The Gstar organising committee on Sept. 14 unveiled the second round of speakers and the session lineup for G-CON 2026, which will be held in November. This year’s event will centre on “narrative” and “AI”. Creators from other content fields such as film, drama and webtoons, as well as games, will take part to discuss storytelling and creative methods.

G-CON 2026 will be held from Nov. 19 to 20 at the third floor of Convention Hall at BEXCO in Busan. The organising committee added sessions featuring game developers as well as writers, directors and artists through the second lineup.

In game development, Ariadna Martinez (아리아드나 마르티네즈), lead writer of “Ghost of Yotei”, and Joanna Wang (조안나왕), art director, will take the stage. They will introduce how Western developers reflected Eastern history and culture in a game’s world view and visuals, with webtoon creator Lee Jong-beom (이종범) joining the discussion.

A session on game art will feature Moby Francke, Gavin Goulden, Bruno Velazquez and Elmeri Laitinen. Drawing on work on “God of War”, “Marvel’s Spider-Man”, “Control”, “Team Fortress 2”, “League of Legends” and “Valorant”, they will cover how early concepts are developed into characters, environments, animation and visual effects. Cecil Kim (세실 킴), studio art director at thatgamecompany, will serve as moderator.

Masakazu Hirayama (히라야마 마사카즈) and Kohei Shibata (시바타 코헤이) of Team NINJA will also take part. Based on development experience on the “Nioh”, “Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty” and “Ninja Gaiden” series, they are set to explain how they design combat, difficulty and the loop of repeated failure and retry in high-difficulty action RPGs.

A dialogue between leading game producers from South Korea and abroad has also been arranged. Kim Hyung-tae (김형태), chief executive of Shift Up, and Shinji Mikami (미카미 신지), chief executive, will share their development philosophies and game production experience on the same stage. The session will be moderated by the game-focused channel “Middle-aged Gamer Kim Sil-jang”.

A session on “The Witcher” series will feature story director Marcin Blacha and narrative director Philip Weber. They will introduce how they reconstruct myth, folktales, history and literature into game narratives, and structures in which the story changes depending on user choice. Professor Jang Hong-je (장홍제) will also take part.

Another session will compare character design in games and drama. Cho Yong-hee (조용희), director of Capcom’s “Pragmata”, and Park In-je (박인제), director of Disney+’s “Moving”, will discuss how they design characters and relationships, with Lee taking part as moderator.

A session will also link the past and present of “Final Fantasy VII”. Yoshinori Kitase (키타세 요시노리), director of the original and producer of the remake project, and Naoki Hamaguchi (하마구치 나오키), director of the remake series, will take the stage together to talk about how the work changed and was reinterpreted over about 30 years.

A session on the role of creators in the AI era will feature directors Jang Hang-jun (장항준) and Lee Byung-hun (이병헌). They will discuss how film storytelling methods, centred on human creative sensibility such as dialogue, context and rhythm of speech, can be applied to game development.

A session on the potential to expand game narratives will feature Greg Kasavin, Darren Korb, Harry Krueger and Pierre Shorette. Based on development experience on “Hades”, “Returnal” and “Dispatch”, they will explain how replay loops, music, systems and user choice affect game narratives. Rhys Mowbray of 20th Century Games will serve as moderator.

Lee Dong-gun (이동건), creator of webtoon “Yumi’s Cells”, and senior animator Kim Hye-sook (김혜숙), who worked on “Inside Out 2”, will cover ways to visually express emotions and psychology. Kim Kyung-il (김경일), head of the Game Science Research Institute, will also take part to discuss how emotional expression in webtoons and animation can combine with interactive structures in games.

Conference pre-registration runs through Nov. 15 on the official Gstar website. Buyers of G-CON tickets will be able to attend conference sessions and view the Gstar BTC exhibition for 4 days.