Once again, I’ll be at GDC this year, both speaking and presenting our latest Spirit AI work at a booth in the Expo hall.
If you’re new to GDC and are coming to it from the IF community, I’ve written before about the experience and how to get the most out of it.
If you’re going too, here are a few IF-relevant things to look forward to:
- Monday 10-11 AM, Narrative Innovation Showcase. Clara Fernandez-Vara and Matthew Weise curate a showcase of interesting and surprising new work.
- Monday 3:50-4:20. Writing and Narrative Design: A Relationship.
- Tuesday 10-11 AM, Beyond Procedural Horizons: Exploring Different Uses of Procedural Content Generation. I’m speaking on procedural generation of dialogue.
- Tuesday 11:20-12:20, Designing Great Interactive Narratives on Mobile, including Jon Ingold of inkle.
- Tuesday 1:20-1:50. The Simplest AI Trick in the Book. I’m on the panel and will be talking about procedural storytelling.
- Tuesday 2:10-2:40, Building an Open-Ended Conversation System for Expressive Game Characters. My Spirit AI colleagues Aaron Reed and Alan Hinchcliffe talk in more depth about our project and tooling.
- Tuesday 5:30-6:30. AI Devs Rant. I will be amongst the ranters. I usually avoid situations that require me to froth at the mouth, so if you want to see me rant, be there.
- Wednesday 2:00-3:00 PM is the advocacy microtalks, featuring my Spirit AI colleague Mitu Khandaker as well as many other fine people.
- Wednesday 2:00-3:00 PM also, a post-mortem on Night in the Woods.
- Thursday 11:30-12:30, the Microtalks session is often a good time, and this year features the excellent Liz England.
- Thursday 2:00-2:30, Writing Modular Characters for System-Driven Games features Tanya Short on a topic close to my heart.
- Thursday 3:00-3:30, Exploring Helplessness in Games with ‘Bury Me, My Love’. Florent Maurin speaks about The Pixel Hunt’s award-winning interactive story about Syrian refugees.
- Friday 11:30-12:00, Joseph Humphrey on text UX.
- Friday 1:30-2:30, Jon Ingold on narrative in Heaven’s Vault.
- Friday 1:30-3:30, the Experimental Gameplay Workshop features work by Jacob Garbe.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 