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Organizers of the Game Developers Conference have once again donated a number of complimentary GDC 2015 passes to a variety of organizations through the GDC Scholarship Program, and the deadline to apply for these scholarships is approaching fast.
In fact, two of the organizations that GDC is partnering with -- the GDC International Ambassador program and the Dames Making Games program -- will close their call for GDC 2015 scholarship applications next week, so make sure to check out their programs via the GDC Scholarship Programs page and apply if interested.

As the game industry matures, a growing group of game educators face the difficult challenge of figuring out how to preserve and advance the field through the next generation of game design students.
Northeastern University professor Gillian Smith and USC lecturer Jane Pinckard are two such trailblazers, and at GDC 2015 in March they'll be speaking about what they've learned in trying to discuss design inclusivity issues as they relate to the curriculum of a games education course.
Their talk, Socially Responsible Game Education," aims to provide concrete examples of how members of the game industry can incorporate inclusive design practices into their efforts as educators. Teaching resources will also be recommended, and an open discussion of the topic will take place after their talk.
Pinckard and Smith's talk will be part of the conference's Education Summit, a series of incisive and forward-thinking talks on the subject of game education from leading experts in the industry.

As the year winds to a close, Game Developers Conference 2015 officials are excited to announce that two game industry luminaries are coming to the show next March to deliver what promises to be an insightful postmortem of a seminal game.
Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, the game design duo who cofounded the venerable Toys For Bob studio 25 years ago, will be delivering a Classic Game Postmortem on their influential 1990 space adventure game Star Control at GDC 2015.

Damion Schubert, former lead designer on Star Wars: The Old Republic, will share lessons learned from the MMORPG's remarkably successful conversion from subscription-based to free-to-play in his GDC 2015 talk "Free-to-Play Is Not (Necessarily) Evil."
Schubert believes the success of games like League of Legends and Star Wars: The Old Republic show that free-to-play games are no longer just a distant possibility for AAA developers -- the future is now, and we need to adapt. There's big success to be had within the bounds of F2P design, but if done carelessly it can alienate your fans.

Ubisoft's efforts to render the fictional setting of Kyrat for Far Cry 4 drove the development of new graphical features that tap the power of new hardware in interesting ways, and 3D programmer Stephen McAuley is coming to GDC 2015 in March to explain exactly how they work.
Check out McAuley's talk, Rendering the World of Far Cry 4", if you're a designer, artist or developer looking for some new technical tricks and a bit of insight into how the Ubisoft culture affects the way it makes games.

Earlier this year a group of developers took advantage of a multi-day train ride from Chicago to attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco by participating in the first-ever Train Jam, a 52-hour game jam held aboard an Amtrak train with limited connectivity.
Next year the Train Jam organizers are going to do it all again, and GDC officials are proud to support their efforts by providing a dedicated space at the show where organizers will be displaying select games made during the jam.

Gearbox Software's Anthony Burch believes that, contrary to popular opinion, most people don't care about saving the world in games: they'd rather spend time with a well-written little girl who's learning to cope with grief. At GDC 2015, he'll lay out his case and offer some advice on how you can start writing better characters right away.
Burch served as a writer on the outlandish first-person shooter Borderlands 2 and its ensuing post-release DLC packs, and his experience suggests that people tend to respond more positively (and are more likely to give their attention and money) to character-centric DLC, rather than content that pushes the narrative of your game world forward with "epic" plots and sequences.
By analyzing rough sales figures and critical response to Borderlands 2's DLC, as well as exploring the process of those DLC's creation, Burch will try to convince you to lean on character and charm rather than plot and lore when you write for games in his upcoming GDC 2015 talk, Plot is Dumb, Character is Cool: Writing for DLC.