Organizers of this October's GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin) have announced key speakers for its iPhone and iPad Gaming Summits, including Words With Friends/We Rule's David Bettner, Pocket Legends' Cinco Barnes and more.
The two new Summits, focusing on Apple's portable gaming devices, take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 5th-6th in Austin, Texas alongside the larger GDC Online event, to provide a lexicon of key facts and advice for all those working in the iPhone and iPad game areas.
From key business learnings through top technical takeaways, some of the developers who are even now surging to major success on the iPhone, iPad and other mobile platforms are shaping this inaugural GDC Summit on the subject.
Some of the newly announced highlights of this year's iPhone and iPad Gaming Summit talks, chosen by a distinguished Summit advisory board including Gamevil's Kyu C. Lee, Canabalt's Adam Saltsman, GeoDefense's David Whatley and Backflip's Julian Farrior, include the following:
- The lecture 'Turn Based: The Power and Potential of Asynchronous Gaming in Mobile' sees Newtoy co-founder David Bettner, one of the minds behind smash iPhone hits Words With Friends and We Rule, explaining why "turn based gaming, previously confined to the living room, has been liberated. At its core, it's gaming meets text-messaging and it allows you to play with your friends anytime, anywhere, in a way never before possible."
- Successful indie Arash Keshmirian of Limbic Software (Tower Madness) is presenting 'App Store Survival - Launching and Sustaining a Successful Franchise', outlining "strategies for developing a game that not only thrives at launch but holds players attention and can become an enduring franchise." Attendees will learn how to analyze and hone initial concepts (including revenue models) for the best chance of success, managing a launch and an ongoing marketing calendar, and a host of other notable tips.
- In 'Surviving and Thriving as an iPhone MMO Developer', Cinco Barnes, previously lead designer of Star Wars: Galaxies, discusses how his company abandoned their charter to create large-scale PC MMO games and leveraged their advantages to find profitability in the mobile games biz via games like acclaimed persistent iPhone online game Pocket Legends.
- 'Fun Meters: Data Driven Design For TILT' sees noted player experience expert Nicole Lazzaro discuss her popular iPad/iPhone title TILT, with plenty of information on "how to use data to make your game more fun, what data we collected, how data from real players is different from Betas, viral web mechanics' effect on App Store positioning, [and] answers to such mysteries as why advanced players continually replay."
Additional confirmed lectures include a panel on getting your game noticed by the press with representatives from SlideToPlay, IGN, and 148Apps, some analysis on 'rapid development in the mobile games space' from NewToy's Vijay Thakkar, a look at mobile social games in Asia from DeNA's Tomoko Namba, and much more still to be announced.
The iPhone Games Summit and the iPad Gaming Summit will be just one part of GDC Online, which will take place October 5-8, 2010 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas and also features a main conference based around social games and MMOs, plus Summits on game narrative and 3D stereoscopic gaming.
To learn more about the other lectures and summits for GDC Online, for which early, reduced-price registration is only open until September 1st, please visit the official GDC Online website.
