PSA: Tomorrow's your last day to get your early registration discount for GDC 2020!

With less than 48 hours to go until the early registration period for this year's Game Developers Conference ends Wednesday, January 29th (tomorrow!) at 11:59 PM Pacific, conference organizers encourage anyone interested in attending to register now at a discounted rate!

This is one of the best opportunities to save money on your pass to GDC, which takes place March 16th through the 20th in San Francisco and will once again play host to a smorgasbord of cutting-edge lectures, panels, and tutorials for game makers and other industry professionals.

For example, game dev veteran Hideo Kojima is coming to GDC this year to tell you all about the challenges and triumphs of 2019 hit Death Stranding's development. In a special hour-long Design track talk on "Death Stranding's Design Philosophy" Kojima will unravel this process through an analysis of the game's concept, theme, storytelling, game mechanics, and development, utilizing the overarching keyword of “connection” as a framework!

Plus, as part of the Level Design Summit at GDC 2020 Remedy's Anne-Marie Gronroos will present "Designing the Ashtray Maze in 'Control'", a rare opportunity to get an inside look at the making of one of this year's most remarkable in-game sequences.

The Ashtray Maze in Control is a shifting, interdimensional maze, which the player blasts through with the help of a cassette player. It's a singular moment in games, and in her talk Gronroos aims to walk you through its design process, the constraints of creating a musical sequence, how to gain flexibility through modularity, fast prototyping of heavily animated environments, and making the most linear section of the game feel both disorienting yet intuitive. 

Carve out time to see "Curiosity-Driven Exploration: The Design of 'Outer Wilds'" at GDC this year to catch co-creative leads Alex Beachum and Loan Verneau digging into the meta-design of the award-winning Outer Wilds, from early 2D prototypes to the final structure of the game's overarching mystery.

Along the way they'll share techniques for inspiring and rewarding player curiosity, explore the challenge of communicating an unconventional game structure, and examine how curiosity-driven exploration fits into the broader landscape of open world game design!

And while you're planning out what to see at GDC, don't miss the special Classic Game Postmortem of The 7th Guest! It promises to be a rare opportunity, as three members of the original team - Graeme Devine, Rob Landeros, and George 'The Fat Man' Sanger - will be reunited for the first time in 20 years to discuss the origins and development of this classic game.

If you're more interested in learning deep truths about multiplayer worlds, catch Playable Worlds chief Raph Koster and Certain Affinity VP Rich Vogel presenting a Star Wars Galaxies Classic Game Postmortem at GDC 2020 that promises to reveal key lessons learned and practical advice about  large-scale social design aimed at building a strong community for games as a service.

This is likely to be a great talk for anyone with an interest in online game design or good stories, as Galaxies had a famously troubled existence, with a patch so controversial it made the New York Times. Much will be revealed about this classic game's design, and you won't want to miss it!

This is just a small taste of what's in store for you at GDC this year, and more talks are being announced every week. Of course, a GDC 2020 pass also gets access to the GDC Expo Floor, located within the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, which serves as a showcase for cutting-edge technology from some of the industry's biggest and most influential companies. So make sure to register now at a discounted rate!

For more details on these and all other announced talks head over to the online GDC 2020 Session Scheduler, where you can check out all the sessions on offer at the show this year.

For more details on GDC 2020 visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa