In this latest update for the 2012 Game Developers Conference, the show's organizers have debuted new and notable talks within the Production and Business, Marketing, & Management tracks, detailing new sessions on Words With Friends, frustration management at IO Interactive, The Witcher 2, and the Indie Summer Uprising.
The Production and Business, Marketing, & Management tracks are but two of the seven full-featured tracks at the upcoming San Francisco show, covering the industry's most important management trends and its emerging business strategies, respectively.
The following are the latest sessions to be highlighted for these two Main Conference tracks, taking place on the Wednesday to Friday, March 7th-9th, of GDC 2012:
Production
- In "Words With Friends: Building and Growing a Game on the Top of the Charts," Zynga With Friends CTO Vijay Thakkar will discuss how the studio's popular word-scramble game grew from a modest, small scale title into one of the top juggernauts of mobile gaming.
Thakkar will further detail the technical challenges developers can expect to face when managing any project that grows to encompass multi-platform, or even cross-team development.
- Elsewhere, Square Enix and IO Interactive's user research manager, Janus Rau Sorensen, will offer advice to help weed out overly frustrating bottlenecks from a game's design. Throughout his talk, "Arrrgghh!!! - Blending Quantitative and Qualitative Methods to Detect Player Frustration," Sorensen will delve into a computational model that helps identify patterns of frustration, helping developers quantitatively assess which parts of their game need extra attention. Sorensen's presentation was co-written by Dr. Alessandro Canossa of Information Technology University of Copenhagen.
In addition to these talks, GDC organizers have previously detailed Production track sessions covering BioWare's approach to product ownership with the Dragon Age franchise, and Naughty Dog's internal approach to remaining detail-oriented while still shipping on time.
Business, Marketing, & Management
- Using examples from the critically-acclaimed The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, CD Projekt RED joint CEO Marcin Iwinski will outline show studios can develop blockbuster franchises while operating on a modest budget. His talk, dubbed "Witcher 2: How CD Projekt RED Sold Over a Million Copies of its Exclusive PC Game And How You Can Too," will go over the conception, development, and eventual sales of the Witcher franchise, providing an inside look at the business of this fantasy role-playing series.
- In today's final new talk, writer and Xbox Live Indie Games expert
Dave Voyles will host "Marketing for Indies: The Indie Games Summer Uprising." Voyles is one of the co-coordinators of this independent promotional movement, and in his talk he will demonstrate how more than 70 XBLIG teams planned and executed a successful marketing campaign, providing insight to indie devs who hope to get more exposure for their upcoming projects.
These sessions join previously revealed Business, Marketing, & Management talks featuring a panel of industry legends (featuring Epic founder Tim Sweeney, Markus "Notch" Persson, and more) on the indie renaissance, Ngmoco's Ben Cousins on the future (and demise) of the traditional game console, and WB Seattle on balancing creative freedom with the business realities of game development.
Additional Info
For more information on these or other sessions at GDC 2012, please take a look at the event's Schedule Builder, which will list all public lectures and additions between now and the March 2012 show.
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