GDC 2011 Smartphone Summit Adds Infinity Blade, Google, Smule Talks

Author: by Staff

GDC 2011 organizers have revealed notable GDC Smartphone Summit talks for the February/March 2011 event, including an Infinity Blade postmortem and talks from Google and Smule (Magic Piano). The brand new summit, taking place on February 28th and March 1st during Game Developers Conference 2011 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, will feature lectures from the top iOS and Android developers, and other smartphone game creators. The Summit is intended to "share ideas, introduce best practices and discuss the future of gaming on established and emerging smartphone and related platforms, including the iPhone and iPad, Android OS phones and tablets, Blackberry and a cornucopia of similar handheld devices." Advisors for the Summits include Tiger Style's David Kalina (Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor) and Korean mobile veteran Gamevil's U.S. president Kyu Lee (Baseball Superstars). With a final set of lectures to be announced soon, a number of major talks have been revealed on the Summit homepage and the Smartphone Summit section of GDC's Schedule Builder. Highlights include the following: - In a talk called 'Infinity Blade: How We Made a Hit, What We Learned, and Why You Can Do it Too!', Chair Entertainment co-founder Donald Mustard will discuss the design and implementation of the fastest-selling iOS game of all time. The session from the Shadow Complex creators claims to "share the methodologies we have learned that are unique to the process of creating a critically and commercially successful mobile title", discussing "how to take the limitations of the platform and turn them to your advantage [and] how to quickly and successfully find the fun in your title." - Elsewhere, Chris Pruett of Google Japan presents 'Replica Island: Building a Successful Android Game,' discussing the making of his self-created, popular title which "achieved a million players within 100 days of its release on a marketing budget of $0.00." Along the way, "concrete lessons about Android software design, compatibility across a wide range of devices, phone-oriented game design, and negotiating Android Market will be presented", as well as details on an automated player metrics system for post-release game tuning. - In addition, Smule's Ge Wang is presenting a lecture on 'Tapping Into Innovation Strategies for Developing Successful Apps', as the successful studio behind titles such as Magic Piano/Fiddle, Glee Karaoke and I Am T-Pain discusses "strategies for developing apps that not only thrive at their launch date but continue to be popular a year later." The rest of the schedule thus far announced for the Summit includes leading mobile developers, spanning Microsoft's Allan Murphy on 'Building Cloud Services for Mobile Titles with Minimum Effort' through NewToy/Zynga With Friends' Vijay Thakkar on 'Changing the Way We Make Games: Lessons Learned in the Transition from AAA to Mobile Development' and Rade Stojsavljevic of Jet Set Games (Highborn) on building strategy games for mobile devices. The GDC 2011 Smartphone Summit joins six other notable standalone Summits, including Social & Online Games, AI, Indie, Serious Games, Localization and the GDC Education Summit, as well as multiple high-profile tutorials, on the Monday and Tuesday of Game Developers Conference 2011. More information on this particular Summit -- part of the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website -- which can be attended via All-Access or Summit-specific GDC 2011 passes, is available on its official webpage.