighting a few of the already-announced lectures:

- Flying Lab's director of development Joe Ludwig will be presenting 'Pirates of the Burning Sea: A Post-Partum', with the cheery refrain: "Well, it took five years, but Flying Lab Software has finally launched its Age of Sail MMO! Come hear the ups and downs of the project and all the things the team learned along the way". The project has some interesting in-game lessons - will be interesting to hear Joe dissect them.

- Internet marketing research company comScore's Edward Hunter will be speaking on 'Measuring & Metrics: The Online Gaming Audience', one of our advanced Business & Marketing sessions, covering the shift in the online gaming audience demographic and where those audiences are headed - important stats within!

- Finally for now, Disney Interactive senior designer Patricia Pizer is debuting 'Everything I Need To Know About Virtual Worlds, I learned at Disneyland', in which one of the masterminds behind Disney's DGamer project (effectively a Nintendo DS-connected online world!) discusses a cute and relevant real-world comparison point: "Walt Disney and his team built Disneyland on a foundation of thoughtful, deep and careful design choices, each made to deliberately address issues such as quality of experience, narrative flow, party-dynamics, crowd control and user retention."

For more information, including a number of other key already debuted lectures that we'll be highlighting weekly here on WorldsInMotion.biz, alongside further new Worlds In Motion Summit/online keynote specifics as they happen, check out the official Austin GDC 2008 website.