It's the castle that changed everything—and they only had four months to build it. Classic Game Postmortem returns to GDC 2022 with a session about one of the most groundbreaking games in history: Wolfenstein 3D.
The Game Developers Conference organizers are happy to announce that game designer, programmer, and id Software co-founder John Romero will be hosting the latest installment in the Classic Game Portmortem series. It's all about the ambitious 1992 MS-DOS PC game that changed everything, made during a time where there were no GPUs, most games were 320x200 pixels, and mice were barely used.
"Classic Game Postmortem: Wolfenstein 3D (Achtung!)" on Wednesday, March 23 from 9:00 to 10:00am PT, will take the audience through the short timeline of creating this "watershed moment in gaming history," showing just how much happened during the game's development rollercoaster ride. Wolfenstein 3D showed the world that the PC could play a new kind of game that no other machine could replicate, a legacy that continues to this day.
Here are some of the other Postmortem sessions coming to GDC 2022:
Classic Game Postmortem: Q*bert (Thursday, March 24 from 11:30am to 12:30pm PT)
Warren Davis, (Software Consultant, Independent)
Warren Davis, the designer and programmer of the original 1982 arcade version of Q*bert, describes the history behind developing this classic game. Also covered will be the story of the unreleased (until 1997) follow-up, Faster Harder More Challenging Q*bert, and the legacy of the character and game through present day.
Psychonauts 2 Design Postmortem (Thursday, March 24 from 5:30 to 6:30pm PT)
Seth Marinello, (Principle Designer, DOUBLE FINE PRODUCTIONS)
Lead designer Seth Marinello will walk through the thinking behind key systems and levels in the GDCA-nominated hit sequel, Psychonauts 2. He will discuss how the team balanced honoring the legacy of the first game while updating the gameplay for a modern audience—along with exploring the challenges of creating a narrative platforming game, and how a focus on empathy expanded the design possibility space.
Lombax Lessons: A Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Design Postmortem (Friday, March 25 from 1:30 to 2:30pm PT)
Mark Stuart, (Lead Designer, Insomniac Games)
The lead designer of GDCA nominee Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart takes the audience on an intergalactic journey of wild possibilities, crushing realities, and keeping the vision true to an iconic franchise, while pushing for inclusivity and improved accessibility. This postmortem takes the initial pillars of the game and explores how they drove design and system choices, constraints, and pivots the team encountered in crafting the duo's most recent adventure.
When More is More: An Old World Design Postmortem (Wednesday, March 23 from 3:30 to 4:30pm PT)
Soren Johnson, (Design Director, Mohawk Games)
With Old World, Mohawk Games set out to reinvigorate the historical 4X genre by reducing thematic scope and removing rote decisions to make room for procedural characters and narrative. In this session, design director Soren Johnson goes into how Mohawk reexamined and often rejected genre conventions during the game's production, while also building a dynamic story engine that enabled the creation of over 3,000 events.
Join us at the Game Developers Conference to get the final word on Wolfenstein 3D and so many more incredible games. Register for GDC 2022 today!
GDC returns in-person to San Francisco, March 21-25, 2022—registration is now open! For more information on GDC 2022, including our virtual options, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDC22 hashtag on social media.
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