GDC is nearly upon us! I will be speaking as part of the Design Microtalks session, but there are also a number of other IF-related highlights. (I’ve put a list of the IF/narrative talks that looked particularly intriguing after the fold.)
This trip means I’ll be in the Bay Area March 1-7 and then in Seattle March 7-14. My schedule is filling in, but there are still some slots here and there. Necessarily I put a priority on meeting with clients, friends, and students looking for mentorship, but every year I’ve met at least a couple awesome new people who were none of the above. So if you’re in the area and you’d like to get together and talk — about that totally unfair review I gave your game five years ago, about possible collaborations, about your dreams for the future of interactive narrative, about whatever common interest leads you to read what I write in the first place — please do ping me and I’ll see what I can do.
As promised, cool-looking GDC talks:
Monday, March 2 | 11:15am – 11:40am
Harvesting Interactive Fiction
Speaker: Heather Albano (Choice of Games LLC)
Heather is talking about what can be learned from the last several years of IF production.
Monday, March 2 | 3:35pm – 4:00pm
The Design in Narrative Design
Speaker: Jurie Horneman (Independent)
Jurie is talking about something very dear to my heart: the intertwined nature of systems design and narrative design.
Tuesday, March 3 | 4:30pm – 5:30pm
When Story is the Gameplay: Multi-Genre Writing for Telltale Games
Speakers: Kevin Bruner (Telltale Games), Ryan Kaufman (Telltale Games), Pierre Shorette (Telltale Games), Mark Darin (Telltale Games), Tom Bissell (Freelance)
…looks like a good time.
Wednesday, March 4 | 5:00pm – 6:00pm
Adventures in Text: Innovating in Interactive Fiction
Speaker: Jon Ingold (inkle)
Background on the Sorcery! series and 80 Days, on both the design and technical side.
Wednesday, March 4 | 5:00pm – 6:00pm
Thinking About People: Designing Games for Social Simulation
Speaker: Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris (The Tiniest Shark Ltd.)
Another topic near and dear to my heart, unfortunately the same time as Jon’s talk; I’m going to wind up going to one of these and watching the other one on GDC Vault, most likely.
Also Wednesday afternoon, Lost Levels is a free, GDC-adjacent unconference that always contains some really interesting material in counterpoint to the more commercial aspects of the industry.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
I actually really want to attend a talk (someday…) but most them tend to further away that I’d like to travel. Do you happen to know if they offer recordings/PPT slide for presentations? Thanks.
They do record everything and put it on the GDC Vault, but only selected talks are free to the general public (and it’s hard to predict what those will be); the rest are paywalled for people who actually attended the conference.
Hmm—oh well. Thanks anyways, now to hope for a NY con eventually.
Actually, I was hoping to pick your brain at some point since talking to Jacqueline at PAX last year. Maybe the 3-4 of us can meet up around Seattle for a bit. :)
There’s a Seattle IF meetup on the afternoon of March 7 if you want to meet multiple IFers — http://groups.google.com/group/seattle-if has the details. Otherwise if you want to set up something else, email me at emshort@mindspring.com and we can talk scheduling?
Jinkies, I need to turn my google group notifications on. Thanks!