GDC 2013 Day 1: Indies speak out

The 2013 Game Developers Conference is in full swing, and highlights from the first day include Double Fine's Kipnis on the game jam inspired by @petermolydeux, Terry Cavanagh calling for indies to curate their own games, and Giant Sparrow on The Unfnished's Swan's journey to PSN. GDC 2013 is running Monday, March 25th through Friday, March 29th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Gamasutra is onsite to cover the event in its entirety, and the following are some of the first-day highlights. In How a parody Twitter account inspired a global game jam, Double Fine's Anna Kipnis gives a postmortem of "What Would Molydeux," last year's event that offered a unique spin on the concept of a game jam by basing prototypes on the tweets of Twitter parody account @petermolydeux. Elsewhere, Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh argues that fellow indie game developers are the community's best curators in Indies question whether journalists should be our game curators . In Lessons from The Unfinished Swan's unique development journey, Giant Sparrow creative director Ian Dallas shares what he learned in The Unfinished Swan's journey from USC student prototype to full-scale, 12-person PlayStation Network release. In Mark of the Ninja creator: Innovation no excuse for crunch, Jamie Cheng, founder of Klei Entertainment, creator of the XBLA games Shank and Mark of the Ninja had strong words for any game maker who might claim that working extensive overtime is an intrinsic part of making 'art'. Also on Monday, game designer Noah Falstein discusses the concept of the puzzle dependency chart, a technique that he and his colleagues used at LucasArts when developing classic adventure games like Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. Lastly, Spry Fox (Triple Town) devs say rapid iteration, early releases, and a broad design space are key to building original successful free-to-play games. These are just a few of the notable GDC 2103 lectures covered so far. All related GDC news can be found on the special Gamasutra GDC coverage page, which is being updated regularly throughout the week. Those interested in purchasing passes to GDC 2013 may still do so onsite. For more information on GDC 2013, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.