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Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have announced the latest Summit talks scheduled for the March conference, covering FTL: Faster Than Light's full postmortem, Spec Ops: The Line's acclaimed narrative built around shooting, and a lecture on introducing students to game audio.

These talks are part of the Independent, GDC Education, and new Game Narrative Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.

In the Independent Summit, Justin Ma and Matthew Davis of Subset Games will explain their process and rationale from crowdfunding to release, focusing on the player experience of running a starship and keeping gameplay structures, mechanics, and genre secondary, in 'Designing Without a Pitch - FTL Postmortem.'

Their singular focus allowed the duo to iterate on or abandon much of the IGF-nominated FTL's design until the game became fun. In this talk, the duo will teach "the hows and whys of separating one's expectations from preconceived notions about games, genres, settings, and other previous experiences when designing."

In the Game Narrative Summit, 2K Games lead writer Walt Williams will detail crafting the story behind the military shooter Spec Ops: The Line in 'We Are Not Heroes: Contextualizing Violence through Narrative.' Attendees will learn how creating the game's narrative elements around the mechanic of shooting "led to a more immersive and emotionally impactful experience."

Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have revealed the latest Summit talks scheduled for the March conference, including Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP collaborator Capy on the viability of paid Apps, Ninja Robot Dinosaur Entertainment's approach for IAP in iOS hit Shellrazer, and a unique collaboration between engineering students and indie game developers resulting in dance battle game/Indiecade finalist Yamove!

These talks are part of the Smartphone & Tablet, Independent, and GDC Education Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.

Nathan Vella of Capy, the Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP collaborator and Critter Crunch creator, will examine the smartphone and tablet app market in 'Still Kicking: The Viability of Paid Apps in the Era of F2P.'

Vella will impart the risks of free-to-play as a small studio and the continued viability of developing paid apps. He will also paint a clear picture of the paid app market while showing how to leverage the opportunities in the paid app space.

Complementing Vella's paid App talk is Shane Neville of Ninja Robot Dinosaur Entertainment's 'Shellrazer - Designing In-App Purchase Without Losing Your Soul' for the Independent Games Summit.

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) juries are announcing the Main Competition finalists for its historic 15th annual awards - nominating nearly 30 outstanding independent game titles to come out of the worldwide community in the past year.

This year's finalists for the most prestigious independent video game awards and showcase were each picked by a discipline-specific set of expert juries, following playthroughs and recommendations of the 580+ IGF entries from over 200 top independent game experts.

Some of the multiple-nominated games for this year's extremely diverse Festival include Cardboard Computer's 'magical realist adventure game' Kentucky Route Zero, Subset Games' spaceship sim 'Roguelike-like' FTL, and Richard Hofmeier's stark, dense street vendor simulator Cart Life.

The first-ever Excellence in Narrative Award is also showcasing unique titles such as Blendo Games' quirky 'first-person short story' Thirty Flights Of Loving, Auntie Pixelante's autobiographical game about a trans woman undergoing HRT, Dys4ia, and The Fullbright Company's abandoned house mystery Gone Home.

The Nuovo Award, once again honoring 'abstract... and unconventional game development' of all kinds, also saw many standout games competing for its $5,000 prize, including Sleeping Beast's irreverent local co-op sci-fi smartphone game Spaceteam, Michael Brough's 'one move a day for 100 days' VESPER.5, and Mousechief's multi-generational family history title 7 Grand Steps.

The full list of finalists for the 2013 Independent Games Festival, with jury-picked "honorable mentions" to those top-quality games that didn't quite make it to finalist status, is as follows:

Game Developers Conference organizers are reminding registered Gamasutra members that nominations for the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards end tomorrow, January 4, 2013. Produced by GDC parent company the UBM Tech Game Network, the Choice Awards are the most prestigious honors in the world of video game development.

The Game Developers Choice Awards recognize the artistry and technical genius of leading industry professionals across multiple game development disciplines. The 13th Annual Awards ceremony will take place the evening of March 27, during GDC 2013 in San Francisco, CA.

Awards in 10 categories are open for nominations for games that launched to retail or debuted online during the 2012 calendar year.

Nominations are also open for three special awards: the Pioneer Award (previous winners), which celebrates those individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture video game history - paving the way for the myriads who followed them.

Also up for nominations is the Ambassador Award (previous winners), which honors an individual who helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games, and the Lifetime Achievement Award (previous winners). All three special awards are open to anyone not previously recognized.

Organizers of March's Game Developers Conference 2013 have revealed additional summit talks on Diablo III translation, two Parsons The New School for Design professors' education manifesto, and Microsoft Game Studio's writing for moral games.

These talks are part of the GDC Education, Localization, and new Game Narrative Summits held at GDC on Monday and Tuesday, March 25-26, 2013 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

The Game Narrative Summit is new to the GDC after seven years at GDC Online and will cover interactive narrative on all types of titles, including AAA hits, indie games, and transmedia projects. The advisory committee includes Tom Abernathy of Microsoft Studios, Lev Chapelsky of Blindlight, Richard Dansky of Ubisoft/Red Storm, Mary DeMarle of Eidos Montreal, and independent writer Susan O'Connor.

Part of GDC's first Game Narrative Summit is Microsoft Game Studios senior game designer and 'Game Design: Theory & Practice' author Richard Rouse III with 'Seven (Or So) Techniques for Writing a Moral Game.'

Following up on Rouse's Seven Ways a Video Game Can Be Moral talk from GDC 2011, he will discuss techniques writers can use "to emphasize morality within their game world while working to the strengths of [the] medium," covering topics such as "morally diverse character creation, integrating moral themes into gameplay systems, the importance of moral quandaries, and moral choice design on a budget."

Organizers of the 2013 Game Developers Conference have revealed more talks revolving around industry-leading hits, including Assassin's Creed III, SSX, and the Dead Space franchise.

These three talks are part of the Production, Audio, and Visual Arts tracks of the GDC 2013 Main Conference, taking place March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

From the production track, five Ubisoft studio leads - Damien Kieken, Marc-Alexis Cote, Hugues Ricour, Francois Pelland and Alexander Hutchinson - will speak about cross-studio collaboration for its multi-million selling IP in 'Three Years of Collaboration on Assassin's Creed III.'

Focusing on "issue and game management, communications and creative processes, and real anecdotes," the panel will discuss the challenges and rewards of maintaining a production model with hundreds of people across international waters.

In the visual arts track, Electronic Arts-owned Visceral Games' lead user interface designer Dino Ignacio will dissect the diegetic UI of their survival horror shooter in 'Crafting Destruction: The Evolution of the Dead Space User Interface.'

Along with Dead Space trivia and Easter eggs, Ignacio will explore the "philosophy, evolution, and development of one of the industry's most innovative user interfaces" and "key elements of the UI such as the RIG, the Frontend, and the BENCH."