GDC Next debuts talks from Halfbrick, LA's Glitch City

The GDC Next team continues to work with the best and brightest in the game industry to organize a great session lineup for GDC Next 2014 featuring ADC this November. Today, they're excited to share two more excellent talks that will take place at this year's conference: Halfbrick (Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride) executive Ramine Darabiha will explain how and why the company successfully revived a four-year-old game, and members of the Glitch City developer collective in L.A. will offer practical advice to developers looking to form their own creative supergroups. 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. Over on the Production track, Halfbrick's chief product officer Ramine Darabiha tackles a tricky question: Can you make an old game new? During his talk, "Games As A Service: Rebooting a 4 Year Old Game to the Top Charts," Darabiha will explain how Halfbrick successfully rebooted its mobile app Age of Zombies, the philosophy of the reboot, and how new or existing games companies should continue to realize the full potential of a game by coupling the "Games As A Service" model with disruptive updates. Small-scale development is a popular path for contemporary game makers, but working alone or with a very small team means you forfeit the resources of a large-scale studio. But there are other options: A group of developers have come together in Los Angeles to operate the Glitch City collective workspace, and this year they're sending members like Teddy Diefenbach (Hyper Light Drifter) and Ben Esposito (Donut County) to GDC Next to discuss the trials and triumphs they've encountered while building Glitch City in a talk titled "Indie Voltron: Building a Development Collective." Attendees can look forward to a sober discussion of the development collective model for independent game makers, including the benefits and the potential points of difficulty. The practical nuts and bolts of maintaining such a group will also be discussed at length. Conference organizers look forward to programming and announcing many more interesting 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.