All of indie developer Inkle's games, from the award-winning 80 Days to the various Sorcery! games, have been authored using the same tool: Ink, an in-house text-based scripting language designed for rapidly authoring branching text-based content in a writer-friendly environment.

It's a unique, potentially powerful and tricky tool, one that Inkle recently made open-source, so it's nice that Inkle cofounder Joseph Humfrey took the stage at GDC 2016 earlier this year to outline how the language works.

In his talk Humphrey walked through where Ink came from, and how developers can use can use it to drive a game's content, facilitate branching, and even allows complexity that approaches procedural narrative in some scenes.

Humphrey's talk offered both singular insight into Ink's potential and an interesting perspective on the current state of narrative in games, so don't miss your opportunity to watch the whole thing for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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