FTL and Spec Ops: The Line talks coming to GDC

Talks covering the post-mortem of indie hit Faster Than Light (FTL) and Spec Ops: The Line’s narrative have been revealed for the Game Developers Conference 2013.

FTL creators Justin Ma and Matthew Davis of Subset Games will discuss how and why they took to Kickstarter to fund the title’s development, as well as looking at the player experience of running a starship and keeping gameplay structures, mechanics and genre secondary.

The talk, titled ‘Designed Without a Pitch – FTL Post-mortem’ will also explain to developers “the hows and whys of separating one’s expectations from preconceived notions about games, genres, settings, and other previous experiences when designing”.

2K Games lead writer Walt Williams meanwhile will be taking to the game narrative summit to detail the story behind FPS Spec Ops: The Line.

In his talk, ‘We are not heroes: Contextualising violence through narrative’, Williams will discuss how creating the title’s narrative around shooting mechanics “led to a more immersive and emotionally impactful experience”.

Another speaker added to the conference’s roster is the University of Waterloo’s Karen Collins, who will detail a number of interactive exercises and examples from a 12-week course to teach students how to make game audio.

GDC 2013 will take place between March 25th and 29th at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco.

Develop will be out force at the event to cover all the latest and breaking stories as they happen. The March issue of Develop will also be available throughout the conference.

If you would like to get in contact with Develop at the show for a meeting, please contact Develop editor Will Freeman at Will.Freeman@intentmedia.co.uk or Develop editor-in-chief Michael French at Michael.French@intentmedia.co.uk.