PSA: 2 days left to register early for GDC 2018 at a discounted rate!

With just days to go before early registration for Game Developers Conference 2018 ends this Wednesday, January 31st at 11:59 PM Pacific, conference organizers are encouraging anyone interested in attending to register now at a discounted rate!

This year, as in years past, GDC will feature a diverse lineup of lectures, panels, and tutorials during the show proper, and show organizers will continue to debut new sessions as the event draws ever closer.

Today, organizers highlight a handful of the announced talks to shed light on the diverse array of topics that will be tackled during the show!

Notably, in his GDC 2018 talk on "Splatoon and Splatoon 2: How to Invent a Stylish Franchise with Global Appeal", Nintendo's Hisashi Nogami (who served as producer on both Splatoon and Splatoon 2) will share his experiences working with a design team whose goal was to create a game that was novel, yet easy to grasp and riveting to play.

Mr. Nogami, who also served as director and lead artist on Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series, will don his lab coat, roll up his sleeves, and divulge lessons learned while illustrating the importance of risk-taking. Developers of all levels and backgrounds interested in a thoughtful, provocative tour of the Splatoon and Splatoon 2 games’ design history are encouraged to join him.

And of course, original game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and original character designer Naoto Oshima will be at this year's GDC to deliver a Classic Game Postmortem of Sonic the Hedgehog!

In the course of their remarkable hour-long talk, Yasuhara and Oshima will reflect on the design and development of the seminal high-speed platformer, which made its debut in 1991 and went on to become the best-selling Genesis game ever made.

Together, the pair of original Sonic devs will discuss their perspective on the creation of the enduring game franchise, including detailed recollections of the game's original design process and art direction.

And in "'A Mortician's Tale': A Different View on How Games Treat Death" A Mortician's Tale creator Gabby DaRienzo will look at the history of death in video games, discuss how A Mortician's Tale and other independent games are innovating on death mechanics, and share strategies on how game developers can best explore death in their own games.

You'll learn how to navigate challenges behind designing experiences on personal subjects like mortality, and learn how death is used in video games, and how it could be used by you in your next one.

What's more, Guerrilla's Eric Boltjes is coming to GDC 2018 to present "'Horizon: Zero Dawn': A Game Design Postmortem,"  a Design track talk that will run you through through early prototypes and delving into design decisions and processes that shaped development of the 2017 game.

You'll want to make time for this, because Boltjes plans to give you insight into the journey Horizon's game design went through while moving from an ambitious paper concept to a finished open world action RPG, with all of the small and large design decisions and choices that had to be made along the way.

GDC organizers are also excited to once again host a diverse array of experienced game designers sharing their tips and tricks in "Rules of the Game: Five Further Techniques from Rather Clever Designers."  

This session promises to be great, because it features five accomplished game makers (moderated by fellow accomplished game maker Richard Rouse III) who will each spend ten minutes detailing a specific design technique or rule they use to craft compelling experiences.

Erin Hoffman-John (CEO/Designer, Sense of Wonder), Soren Johnson (CEO/Design Director, Mohawk Games), Raph Koster (Designer, Independent), Josh Sawyer (Director, Obsidian Entertainment), and Stone Librande (Lead Designer, Riot Games) will each dive into their technique and provide detailed examples about how they have used the rule in past projects, honestly sharing the pluses and minuses -- including where their rule works well and where it may be less applicable.

Expect to leave with an interesting new set of design principles to try out on your own projects!

And these are just a very small taste of what you'll gain access to when you register to attend GDC 2018 -- you'll also be securing access to a wide variety of game development talks, roundtable discussions, postmortems and workshops. 

For more details on these and all other announced talks head over to the online GDC 2018 Session Scheduler, where you can look over all the sessions on offer at the show this year.

For more information on GDC 2018, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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