Game industry veteran Howard Scott Warshaw took the stage at GDC 2015 to deliver a Classic Game Postmortem of his very first game, the seminal Atari 2600 title Yars' Revenge, and in the process he shared some valuable insight into a pivotal period of game industry history.

Warshaw's efforts at Atari in the '80s helped advance the practice of game design; his work on Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the earliest examples of highly successful licensed game development, while 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. 

He touched on all these topics during his GDC talk, which was predominantly focused on diving deep into his work designing and coding Yars' Revenge, widely believed to be one of the most popular Atari 2600 games.

It was a remarkable talk, and now you can watch a recording of it (embedded above) for free over on the GDC Vault.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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