On its developer blog, Facebook posted a recap of all of its sessions at GDC. The social network covered everything from the basics to advanced monetization strategies. Here’s some of the more interesting talks with links to the videos in blue:

Facebook Games Product Update

It’s been a record year for games. More than 250 million people, or one out of every 5 users, play games on Facebook.com each month. George Lee, Product Manager for Facebook Games, walks through improvements that have helped drive 75% more game installs year over year. He also discusses how games are part of the overall Facebook experience through News Feed, Timeline, and Graph Search.

Building Core and Mid-Core Games on Facebook

There are 84 million 18-35 males playing games on Facebook each month, which represents 32% of all monthly active gamers. In other words, there’s a huge opportunity for core and mid-core game developers to build on Facebook. Andy Katzman, Strategic Partner Manager, Colin Creitz, Partner Engineer, and Peter Chang, Partner Engineer, walk through the products we are building to help gamers find great games and stay connected with each other. In addition, Greg Richardson, CEO of Rumble, discusses how his team is creating a more immersive game experience, and David Helgason, CEO of Unity, talks about 3D gaming and how we’re improving the Unity experience on Facebook.

Monetizing Your Game on Facebook

More than 100 developers generated more than $1 million on Facebook last year. Our payments team is committed to growing the games payments ecosystem and driving developer revenue. Deborah Liu, Monetization Product Manager, Daniel Schultz, Partner Engineer, and Sara Brooks, Strategic Partner Manager, discuss how developers can prepare for the updated Facebook Payments and price virtual goods for a global audience.

There are many more videos at Facebook’s blog post to keep you busy for a few hours. You might even learn something.

At GDC 2013, Epic Games smashed that argument to bits with its latest real-time demo of Unreal Engine 4. The technology on display just isn’t currently possible on existing consoles, and it’s exciting to think what developers will do with it once they have the power to do so.

The most exciting part about this tech demo is that it’s running on currently available PC hardware. Epic confirmed that the demo was running on a single, unmodified Nvidia GTX 680. So, we know that Unreal games built on the PC will look great, but it will be interesting to see how the engine works with the AMD hardware in the PS4 and next Xbox.

[h/t: Polygon]

Well, Internet, pat yourselves on the back. You were right. At GDC 2013, Hideo Kojima unveiled Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. It would be much more of a shock if the Internet didn’t already have pages of evidence pointing to this conclusion, but it’s still nice to be vindicated nonetheless. What is legitimately surprising, however, is that Metal Gear Solid V is also Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, an open-world stealth-action game revealed last year.

So, how does this all fit together? Kotaku reports that The Phantom Pain trailer shown at the VGAs is the opening of Metal Gear Solid 5. It takes place right as Snake has woken up from a nine-year coma. Once Snake escapes the hospital seen in that trailer, the game becomes the open-world title that we saw in Ground Zeroes.

There are not many details available regarding Metal Gear Solid V just yet, but the trailer did offer a few tidbits of information. For starters, Kojima is back in the director chair on this one. He’s also credited as a game designer and producer. Series veteran Yoji Shinkawa is back on board as character and mechanical designer as well.

As for platforms, the game looks like a next-generation title. That might be because the trailer was taken from the PC build, but the trailer also said the game would be coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360. It’s unknown at this point if the title will show up on the PS4 and the next Xbox.

At the annual Games Developer Conference, Facebook announced the launch of the Games Developer Center. Much like its regular Facebook Developers portal, the Games Developer Center collects all the information and tools developers need to create games for Facebook.com, or games that use the Facebook SDK for iOS and Android.

Facebook also announced today that it’s adding a games section to the new timeline that will “give people a way to express their favorite games on their timeline and About page.” Facebook also suspects that the new games section will “serve as another reengagement and discovery channel for game developers.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Facebook announcement without some stats and the games team didn’t disappoint:

Last year, Facebook uploaded all of its GDC talks for developers for those who weren’t able to make it out to the show. If you weren’t able to make it to the show again this year, Facebook should have those talks up within the week.

Indie games may not be what some gamers were expecting from Sony, but the focus on these small titles is a major boost to Sony’s reputation at an increasingly indie-focused event like GDC. It doesn’t hurt that the majority of the titles shown at GDC also show an incredible amount of promise.

For the PlayStation 4, Sony only announced two indie games for the platform – Blacklight: Retribution and Primal Carnage: Genesis. The former is a free-to-play shooter supported by microtransactions. Sony is already experimenting with free-to-play on the PS3 with games like Dust 514 so it will be interesting to see what the platform holder does with FTP games on the PS4.

As for Primal Carnage: Genesis, the game is an episodic first-person shooter title that could very well be seen as the spiritual successor to Dino Crisis.

As for other platforms, a number of games are being developed for both the PS3 and PS Vita.

Last but not least, Sony announced a number of titles for its fledgling PlayStation Mobile platform. These games are intended for mobile devices, like those from HTC and Sony, but the games can also be played on the Vita as well.

If you were expecting major announcements out of Sony, you will probably have to wait until E3 when the company is expected to reveal more about the PS4 and the AAA games coming to the platform. For now, start setting aside a bit of money to purchase Thomas Was Alone for when it launches on the Vita.

GDC Europe is not as big as its American counterpart, but it’s just as important to the livelihood of the industry. There are plenty of talented game developers working out of Europe and Facebook was courting them with a number of excellent panels. Unfortunately, Facebook made it impossible to embed the videos from their talks, but the links in the panel names will take you to their respective talks.

The social network opened up their GDC talk with “Growing Social Games with Facebook: Lessons from European Partners.” All European developers should check this one out as Facebook highlights the success that European developers are having on Facebook. In fact, five out of the top 10 Facebook developers are based in Europe.

