Bioshock Infinite, Plague Inc among first batch of GDC 2015 talks

Now that registration has officially opened for the 2015 Game Developers Conference, officials are excited to announce the first batch of talks for next year's March event. These sessions strike a balance between exploring the art and business of making video games by revealing what it takes to compose an award-winning soundtrack for Bioshock Infinite, running down the pitfalls of porting mobile games to Steam and laying bare some of the most important game market data of 2015. As part of the conference's vaunted Audio track of talks, composer Garry Schyman will lead a session titled "Bioshock Infinite: Scoring In the Sky, a Postmortem" that offers attendees an in-depth look at the complex process of creating the award-winning score for Bioshock Infinite. Schyman will reveal the steps and struggles of writing a score for one of the most anticipated game in years, and share techniques for writing interactive scores alongside advice for those working on a high-pressure project in a highly creative environment. Also, Ndemic Creations' founder James Vaughan will be leading an interesting session on the topic of bringing mobile games to Steam in a satisfactory manner. During his talk, "Evolving Plague Inc: Taking a Top Mobile game to Steam," Vaughan will run down the challenges that mobile developers face when coming to Steam -- and explain when developers should do it anyway. He'll also reveal his studio's approach to overcoming the 'mobile stigma' and other pitfalls, using post-launch data to illustrate the impact of choices. Key lessons learned will be highlighted for other developers who are bringing games to Steam, and he will also touch on Early Access strategies, differences between publishing on Steam/mobile and how to determine which platform to start with. Finally, EEDAR co-founder Geoffrey Zatkin returns to GDC next year to talk business in his "Awesome Video Game Data (2015)" session. This talk should benefit anyone interested in how the video game industry as a whole is moving (both on a macro- and micro-trend basis) as Zatkin takes attendees on a tour de force romp through video game industry data, patterns and trends, covering everything from next generation consoles to the maturation of mobile games to the diversification of monetization methodologies -- and everything in-between. Conference organizers look forward to announcing more GDC 2015 sessions in the months ahead. In the meantime, don't miss your chance to register early -- the deadline for discounted Early Bird passes, including a lower-priced Summits, Tutorials & Bootcamps Pass, is January 21, 2015. GDC 2015 itself will take place March 2-6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2015, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.