Don't miss these GDC 2015 talks - or today's Early Reg deadline

Developers, this is it -- early registration for Game Developers Conference 2015 ends today, January 21 at 11:59 PM Pacific, and conference organizers are encouraging anyone interested in attending to register now at the discounted rate.

When you register you'll be securing your access to a wide variety of game development talks, roundtable discussions, postmortems and workshops from the best and brightest our industry has to offer.

GDC 2015 organizers have already revealed numerous notable sessions as part of the show's Main Conference, which features tracks on Business Marketing & Management, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts, Audio and Advocacy. More will be announced in the weeks to come, and we thought we'd take a moment to highlight some of the Design talks you mustn't miss when the conference kicks off at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center in March.

- Access Games' Hidetaka "SWERY" Suehiro will be speaking about his recent development efforts in "Designing for Empathy with Sensory Replication in D4." Speaking to Gamasutra about the genesis of the talk late last year, Swery said he wanted to share advice on new ways to "make games that are, if not as significant as life memories, as close to that as I can possibly make."

- Also, don't miss Insomniac Games' Liz England discussing the challenges of tackling an open-world game in her "Transitioning from Linear to Open World Design with Sunset Overdrive" talk. She plans to run down how her studio, which had previously spent 20 years or so making linear games, had to develop new approaches and techniques for prototyping and implementing large, overlapping gameplay systems, and dealing with the problems of working in a single shared gameplay space to create Sunset Overdrive.

- Join Richard Lemarchand, former Naughty Dog lead game designer and associate professor in the USC Games program, for "Infinite Play", a talk that investigates the game design potential of open play - play that does not necessarily result in an outcome of victory or defeat. 

Referencing James P. Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games," Lemarchand aims to give you some new lenses through which to view our practice in the design of games and play, and to help expand our ideas about what games can be and do, particularly in the artistic, social and cultural spheres.

- Blizzard's Derek Sakamoto will be addressing the art of marrying form and function in his "Hearthstone: How to Create an Immersive User Interface" talk, which spans both the Design and Visual Art tracks of talks. Check it out to Learn about the organization, vision and process used to create an immersive interface for the popular game, as well as how it was designed for optimal cross-platform play.

- Finally, as part of his inspirational "Game < Design" talk at GDC 2015, Riot Games lead designer Stone Librande will address what game design shares in common with other forms of design (like fashion design or automotive design) and what game makers can learn from those disciplines.

Librande will describe his own personal design journey and the lessons he has learned along the way, as well as broader topics like the lives of famous designers, techniques taught in design schools, and the philosophies of world-class design studios.

You can find further details on these and all other announced talks 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.

Again, GDC 2015 itself will take place March 2-6, 2015 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. You can register for the event by visiting the info page on the official GDC 2015 website.

Early Bird pricing, with discounts up to 30 percent, ends this week at 11:59 PM Pacific on January 21st.

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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