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Video: Building an indie MMO game with 70 million players

At GDC 2017 Transformice co-creator Melanie Christin walks attendees through the 6-year journey of scaling an indie game prototype (done in 3 weeks) into a 70M-player MMO game.

September 1, 2017

1 Min Read
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Atelier 801's Transformice is something of a rarity: a massively multiplayer indie game with a player count numbering in the tens of millions.

At GDC 2017, Transformice co-creator Melanie Christin walked attendees through the journey of scaling a prototype done in 3 weeks into a 70 million players MMO over the course of 6 years, from the pleasant surprises of an overnight success to the pitfalls to watch out for in "games-as-a-service" development.  

It was a unique, illustrated talk that highlighted all the mistakes that could have been avoided, as well as some successes that other devs can learn from as they work on their own projects.

If you didn't catch it at GDC this year, make sure to take advantage of the fact that you can now watch it for free on the official GDC YouTube channel!

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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