GDC 2013 Day 2: F2P problems and solutions

Kongregate COO Emily Greer described what keeps F2P players playing and paying, while QWOP developer Bennett Foddy identified F2P problems and potential solutions in the second day of the 2013 Game Developers Conference. GDC 2013 is running Monday, March 25th through Friday, March 29th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Gamasutra is onsite to cover the event in its entirety, and the following are more can't-miss highlights. -Kongregate COO and co-founder Emily Greer has built her company on maintaining players for the long haul. In her Free-To-Play Summit session, she described the six pillars her company has identified for keeping players happy (and keeping the revenues flowing). -QWOP and GIRP developer Bennett Foddy says the free-to-play business model has five big problems. However, being creative about solving them can result in a more meaningful application of free-to-play games. -FTL: Faster Than Light developers Matthew Davis and Justin Ma didn't bother with a design document -- after all, they expected it to be a three-month side project. But when development got serious, they had to adjust, the two share in this postmortem. -Ndemic Creations CEO James Vaughan outlines some of the business decisions that made mobile disease simulation game Plague, Inc one of the most successful and top-grossing mobile games of 2012. Other GDC 2013 topics still ripe with discussion among the Gamasutra community include Sony making moves to get indies onto PS4, Nintendo's indies guy tells you how to get your games approved, and Warren Spector arguing that games need to borrow from film less. These are just a handful of the notable GDC 2103 lectures covered to date. All related GDC news can be found on the special Gamasutra GDC coverage page, which is being updated regularly throughout the week. Those interested in purchasing passes to GDC 2013 may still do so onsite. For more information on GDC 2013, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.