80 Days and Kitty Powers join GDC 2015 Indie Games Summit lineup

The Game Developers Conference Indie Games Summit has a history of hosting insightful talks from a diverse array of innovative speakers, and today conference officials are happy to announce a few notable IGS 2015 talks that continue that tradition.

These talks are part of the GDC Indie Games Summit, one of eight that will take place Monday, March 2nd and Tuesday, March 3rd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of the conference.

While you're there, don't miss "Making Kitty Powers' Matchmaker - Adventures of a Video Game Drag Queen." In this inspirational and practical talk, develope Richard Franke charts the development of hilarious drag queen-hosted mobile dating sim Kitty Powers' Matchmaker (pictured).

This was Franke's first indie title after almost 20 years making "big" console games at places like Criterion Games, and in a very personal story, Franke (a "close personal friend" of Kitty Powers herself!) covers how he dealt with inclusiveness, making comedy work in a game, designing a compelling dating game, and how to keep your wig on when all around are losing theirs.

You should also carve out time in your GDC schedule to catch writer Meg Jayanth deconstructing storytelling for games in "Leading Players Astray: 80 Days and Unexpected Stories." Drawing on her experience as the writer of the critically-acclaimed mobile adventure game 80 Days, Jayanth will talk about the process of collaborating with inkle Studios to build a machine for telling stories, and how indies in particular are ideally placed to create game stories which engage, surprise, discomfit and delight players.

Expect to come away with a granular, process-driven framework for how to tell interesting stories in games, which can be implemented and adapted to your own projects.

Need more great sessions to fill out your GDC 2015 dance card? No worries; a list of all announced talks is available in the online GDC 2015 Session Scheduler, where you can begin to build your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App, coming soon.

Also, conference officials look forward to announcing more GDC 2015 sessions spanning a diverse array of game industry issues in the months ahead.

For now, don't miss the opportunity to save money by registering early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate is this week! January 21, to be precise; 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.

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