GDC Next adds talks on building your community and your business

We're less than a month away from GDC Next 2014 featuring ADC, and today we're excited to reveal two more great talks that will take place at this year's November conference. Developing your community and your business are crtical aspects of sustainable game development that are often overlooked by small-scale studios, so it's good to have both Failbetter Games (Sunless Sea) marketing manager Hannah Flynn and Powell Group CEO Jay Powell at GDC Next this year to lead sessions offering meaningful, actionable advice on both topics to conference attendees. GDC Next and ADC, which aim to highlight practical ways for developers to increase the creative and financial success of their projects, are taking place simultaneously on November 3rd-4th, 2014 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Sunless Sea developer Failbetter Games has been making offbeat narrative games for five years, evolving into a successful indie studio based (at least in part) on the steadfast support of its fans. Studio marketing manager Hannah Flynn believes that your community is invaluable when it comes time to solicit development support through contemporary funding platforms like Kickstarter or Steam's Early Access service, and she's coming to GDC Next this year to share advice on how you can have fun nurturing your own community in a light-hearted talk titled "Hello, Delicious Friends: In and Out of Character on Social Media." Flynn will reveal how Failbetter used both in-character and out-of-character engagement on social media to grow, assist, engage with and benefit from that community, then run down the specifics of different channels, the utility of playful menace and the very real dangers of Kickstarter-funded tattoos. Meanwhile, Powell Group founder Jay Powell will be offering a session to help small-scale developers effectively grow their business as part of the GDC Next 2014 Business track of talks. His session, "Go-Gadget Business Development: A Beginner's Guide to Business Development" will run down the hidden benefits of good business development, why it's important, basic business development skills and tools, and a top-level overview of negotiating deals and contract essentials for independent and small-scale studios. Conference organizers look forward to announcing more talks in the weeks before this year's GDC Next featuring ADC, which takes place November 3rd-4th, 2014 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For additional details about GDC Next and ADC or to register for the event, visit the conference homepage. Gamasutra, GDC and ADC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.