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Just a quick reminder that if you're planning to bring kids with you when you attend GDC 2018 in San Francisco this March, the advance deadline to register for the program is February 20th -- less than a month away!

What does it take to design an interesting, compelling character? Explore the challenge at this year's Game Developers Conference, where you'll have a chance to get tips from the creators of Moss -- and its cute mouse protagonist.

In a very special Design track talk on "How Quill Defined Polyarc's VR Character Design Process" Polyarc's own Brendan Walker will dig into the nuts and bolts of crafting believable and engaging VR characters and environments in your game.

See, when Polyarc set out to make its first VR game they built their world from diorama-sized puzzles you interacted with in 3rd person while respecting real world scale. This naturally lead to the creation of a mouse as a main character that the player would use to traverse the puzzles.

According to Walker, Playarc hoped to make that moues protagonist (Quill!) appealing to the player, but did not expect the amount of emotional attachment players expressed during playtesting. This led Polyarc to double down on player interactions within as many places as they could while building out their puzzles.

When you arrive in San Francisco this March for the Game Developers Conference you're going to have a lot of cool talks to choose from, so organizers wanted to take a moment to quickly highlight a particularly interesting one from the folks at

As you're getting ready for the Game Developers Conference in March, organizers want to be sure you know about some of the great sessions taking place at the event that are all about the art of great level design.

Each of these talks is part of the Level Design Workshop, one of many focused, insightful Bootcamps and Tutorials scheduled during the first two days of GDC -- that's Monday and Tuesday, March 19th and 20th this year!

The Level Design Workshop returns for the eighth consecutive year bringing together another all-new docket of talks spanning a variety of topics that will interest working and aspiring level designers across the game industry.

Historically, LD Workshop presentations run the gamut from sharing specific techniques, to in-depth analysis of shipped games, to introspective explorations of "big" concepts that affect level designers/teams, as well as providing guides to process and workflow.

Amid all the remarkable talks and events happening at the Game Developers Conference in March, organizers want to make sure you don't miss one particularly fascinating session on the Frog Fractions 2 alternate-reality game.

Writer Justin Bortnick played a key role in orchestrating the Frog Fractions 2 ARG, and in his GDC 2018 Business & Marketing track talk on "Rallying the Resistance: 'Frog Fractions 2' Alternate Reality Game" he plans to reveal what happened -- and what lessons were learned.

Expect to learn more about the mysteries behind the beloved (and notorious) ARG, from the early days of design through the origins of the mysterious resistance and their sparkly foes all the way to the explosive end that put the launch day of their game into the hands of their fans.

It promises to be a talk you'll want to check out, because you'll gain a broader understanding of unorthodox marketing techniques as campaigns like ARGs continue to grow in popularity, a sense of the benefits and drawbacks of rapid content development, real-time narrative composition, and a sense of wonder that secrets can still exist in games today.

Artificial intelligence! It means many things to many people, and at this year's Game Developers Conference you'll have an opportunity to hear how it meant a breakthrough in game production for the folks at Temple Gate Games.

In a very special GDC 2018 AI Summit session on "'Race for the Galaxy': A Neural Network in Production" Temple Gate chief Theresa Duringer will explain how the studio's game Race for the Galaxy (a digital adaptation of the board game) uses temporal difference learning to power its AI.

This knowledge-free system requires no human input to generate training data, which allows it to improve by playing against itself. Through this approach, the Temple Gate Games team was evidently able to dramatically improve the challenge level offered by AI opponents without the significant time investment typical of tuning complex AI.

Game makers, take note: GDC 2018 organizers want to give you a preview of the cutting-edge discussions taking place during the brand new Tools Tutorial Day which helps kick off the conference in San Francisco this March.

And of course, this is just one of many focused, insightful Bootcamps and Tutorials scheduled during the first two days of GDC -- that's Monday and Tuesday, March 19th and 20th this year!

The Tools Tutorial is designed to offer you a deep dive into the state-of-the-art techniques and processes for building tools that enable game development teams to ship awesome games. Topics will range from usability and workflow to studio services and automated testing, and all the technology in between.

When you attend the Tools Tutorial talks, you'll get to hear (from a front-row seat, if you're quick) to experts from studios large and small talk about their experiences shipping the tools that ship awesome games.