GDC Next adds talks on Skulls of the Shogun and community design

GDC Next 2014 featuring ADC is fast approaching, and today the organizers are happy to announce two more great talks that will take place at this year's November conference. Skulls of the Shogun programming wizard Borut Pfeifer will be attending the conference to give a talk on the trials and triumphs of coding your next game to be completely cross-platform, while community management guru Matt Fairchild will lead a session breaking down the practical benefits of cultivating a vibrant community for your mobile game -- and how to go about pulling it off. 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. Skulls of the Shogun was the first game to support cross-platform gameplay between console, phone, tablet, and desktop PC. Blazing a trail in modern multi-platform development means a lot of lessons learned -- spend an hour with Skulls programmer Borut Pfeifer in his GDC Next talk, "Surviving Cross-Platform Development with Skulls of the Shogun" to learn from 4 years' worth of successes and mistakes. The entire spectrum of development, from technology considerations for multiple devices (including networking, business and marketing strategies) to design and interface considerations, will be addressed in Pfeifer's talk. As part of GDC Next's vaunted Community session track, Tinyco community director Matt Fairchild will be delivering a talk on the untapped potential of community-first mobile game design. During his session, titled simply "Community is a Competitive Advantage," Fairchild will run down the metrics that define a successful community, the internal practices that you can use to help cultivate them, and the concrete benefits waiting to be reaped by community-focused game makers who make their players the backbone of their game development. Conference organizers look forward to announcing more talks in the months 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.