Up next is “Building your next generation social game with Facebook.” The platform has evolved from its simple roots into a gaming powerhouse. The App Center alone pushed over 170 million people to mobile apps last month. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re interesting in taking advantage of all the new features Facebook offers.

The third presentation was called “Simple steps to build and grow a social game on Facebook.com.” This is for the developer who is just starting out on Facebook development. Some developers, like Zynga, have complained in the past that Facebook makes it harder for players to discover their games. In reality, they mean that Facebook is now giving smaller games the chance they deserve. Thankfully, this presentation is available in handy .pdf format. Check it:

GDC EU: Steps to Build and Grow a Social Game on FB

Next up is “How mobile games can plug into Facebook for massive growth.” This one is a repeat of previous efforts on the part of Facebook to extoll the virtues of implementing Facebook into games. They found that most apps get a lot more traffic through Facebook than any other method. Game developers who haven’t yet jumped on board the Facebook train may want to check it out.

It wouldn’t be a Facebook presentation without Open Graph and that’s just what they did. The presentation titled, “Driving installs and re-engagement with Open Graph,” helps developers get the most out of Facebook’s social graph APIs. Once again, developers who are new to Facebook development should check it out.

The last two presentations will be of most interest to Facebook developers who have been in the social gaming industry for a while now. “Advanced features for getting the most out of Facebook” covers all the new features in Facebook that helps developers gain the edge on their competitors. “Turning players into payers: best practices for monetization” will show you how to get the most out of free-to-play titles. The most popular games are able to convince players that paying real money for in-game items isn’t a waste, but rather an investment in fun.

Facebook announced today at GDC Europe that there are more than 235 million players on Facebook each month. That’s an increase from 205 million from last year. The number has also risen 8.4 percent from the beginning of this year.

Facebook is also beginning to embrace mobile in a big way. They pushed users to the Apple App Store and Google Play more than 170 million times in the last month. That number might increase even more now that developers have access to mobile ads for apps on Facebook.

They also revealed that five out of the top 10 game developers on Facebook are from European countries. That’s a huge increase from just one last year. These developers are growing because more than 80 percent of Facebook users are outside the U.S. European gamers love European games so it only makes sense. The developers leading the charge in European Facebook development include Wooga, Kingcom, Peak Games, Rovio and Social Point.

Facebook also announced that App Center is beginning to lead people to more apps than ever before. They said that 150 million people used App Center in the past month and that the service is driving 2.4 times more installs than the old games dashboard.

In far more interesting news, App Center is also getting players to revisit games over longer periods of time. They found that a game downloaded through App Center is 35 percent more likely to be revisited the following day. It drops to 17 percent for the rest of the week. For games that are nothing more than distractions, that’s huge. Keeping players engaged in Facebook games, which are nothing more than fads at this point, is incredibly difficult.

Facebook gaming might actually have a pretty bright future if they can keep up this kind of commitment to the platform. As Facebook moves to mobile, you can be sure that they want to bring games along with them. App Center is the first step in that move and it seems to doing well for both Facebook and developers.

You may have missed all the announcements that Facebook made at GDC though. All the panels and talks that help developers use Facebook in new and exciting ways. If you were one of those people, Facebook has just recapped its GDC adventures on the developer blog.

The first event had Matt Wyndowe, product manager for the Facebook games team, talk about Facebook gaming and how they are going to focus more on Open Graph and high quality games in 2012.

The second talk focused on how developers can make their game successful on Facebook. It’s true that Zynga may strike fear into the small Facebook developer, but these tips should help to get you noticed. You never know, your game could take off like OMGPOP’s Draw Something, then get bought by Zynga for $200 million.

The third talk spent time on how developers can leverage Open Graph to get the word out about your game. It’s all about using Timeline, scores and achievements to get results.

So you’ve made a Facebook game and now you want to make some money for your hard work. The fourth talk went through the steps required to begin monetizing your games.

The fifth panel was on how Facebook drives traffics to mobile apps. It should give developers insight on how to use Facebook effectively to draw up hype for their game.

The final panel was by far the most interesting. Since Uncharted 2 incorporated Twitter into its campaign, it’s clear that social networking and console games would go hand-in-hand. The talk touched upon how social networking is helping to expand the appeal of games like Uncharted 3 and Kinect Sports 2.

Facebook is here to stay as far as game development is concerned. It’s great to see the company embracing the industry not just through social games, but implementing their technology into console games as well.

It’s no secret that the Chrome Web browser has an app store. The cool thing, however, is that you can download console-quality games onto Chrome and play them in your Web browser. One of the first major games to do this was GDC award winner, Bastion. Other current gen games like Mini Ninjas and From Dust are hitting the Chrome platform as well.

A question that a developer might have though is how they can port their existing game to the Chrome platform. Well, Google presented a talk at GDC on that very topic. The talk was called, “Get your port on,” and offers tips and tricks for developers who want to port their games to the Chrome native client.

The video is a bit on the long side clocking in at 36 minutes, but it should provide developers the tools and know how to start getting their games on the world’s most popular Web browser.

For those who want a bit more instruction on how to build games for Chrome, you can check out Google’s developer page for Web games.

Colt McAnlis from Google gave a GDC talk last week that spoke on the problem of texture compression and how to compress even more. This would allow games to use more memory for other features with textures taking up less memory.

The talk, which lasts a little over 30 minutes, gives tips on how to compress textures up to 50 percent. This technology was used in id Software’s release of Rage last year. While some people complained about low res textures, it’s important to realize that Rage was streaming a lot of textures at once which kept the instance of texture pop-in at a lower rate than on other engines like Unreal Engine 3.

You can check out the entire talk below. If you are a developer, you will want to pay attention. It’s pretty exciting to see Google talking at length about game development. It will also be interesting to see if this is indicative of Google getting serious into game development.