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With GDC Europe 2016 just around the corner, you should know that conference organizers have lined up a great talk from Space Ape Games cofounder Simon Hade about how you can support your mobile game with live ops and events -- without tying up a lot of people.

Hade's talk, "Forget Features! How Space Ape Grows Games Through Live Ops & Events," will be part of the Business, Marketing and Management track of talks at GDC Europe next month in Cologne, Germany.

According to Hade, Space Ape (Rival Kingdoms, Samurai Siege) is a 100-person studio -- yet only a handful of people are working on their live games. In the course of his talk he'll show you how they continue to grow revenue month over month through sophisticated live operations that allow designers, product managers and other non-technical team members to keep the game fresh with new content, troops, defenses and event types every week -- with little to no developer support.

What in-app purchasing strategies set the top mobile game makers apart from the pack?

Amazon developer evangelist Mike Hines will answer that question at GDC Europe next month in Germany, where he'll take the stage to deliver a talk on "What Top Apps Do With IAP That the Rest Don't."

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 of his GDC Europe 2016 session. Don't miss it!

This year's big GDC Europe conference in Germany is right around the corner, and organizers have been working hard to line up an excellent array of cutting-edge sessions and speakers for the August event.

To that end, today GDC Europe officials are proud to confirm that Kayla Kinnunen, game director at Roadhouse Interactive, will be leading a smart session on how to best design humane, intuitive virtual- and augmented-reality experiences.

Her talk, "No Text, No Tutorial: Fully Embracing Human-Centered Design in VR," will showcase how VR -- especially tracked-controller VR -- demands a dramatic shift in UX (User Experience) development practices.

Many common UX constructs were built for a 2D screen and don't work in three dimensional space. At first glance this can present a huge challenge to VR developers. However, with careful thought, this change opens up whole new interaction models that are more intuitive and natural for players. Kinnunen's talk will review trailblazers in the field; discuss human-centered design principles and explain how to take these principles further in your own projects.

This year's GDC Europe conference in Germany is coming up quick, and today event organizers are excited to announce an intriguing talk on the nuts and bolts of MMORPG design for the summer conference.

Come August, GDC Europe 2016 attendees will have a chance to sit in on a session about "Tradeskills for Fun and ROI" from Daybreak Games producer Emily Taylor.

Taylor has been responsible for revamping the tradeskills in Everquest 2 and overseeing further development of tradeskill content across 9 EQ2 expansions, as well as other Daybreak online game projects.

Few appreciate what makes tradeskills in games fun and challenging like she does, so check out her talk to learn how to entice players who love to play games where they can craft, buy and sell things to their heart's content.

Those who attend Taylor's talk will gain an understanding of the factors that motivate tradeskill-oriented players, what aspects of gameplay keep them coming back, how they strengthen your game's community, retention -- and ultimately, profit.

Now that the first standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference is in production, organizers would like to celebrate what sets the November conference apart from the games & entertainment-focused VRDC track of talks at GDC in February 2017.

While VRDC got its start earlier this year as a sibling event to GDC 2016 in San Francisco, it quickly proved so popular that organizers spun it off to become a standalone show. We expanded its remit beyond VR/AR in games and entertainment to encompass subjects such as healthcare, journalism, travel, manufacturing, retail, live events, real estate, training, and so much more.

VRDC will continue to be held alongside the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2017, the world’s largest professional game industry event. VRDC at GDC will continue to focus on creating amazing, immersive VR for games and entertainment.

To match the scope of the standalone VRDC's ambitions, the November conference will feature four different tracks of talks: Games & Entertainment, Brand Experience, Innovation and Partners.

So while VRDC attendees will be able to sit in on talks about the best practices of VR and AR game design, they'll also have the opportunity to see how NASA is using VR to train its astronauts and learn how a video game developer created an interactive VR documentary about Chernobyl's radiated Exclusion Zone.

The first standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference is taking place this year, and organizers have already started lining up an excellent array of informative cutting-edge sessions on VR/AR design for the November event.

VRDC officials are proud to announce that Robin Hunicke, Funomena cofounder, longtime game producer & designer (Journey, Boom Blox) and VRDC Advisory Board member, will be delivering a Games & Entertainment Track talk titled "The Body is Back! Understanding Embodiment in VR & AR Game Design."

Funomena recently announced its collaboration with Google on Woorld, a fascinating mobile AR experience co-created by Katamari Damacy's Keita Takahashi for Google's Tango AR tech.

In the lecture, Hunicke will explore some of the core challenges and opportunities that the human body presents in design -  from controller design and gaze inputs to body posture, movement and gesture design.

Using examples drawn from dance, outdoor play, as well VR and AR game development, she will dig into the science and engineering behind embodied game design, looking at how work from social sciences, human computer interaction and psychology can inform our designs and make our games better!