GDC 2013 announces Spec Ops: The Line narrative, FTL design talks

Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have announced the latest Summit talks scheduled for the March conference, covering FTL: Faster Than Light's full postmortem, Spec Ops: The Line's acclaimed narrative built around shooting, and a lecture on introducing students to game audio. These talks are part of the Independent, GDC Education, and new Game Narrative Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. In the Independent Summit, Justin Ma and Matthew Davis of Subset Games will explain their process and rationale from crowdfunding to release, focusing on the player experience of running a starship and keeping gameplay structures, mechanics, and genre secondary, in 'Designing Without a Pitch - FTL Postmortem.' Their singular focus allowed the duo to iterate on or abandon much of the IGF-nominated FTL's design until the game became fun. In this talk, the duo will teach "the hows and whys of separating one's expectations from preconceived notions about games, genres, settings, and other previous experiences when designing." In the Game Narrative Summit, 2K Games lead writer Walt Williams will detail crafting the story behind the military shooter Spec Ops: The Line in 'We Are Not Heroes: Contextualizing Violence through Narrative.' Attendees will learn how creating the game's narrative elements around the mechanic of shooting "led to a more immersive and emotionally impactful experience." Lastly, for the GDC Education summit, University of Waterloo's Karen Collins, Canada research chair in Interactive Audio at the Games Institute, will explain her hands-on approach for teaching in 'Biff! Boom! Pow! Introducing Students to Sound for Games.' Collins will introduce interactive exercises and examples from a 12-week course that teaches "listening, spotting, recording, editing, creative design, mixing, Foley, and more!" For more information on these or others in the show's growing lineup, check out GDC 2013's official Schedule Builder, which continues to add new talks every week. The deadline for discounted Early Bird passes, including a lower-priced Summits, Tutorials & Bootcamps Pass, is February 13th. GDC 2013 itself will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2013, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.