The big GDC Europe 2016 conference is kicking off next week in Cologne, Germany, and today organizers would like to quickly highlight some of the great expert sessions that will be taking place at the show. That means you have until this Wednesday, August 10th at 11:59 PM Pacific to register online to attend the show. After that deadline, you'll have to register on-site at an increased price!
There's too many to run down in a single blog post, so today we're going to focus on two big tracks of talks at GDC Europe: The Production track and the Business, Marketing and Management track. While they each have a distinct focus, both offer a wealth of practical insight for both freshly-minted and veteran game makers.
For example, GDC Europe attendees can check out the Production track talk "Alien Cultures: Rebooting 'Master of Orion' with a Global Team" for an in-depth look at the process of rebooting a beloved strategy game in a way that both satisfies diehard Master of Orion fans while simultaneously showcasing the appeal of space strategy games to a new audience.
Wargaming's Chris Keeling and Jacob Beucler both worked closely on the project, and in their talk they'll discuss how the Master of Orion team overcame obstacles and managed remote third-party teams across multiple languages, time zones, and cultures.
Plus, Modern Dream (Typing of the Dead: Overkill) director and cofounder Oliver Clarke, who also helped cofound U.K. coworking space Arch Creatives, will be delivering a great Production talk on "Game Hubs: A Quest to Revolutionize Game Production."
His talk will provide a clear understanding of what Game Hubs are, why they're popping up around the world, what the advantages are for developers -- and what major pitfalls to avoid. His talk will also provide ideas on how to set one up, and afford you a better understanding of their potential to improve your game production process.
And for game business insights, consider attending a talk like "What Top Apps Do With IAP That the Rest Don't." from Amazon developer evangelist Mike Hines.
Amazon has collected data about how mobile game players engage with IAP and reviewed how the most profitable apps are using IAP to monetize successfully. As a result, Hines plans to share two levels of data: how the top 50 did differently (Retention data, session length data, units sold and price data) and what they did differently to get those results.
It turns out there are a handful of things that most of the top 50 do that other games don't. Hines will share that knowledge -- along with a truckload of actionable data -- with attendees.
Elsewhere on the Business track, Thomas Reisenegger -- an experienced PR consultant at Ico Partners who's assisted with PR for games like League of Legends -- will deliver a talk on "Guerrilla Marketing - Games PR with Little Money, Much Insanity and Maximum Impact" in which he'll share some hard-won lessons on getting your game noticed.
He'll break down the concept of guerrilla marketing a video game, walk you through examples best practices (and worst practices), then showcase data on what sort of effect this strategy can have on media coverage and game sales. Plus, he'll deal with the question of what it takes to come up with -- and pull off -- a successful PR stunt.
More details on these and all other announced talks are now available in the online GDC Europe 2016 Session Scheduler, where you can plan out your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App!
GDC Europe 2016 will also continue to offer business and matchmaking opportunities to all attendees with a developer-focused Expo Floor area and networking events throughout the show. For more information, please visit the GDC Europe website.
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