GDC Online Reveals New Combat Arms, Firefall, Playdom, Rift Sessions

Author: by Staff

With GDC Online just around the corner, event organizers have debuted eight new lectures for the October show, with session topics ranging from monetization strategies in Firefall and Combat Arms, to breaking into Asian mobile markets, to the capabilities of Sony's PlayStation Vita. GDC Online will take place next month, from October 10 through October 13 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, and these talks come from throughout GDC Online's numerous tracks and Summits, with nearly 150 sessions and 230 speakers on tap. Many of these new talks fall within the show's Main Conference, which features tracks covering Business & Marketing, Customer Experience, Design, Production, and Programming, as well as a sponsored track on Monetization. The show also includes three dedicated Summits, which offer specialized talks covering Smartphone & Tablet Games, Virtual Items, and Game Narrative. Here are the newest sessions to be revealed for the show: - In the GDC Virtual Items Summit, Mark Kern (Blizzard veteran and founder and CEO of Red 5 Studios) will host "Firefall - Free2Play Reborn," a session that examines the monetization techniques Kern's studio will use for its upcoming persistent online shooter (pictured). - Another lecture in the GDC Virtual Items Summit, "Combat Arms Postmortem: The Art of Selling Guns," will feature Nexon America managing producer Jungsoo Lee, as he explains how the company completely re-vamped the monetization model for its popular shooter Combat Arms when bringing the title to the U.S. - As part of the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, a panel of family-focused industry experts will host, "Kids, Tablets and Family: Social Gameplay at Home," which will look at the ways in which tablets and other mobile devices are changing the ways families play and enjoy media together. - The Business & Marketing track will feature "Rift: Surviving and Thriving in Today's MMO Climate," in which Trion Worlds executive producer Scott Hartsman will look back on the studio's experience with Rift to offer tips on creating a successful MMO in today's competitive market. - Also within the Smartphone Summit, speakers from ngmoco, Papaya Mobile, and Gamevil will host, "International Micro-Talks: Developing and Distributing Games for Japan, China and Korea," a series of short lectures all focused on breaking into the mobile space in Asian markets. - Over in the Customer Experience track, Playdom's Gordon Walton, BioWare's Erik Olsen, ZAM's Cody Bye, and Curse's Donovan Duncan will discuss how to create connected experiences that span multiple platforms in a panel dubbed, "Full Immersion: Taking Your Game Everywhere." - Finally, the Production track will feature "What's Beyond Agile?," in which BioWare Austin's Richard Vogel and Ken Shuck will reflect on their experiences with various development strategies, outlining what worked, what didn't, and what processes could work for you. For more information on these or other sessions, please check out GDC Online's official Schedule Builder. In addition, a notable addition to sessions sees Sony hosting a sponsored lecture titled, "PlayStation Vita: Introducing a new Handheld Gaming Platform," which will examine the features and capabilities of the PlayStaton Vita's hardware, dev tools, and online services. Other recent talks within the show's Main Conference feature NCsoft West on making City of Heroes free-to-play, and a panel on the future of cloud gaming. Event organizers have also detailed the show's Game Career Seminar, which includes a series of lectures targeted at students and aspiring developers. For more information on GDC Online, please visit the official GDC Online website, or subscribe to updates from the new GDC Online-specific news page via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. GDC Online is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb, as is this website.