Howard S. Warshaw revisits Yars' Revenge in GDC Classic Game Postmortem

Hot on the heels of last week's announcement of a Star Control Classic Game Postmortem, Game Developers Conference officials are excited to announce another industry luminary is coming to the show next March to deliver what promises to be a revealing postmortem look at the development of a groundbreaking game. Howard Scott Warshaw, the veteran programmer, author, filmmaker and therapist best known in the game industry for his pioneering work at Atari on titles like Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, will be delivering a Classic Game Postmortem on the seminal Atari 2600 title Yars' Revenge at GDC 2015. A contemporary renaissance man, Warshaw has leapt between several successful careers in the past few decades and currently works as a licensed psychotherapist in addition to performing speaking engagements and serving as a contributing artist to New York's Museum of Modern Art. His efforts at Atari in the ‘80s helped advance the practice of game design, and he played a role in some of the pivotal events of industry history. His work on Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the earliest examples of highly successful licensed game development; the unreasonable pressures put upon him to create a game with the E.T. license led to a financial failure that presaged the North American game industry crash of 1983. Now he's coming to GDC to speak at length about his work designing and coding Yars' Revenge, widely believed to be one of the best Atari 2600 games ever made. He'll also make time to speak about his work on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and answer questions from GDC attendees. Warshaw's "Classic Game Postmortem: Yars' Revenge" will be an hour-long talk, and we figured you might appreciate the heads-up so you can keep this postmortem pinned in your GDC 2015 Session Scheduler. While you're there, you can check out the growing list of announced talks and begin to plan out your conference week using the Session Scheduler, then later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App (also coming soon!) In the months ahead, conference officials look forward to announcing many more GDC 2015 sessions spanning a diverse array of game industry issues. For now, don't miss the opportunity to save money by registering early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate 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.