Game Developers Conference organizers have announced new lectures for its 2013 Main Conference, including how Borderlands 2 added humor through gameplay, how World of Warcraft coded its network API, and how EVE Online became a multiplatform universe.
These lectures are part of the Programming, Production, and Design Tracks in GDC's Main Conference, to be held March 27-29 in San Francisco at the Moscone Center.
In a Design Track lecture, Gearbox Software lead writer Anthony Burch will share how his team added humor in game mechanics in the talk 'Designing Humor in Borderlands 2.' He will discuss "how a quest with no gameplay can actually be funnier than a quest with it, how every mechanic holds the potential for humor, and how even jokes need debugging."
For the Programming Track, Blizzard's Joe Rumsey will explore solutions to issues for 'Network Serialization and Routing in World of Warcraft.' He will share sample code to illustrate how they handle machine generated codes for serialization, dynamic protocol negotiation, and more.
Her talk will explain "how patterns from web services can be used to create the ability to connect" the PlayStation game and PC client with mobile apps and even 3rd party applications.
For more information on these lectures or others in the show's growing lineup, check out GDC 2013's official Schedule Builder, which continues to add new talks every week.
The deadline for discounted Early Bird passes to the event is February 13th. GDC 2013 itself will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
For more information on GDC 2013 - part of UBM Tech, as is Gamasutra - visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
Borderlands 2 was filled with stupid 4chan/reddit meme references and Minecraft and "arrow to the knee" references. Anything clever that Borderlands 2 did gets outweighed by all the LCD-targeted bullshit and makes Burch not a credible person to talk about humor.
Pop culture references are a valid , if overused, form of humor. Personally I thought that Borderlands had a few hits and misses, but the fact that it had any hits at all puts it far ahead of most games attempting humor, sadly. Its not Team Fortress quality, but its pretty good.
Since then I respect that much of the "failed" comedy I don't like is actually funny.
I respect that Borderlands 2 put a lot of work into entertainment value. The character intros are a great etc.