With GDC 2016 on the horizon, organizers run down a selection of can't-miss talks from developers of Armello, Soma, Galak-Z and more at the conference's Indie Games Summit.
December 18, 2015
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 eager to highlight a handful of the talks that will continue that tradition at GDC 2016.
Each of these talks is part of the GDC Indie Games Summit, one of eight that will take place Monday, March 14th and Tuesday, March 15th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of the conference.
While you're there, don't miss "The Armello Postmortem: A Journey of Spirit & Peril." The game was developed over more than four years by League of Geeks, and studio co-founder Trent Kusters will take the stage at GDC 2016 to offer realk talk on the (numerous) successes and failures Armello experienced on the way to launch.
Check it out for important lessons learned about profit-sharing, marketing your own game, and making the best out of Kickstarter and Early Access.
Also, carve out time to see 17-Bit studio director Raj Joshi's talk on "Flying by the Seat of Our Pants: Galak-Z." With more than six decades of shared development experience, 17-Bit embarked on creating Galak-Z with a strong knowledge of solid production practices. While that should have been the recipe for a stable production cycle, things got...interesting along the way
Attend the talk and you'll learn what pitfalls they faced (and how to avoid them yourself) as well as the early warning signs of a project in trouble.
Speaking of scary things, Frictional Games' Thomas Grip knows a few things about crafting great horror games, and at GDC 2016 he'll talk about what it was like to explore the finer points of conveying existential dread in "Soma - Crafting Existential Dread."
Soma isn't your typical horror game, and in his talk Grip will speak to the challenges faced in trying to design a game that could, through play, explore some of the most disturbing aspects of consciousness, the self, and what it means to be human.
Elsewhere on the Indie Games Summit, developers Catt Small and Shawn Allen will examine new ways to improve the diversity of the indie game space in "Knights, Fist Fights, Lasers & Catacombs: Subversive Diversity to Improve Our Games."
Come see the talk and you'll walk away with concrete examples of how working to change the face of the indie games space -- by creating new characters, writing narratives, and branching out with inclusive working and hiring habits -- has and will continue to improve games & foster growth in a cluttered marketplace.
Need more great sessions to fill out your GDC 2016 dance card? No worries; a list of all announced talks is available in the online GDC 2016 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.
And of course conference officials look forward to announcing many more GDC 2016 Summit 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 for the conference early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate is Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016.
GDC 2016 itself will take place March 14-18th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2016, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
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