Game Developers Conference 2014 organizers are highlighting a few more noteworthy Summit sessions for the upcoming March conference, including an Antichamber postmortem from creator Alexander Bruce and a behind-the-scenes look at how ChAIR Entertainment created Infinity Blade, then tapped a wealth of analytic data to develop sequels that matched player tastes.
These talks are part of the Independent Games Summit and the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, just two of the eight that will take place Monday, March 17 and Tuesday, March 18 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of GDC 2014.
First, don't miss ChAIR Entertainment's Scott Stoddard leading a GDC 2014 session about the design and production of the remarkably successful Infinity Blade trilogy. During his talk, titled Infinity Blade: Creating the Mobile Blockbuster Trilogy, Stoddard will cover the key design choices that led to the core combat and RPG metagame, and how post-launch analytics were used to refine these systems to maximize the user experience and commercial success of the games. The
Plus, Tomorrow Corporation COO Kyle Gray is giving a great talk about the design and development of Little Inferno, Tomorrow Corp.'s IGF award-nominated game about burning things. Gray's talk, Trial by Fire: The Making of Little Inferno, will shed some light on how the game started as a fireplace simulator, then became an adventure game, then became an arcade game, and so on and so forth until it wound up as a darkly satirical fireplace simulator with a secret. Gray plans to reveal the adventurous development of Little Inferno's rich world with the help of concept art, pitch documents and early prototypes.
Also, Antichamber creator Alexander Bruce will be doing a postmortem talk about his surreal first-person puzzler titled Antichamber: An Overnight Success, Seven Years in the Making. Bruce plans to cover the entire history of the game, as he went from working alone in a bedroom to flying around the world and landing on the IGF stage in 2012. This talk will provide a very honest analysis of the many problems encountered throughout development, and break down why creating an independent hit felt very far from "living the dream." Expect to learn a bit about the core philosophies that drove the development of Antichamber - from its inception as a series of student prototypes through to becoming a commercial hit, as well as the many challenges, lessons learned, mistakes and course corrections involved in making a multi-year game independently.
Finally, 10,000,000 developer Luca Redwood is leading a session at GDC 2014 in which he plans to speak frankly about how he was able to achieve notable success selling a mobile game for a fixed price -- with no in-app purchases. Redwood intends for everyone attending his talk, simply titled Making 10,000,000, to walk away with a better understanding of his design decisions, as well as some data on the game's sales and how it performed across iOS, Android and Steam.
For more information on these or others in the show's growing lineup, check out GDC 2014's official Schedule Builder, which continues to add new talks every week. GDC 2014 itself will take place March 17-21 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
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