Knowing how to get your game in front of the people who will enjoy it most has never been more important, and if you want to sharpen your skills, GDC 2019 in March is the place to be!
January 8, 2019
Knowing how to get your game in front of the people who will enjoy it most has never been more important, and if you want to sharpen your skills, the 2019 Game Developers Conference is the place to be!
First and foremost, this year GDC debuts a special Game Discoverability Day, an entire day of talks discussing practical case studies and strategies for PC, console and mobile game developers to help their work stand out amid a sea of games.
Also, there are a slew of notable talks outside DIscoverability Day that are designed to help you sell and market your games more effectively. For example, in "PR Success.gif: How to Get Your Game Across in 5 Seconds" Future Friends Games' Thomas Reisenegger explores the wonderful format of animated gifs and how they can be used to promote your game efficiently to players, press, influencers and other important people.
From the question of what makes a good gif, how to record, compress and post them, to best practice examples, this session will provide tips like why the first frame of a gif is key, as well as platform-specific gif advice for Steam, Twitter, etc. After this session you will know how to get the most out of your beautiful animated gif babies and how to convey your game's core message within seconds!
And in "Build Your Own Fan Club: How to Use Your Email List" Return to Adventure Mountain's Chris Zukowski will teach you the techniques needed to get players to join your mailing list, boost your open rates, and turn new players into super fans. You'll walk away inspired to use your email list in new and interesting ways, and you'll know what you need to grow your list.
Mobile game makers should check out "The Changing Face of the Mobile Marketplace", in which Kongregate's Peter Eykemans will take a look at four mobile games (two new launches, and two aging titles) to see what the modern mobile business looks like. He'll walk you through the practical value, in 2018, of things like storefront featuring, user acquisition, test markets, performance improvements, competition, game updates, and more. If you're launching (or relaunching) a mobile game in 2019, this is a talk you want to see!
Plus, Dry Cactus director Patrick Corrieri will be at GDC 2019 presenting "Community Driven Discoverability for Indies," a session of strategies for increasing the discoverability of your games. Aimed at indie devs, this talk will help you identify your niche and unique selling points, find your audience, build strong communities, enable meaningful social experiences, provide value to influencers, and leverage social media to enable your players to be your advocates.
Specifically, you’ll hear about what Dry Cactus tried with its hit bridge-builder Poly Bridge, and how well it did or didn’t work.
Last but not least, you'll want to keep an eye out for the GDC 2019 talk on "To Affinity and Beyond: Lessons Learned Mapping the Mobile Games Market" from King product manager Ishai Smadja.
Using King's treasure trove of mobile market data, Smadja will show you what the mobile gaming market looks like mapped using big data, and how to use this knowledge to explore opportunities, or grow them for yourself. Can big data help game makers chart a fruitful course in today's choppy game market? Find out at GDC 2019!
Further details on these talks and many more are available now on the GDC 2019 Session Scheduler. There you can begin to lay out your GDC 2019, which takes place March 18th through the 22nd at the (newly renovated!) Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Bring your team to GDC! Register a group of 10 or more and save 10 percent on conference passes. Learn more here.
For more details on GDC 2019 visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
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