GDC Online highlights Travian, YouTube, new business talks

With just two weeks to go until this year's GDC Online, the Austin show's organizers have debuted several new business-focused talks examining YouTube's plans for game integration, Travian on how existing companies can adopt metrics driven design, and more. These talks all fall within the Business & Marketing track in GDC Online's Main Conference, which will take place take place Tuesday, October 9 to Thursday, October 11 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. The full details on these new Business & Marketing track sessions are as follows: - First, Lars Janssen of the German browser game company Travian Games (Travian, Miramagia) will explain why companies should use special procedures and tools to analyze player behavior if they hope to grow their games in today's market. In his talk, "Moving a Games Company from Gut Feeling to Metrics," he'll discuss how developers can overcome the challenges of introducing metrics to their existing design processes. - Elsewhere, YouTube developer advocate Jarek Wilkiewicz and content partnerships manager Cliff Samaniego will present "Start Playing the Mobile Distribution Game on YouTube." Video games have become one of the top categories on the popular video streaming site, and during this session the pair will explain how you can convert those millions of viewers into actual players by integrating YouTube into your next mobile game. Wilkiewicz and Samaniego will highlight some top examples of games that have benefitted from YouTube integration, and will cover the best practices for using these videos from a technical and business perspective. And of course, they'll take a moment to share some of their favorite gameplay videos with GDC attendees. - Have you ever wanted to host your own session at one of these GDC events? If so, you're in luck, as Playdom developers and GDC advisory board members Steve Meretzky and Gordon Walton will help you do just that in "How to be Accepted to Speak at GDC." During this talk, Meretzky and Walton will detail how the GDC board reviews and selects the talks that make it to these shows. Along the way, attendees will learn how to make their submissions stand out, and how they can craft a solid presentation. These new sessions join scores of other talks already announced for GDC Online, including classic postmortems on Ultima Online and Merdian 59, Main Conference talks on Age of Empires Online and The Old Republic, Game Narrative Summit talks on Halo 4 and Guild Wars 2, and much more. For more information on these or any of the other 100+ talks in the show's lineup, check out GDC Online's official Schedule Builder. (This is the final GDC Online show in Austin - organizers have announced a successor, Game Developers Conference Next, debuting in Los Angeles in November 2013 alongside the new App Developers Conference.) For more information on GDC Online, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.