GDC 2010 organizers have revealed the initial iPhone Games Summit line-up for the March 9th-10th event, including tech and biz talks from the creators of Canabalt, Touch Pets Dogs and more.
The notable new summit, taking place on the first two days of Game Developers Conference 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco next March, will bring together top game developers from around the world to explore ideas, share best practices, and discuss the future of Apple's handheld platform.
The two-day program will highlight the best of iPhone development, with an entire day discussing the nuts and bolts of technical and design techniques. The second day will focus on the business and marketing strategies behind successful iPhone game companies.
Some of the heavyweight Summit advisors for the event from the world of iPhone games include Electronic Arts' mobile VP Travis Boatman, Snappy Touch founder Noel Llopis (Flower Garden), and Ngmoco VP Alan Yu.
With other major lectures to be announced soon, a number of significant talks have been revealed on the Summit homepage. These include:
- Falling to Your Death: The Canabalt Postmortem
Eric Johnson, co-founder of Semi Secret Software, talks about making and marketing Canabalt, the hit followup to word puzzler Wurdle. Beginning with its humble Flash roots, the presentation will cover "OpenGL optimizations, shockingly high price points, guerrilla Twitter marketing, reverse-engineering the App Store, and strangely low piracy rates."
- Nuts & Bolts of Internet Multiplayer iPhone Game Testing
Galcon franchise creator Phil Hassey has created successful multiplayer modes for his acclaimed iPhone games, and is part of the iPhone Games Summit this year, giving a technical talk on how "using test driven development, you can develop a solid code base that will both pass the App approval process and work when the masses arrive."
- One Year in the App Store: A Case Study of Backflip Studios
Julian Farrior, CEO of independent developer Backflip Studios, will discuss the company's 13,000,000 downloads and over $2,000,000 in sales of Ragdoll Blaster and Paper Toss on the iPhone Store, focusing on "marketing wins/flops, distribution opportunities, sales catalysts and key takeaways", with special attention given to presenting real-life numbers across sales, in-app purchases and advertising.
- New Dogs, New Tricks: Breeding Social Networking and Virtual Pets
In this just-confirmed talk from Andrew Stern of Stumptown Game Machine, the creator of Ngmoco's microtransaction-powered Touch Pets Dogs "discusses how the game’s design had to grow and adapt as the iPhone game market filled with limitless low- and no-cost gaming and entertainment options. Notably covered are "lessons learned about player behavior in the wild that further evolved the game’s design, marketing and monetization."
More information on the iPhone Games Summit, which can be attended via All-Access or Summit-specific GDC 2010 passes, is available on its official webpage, with a number of additional talks due to be confirmed in the near future.
