GDC 2013 adds Hitman: Absolution, Mass Effect 3, and Kingdom Age talks

GDC organizers have revealed new talks for the upcoming March 2013 conference, including those on programming AI and NPCs for Square Enix's Hitman: Absolution, reinforcing and strengthening the narrative for Commander Shepard in BioWare's Mass Effect 3, and analyzing the numbers behind GREE's Kingdom Age for the mobile market. These talks are part of the Main Conference, encompassing Business, Marketing & Management, Production, Programming, Visual Arts, and Design tracks, to be held Wed-Fri, March 27-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA. For the Programming track, Mika Vehkala and Maurizio De Pascale of IO Interactive will discuss 'Creating the AI for the Living, Breathing World of Hitman: Absolution'. Along with AI, the pair will explore creating NPC animation that adapts to gameplay situations and player actions in a believable way. Attendees will learn about building systemic AI for a sandbox game that offers a cinematic experience. Lessons include "an overview of the general architecture, details about multi-agent coordination, behavior trees usage, and discretized world representation for reasoning decisions." For the Design and Visual Arts tracks, Dave Feltham will share his team's 'Emotional Journey: BioWare's Methods to Bring Narrative into Levels' for the acclaimed Mass Effect 3. Feltham's team realized it needed new ways to reinforce the narrative in Commander Shepard's missions for the end of this trilogy. In his talk, he will discuss "some of the methods they used to bring narrative to some of the levels' pacing and flow, measure it, and how it helped increase the level of player engagement." Lastly, covering Business, Marketing & Management, and Production tracks for mobile game developers, GREE's Aaron Bannin will present 'Kingdom Age by the Numbers: A Postmortem'. Bannin will review how the team uses player data to deliver and sustain the multi-million dollar generating iOS game, sharing "production debates over numbers, analytics, and how deceiving these numbers can be." For more information on these or others in the show's growing lineup, check out GDC 2013's official Schedule Builder, which has added tens of talks over the previous few days. More talks will debut in the near future, and all of the above sessions will take place as part of GDC 2013's pass is also available). Discounted Early Bird registration is now open on the show's official website, and GDC 2013 itself will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2013, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.