GDC 2014 adds fresh Summit talks on free-to-play game design

Game Developers Conference 2014 organizers have revealed a few new Free to Play Design & Business Summit talks for its March conference, including sessions explaining how to design a chart-topping match-3 puzzle game, a guide to taking your mobile game cross-platform, and tips on how to design compelling in-app purchases for freemium games. These talks are part of the Free to Play Design & Business Summit, one of eight that will take place Monday, March 17 and Tuesday, March 18 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of GDC 2014. As part of the Summit, Jelly Splash Florian Steinhoff will take the stage at GDC to offer a detailed account of how his team came to design a free match-3 puzzle game that rose to claim the number one spot in Apple’s list of most downloaded apps. During his talk, titled Jelly Splash: Puzzling Your Way to the Top of the App Store, Florian plans to share advice on making players feel appropriately awesome, how to manage difficulty curves to appeal to a broad audience, and more. Katherine de Leon has learned a few things about cross-platform game development during her time as executive producer at GSN Games, which produces Solitaire Slots, Wheel of Fortune, and more. During her talk Checkmate: Cross-Platform Development Tips To Make You King she plans to share hard-won advice on how developers can best build and distribute a cross-platform game, including tricks to navigating different marketing channels to find and attract the most appropriate players, evaluating game performance, and -- arguably most importantly -- having a good time at GDC. Finally, FamousAspect monetization consultant Ethan Levy is coming to GDC to give a talk about the art of designing great in-game purchasing models. Levy plans to share practical guidelines and systems for designing optimal monetization systems during his session, simply titled Designing In-Game Purchases. Attendees can expect to walk out with a better understanding of how to evaluate and implement good core loops, build compelling in-game economies, and accurately forecast revenue from a free-to-play game. For more information on these or others in the show's growing lineup, check out GDC 2014's official Schedule Builder, which continues to add new talks every week. The deadline for discounted Early Bird passes, including a lower-priced Summits, Tutorials & Bootcamps Pass, is January 31. GDC 2014 itself will take place March 17-21 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2014, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.