This year's big GDC Europe conference in Cologne, Germany is just a few months away, and today conference officials are pleased to announce a pair of talks for the August conference that showcase the diverse variety of sessions available in even a single GDC track of talks.
This week also marks the debut of the GDC Europe Schedule Builder, a powerful tool that you can use to look up full details on all announced GDC Europe talks. Bookmark it now to keep tabs on the conference and put a pin in your can't-miss talks.
Both of these sessions are part of the GDC Europe Business, Marketing and Management track of talks, with one focusing on the business of supporting amateur competitive communities around your games while the other concerns itself with practical data-driven analysis of how game genres and mechanics affect players' social impact -- how much they talk about your game, tweet about it, and draw in friends and followers to play.
The former, "Unglamorous E-Sports: A Mount & Blade: Warband Case Study," will see TaleWorlds Entertainment's Frank Elliott delivering a heartfelt case study of the competitive scene that's sprung up around the studio's medieval warfare game Mount & Blade Warband.
Small-scale developers with multiplayer games will gain a concept of how they can efficiently respond to and support their competitive communities, and everyone who attends Elliott's talk will walk away with a deeper understanding of why people play a single game for thousands of hours with no promise of material reward -- and how developers can cultivate and support those players.
Elsewhere on GDC Europe's Business track, Ninja Metrics' Dmitri Williams will break down anonymized stats from 400 million players of games across all genres and platforms to help you understand what game genres and mechanics get players talking.
His session, simply titled "Social Impact," aims to give developers an understanding of what genres and mechanics are creating more (and less) "social value," a simple way of summing up how players influence each others' behavior through messaging avenues like Facebook, Twitter and the like. Analytics- and marketing-minded folks will also appreciate Williams' insights into optimizing your ability to find players, send them the right messages, then keep them engaged with (and excited about) your game.
These are just two of the many exciting sessions that will be announced for GDC Europe 2015 in the coming weeks, and early birds can register for GDC Europe 2015 by July 8th to save 200 euros on an All Access Pass. The conference itself will take place August 3rd and 4th in Cologne, Germany.
Of course, GDC Europe 2015 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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