GDC Next adds talks on community management and proximity sensors

We're just months away from GDC Next 2014 featuring ADC, and today the organizers are happy to announce two more great talks that will take place at this year's November conference. The focus of today's announced talks is squarely on the art of designing and drumming up support for cutting-edge games, as the creative director of UK-based Sequence speaks about designing games for proximity-sensing tech while a panel of community managers from across the industry unite to share advice and techniques for meeting your community's needs. 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. Developers, you know it's more important than ever to engage, satisfy and grow your community. Yet building a community can be a big challenge for the indie developer or small studio. How do you find your community, and how do you find the right person to manage and grow that community? What kinds of resources do you need for community building? As part of GDC Next's new Community Management summit, a panel of community management experts from Trion Worlds (Rift, Defiance), Six Foot (Quake Live, Grey Goo) and more will come together to answer those questions and more in a session titled "Building Community From The Ground Up." Our panelists will help show you ways that you can create and sustain indie studio communities, with practical learnings you can also apply to AAA development. As part of the App Developers Conference programming at GDC Next, Sequence (Doctor Who) creative director John Donohoe will help sort through the common misconceptions about proximity-based sensors by discussing the fundamentals of the underlying technology and its common applications. His talk, titled "iBeacons, BLE beacons and Everything in Between: Unpacking Proximity Sensing Technology," is a mouthful to say, but it's also an information-packed session designed for product managers and user experience designers who are new to BLE beacons. It's also suitable for anyone interested in getting past the "magical" marketing videos to hear the real deal, and should hold unique learnings for mobile game developers. 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.