Diablo 3 among newly announced, writing-focused GDC 2013 sessions

GDC 2013 has added a pile of new sessions to its calendar, all of which focus on topics related to writing.

All the new talks are part of Education, Localization and new Game Narrative Summits, which take place on the first two days of the conference. The Game Narrative Summit is a new addition this year, but has previously been held as part of sister-event GDC Online.

The first talk announced for the new Narrative Summit is called Seven (Or So) Techniques for Writing a Moral Game, and will be delivered by Richard Rouse III, an author and Microsoft Game Studios senior designer. The talk will focus on ways writers can "emphasize morality within their game world" without eschewing gaming's unique strengths. It will take in "morally diverse character creation, integrating moral themes into gameplay systems, the importance of moral quandaries and moral choice design on a budget".

Over in the Localization Summit, the 400,000 monsters, items and lore entires of Diablo 3 are the focus of a talk by Blizzard's Andrew Vestal. The lecture, English is a Localized Language: Translating Diablo III, will talk about how Blizzard uses proactive localisation techniques to make QA and translation easier.

Finally, John Sharp and Colleen Macklin of Parsons The New School for Design will give a talk called Play, Make, Appreciate: A Games Education Manifesto, on the topic of how to improve gaming education.

GDC 2013takes place from March 25 through 29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.