Upcoming talk: Systems Design for Retention

I’ve mentioned it a fair amount of Twitter and Facebook, but I wanted to call attention to it here again, for those who still follow such antiquated things as blogs! I’ll be speaking at the newly revived Austin Game Conference, taking place in Austin of course, on Sept. 21 and 22.

For those of you who fondly remember the various incarnations of game conferences in Austin — this event is going to recapture that vibe, I think. The advisory board is pretty much the same crew of folks who curated all those excellent conferences for a decade, starting back in 2003.

My topic:

Gritty Systems Design for Retention

We all know game systems can have a huge impact on your game’s popularity, retention, and appeal. But are there ways to know in advance whether what you’ve designed will have particular results? Why yes, there are, and they’re proven methods from decades worth of different online service games. Come prepared to think about math as we dive deep into the nitty-gritty of systems game design for retention. We’ll cover XP curves, Monte Carlo modeling, multi-opponent balancing, and more.

We shall see if I can pull it off, but I hope to do this with an “interactive spreadsheet” to some degree… this will probably be the most detail-oriented design talk I’ve done since Games Are Math.

Early registration ends August 31st, and people are already making dinner plans (mmm, BBQ) so you should probably register now.