The organizers of GDC Europe 2013 announced that Ubisoft and mobile talks have been added onto the schedule at the last minute. GDC Europe will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany – just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event, with all GDC Europe passes also guaranteeing entrance to Gamescom.
In ‘Getting Past Pay to Win,’ senior online game supervisor at Ubisoft Blue Byte, Teut Weidemann [The Settlers Online (pictured), Anno Online] will explain how to avoid pay-to-win design in free-to-play games. He will also share how Ubisoft designs monetization methods that its players accept as not being too aggressive nor unfair.
In ‘Turning One-Time Visitors into Lifetime Players: Building Retention in Mobile Games,’ Scopely VP of game development Darion Lowenstein will explore how they design game mechanics and position messaging to retain mobile players. Also drawing on experience from producing and directing hits at Electronic Arts, Activision, and Rockstar Games, Lowenstein will explain when teams need to find the right partner to take their game to the next level, too.
PerBlue’s co-founder and CEO Justin Beck will share their secrets behind their thriving free-to-play game Parallel Kingdom, in ‘Creating and Maintaining a Thriving Mobile, Virtual RPG World.’ He will review over four years of lessons learned along the way, as the game grew from requiring a team of two to a team of 35 full-time employees.
Finally, in ‘Platform Evolution – Implications for the Future of Mobile Games,’ mobile games marketing platform AppLift CEO and co-founder Kaya Taner will analyze the development patterns in browser and social games and their surrounding ecosystems, highlighting upcoming trends in the mobile space. Said trends will include user acquisition, monetization, investments, platform regulation, and changes in competition.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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