Minimum Viable Product is a product development and release methodology pioneered by Eric Ries. Its main tenet is the development and early release of only the core of your product, allowing the marketplace to vet and feedback on its pros and cons. While the developer still has a roadmap of their own, risk is mitigated and the product offering more tightly focused when the core is released early and iterated upon often, in response to real customer feedback.

In my presentation, I’ll go into why MVP has (or should) become your standard operating procedure for launching new products, especially in the online space. Hope to see you there!

In the past, I’ve attended GDC as a speaker, delivering a presentation on Free-To-Play games to 400 attendees, or as press, covering the conference for my FreeToPlay.biz industry blog.

But most often I attend GDC and other conferences as a developer and consultant, meeting up with clients of the past, present and future. If you are looking for design, production or strategy consultation to get a game-related product to market – and you’re attending GDC – contact me and we’ll setup a time to meet.

I’m looking forward to making new acquaintances and reconnecting with my colleagues from gaming hubs throughout the world.

See you at GDC,

Adrian

Drop me a line if you’d like to meet up to discuss working together.

I’ve been invited to speak at a roundtable called “Contractor, Freelance or Employee” during the Casual Connect Leadership Development Forum on July 20th. I’m obviously 100% in the corner of being a freelancer/consultant as it’s been 2 years since I made the jump from 13+ years spent in the core game industry and things have gone great.

(Check my blog for a wrap-up of my 2008 consulting business… a great year, thanks to phenomenal clients!)

The Leadership Development Forum is put on by Women In Games International – the organization I have to thank for making me the only male on my roundtable. How rare!

See below for links to bios for me and my fellow roundtablers:

Adrian Crook
Noelle Hunt Bennett, Big Fish Games
Naomi Kawase
Belinda Van Sickle, GameDocs

For new and old visitors alike, I thought I’d post a quick rundown of last year’s work, so potential clients can get an idea of what I’ve consulted on over the last year. It was an awesome 2008 – very diverse and engaging, lots of personal learning (and ways to apply old wisdom). Looking forward to an even better ‘09.

I can’t name clients of course, but these are some of the projects I worked on in 2008:

• Original 100 page design of Wii game launching with a major kids movie, Xmas 09
• Demo design of a PS3/X360 game for a major movie studio’s action franchise
• Designed flash board game with mini-games for a major hospitality brand
• Designed and secured funding for a free-to-play kids flash CCG with microtransactions, launching with Cartoon Network TV show this year
• Reviewed 20+ grant applications for a provincial interactive ministry
• Designed 2 iPhone games, still in pitch phase
• Concept design of free-to-play casual MMO for kids to support marketing of the governing body of a major sport
• Various design work on Facebook games – only one is out yet: Prize Potato
• Design review for major kids free-to-play casual MMO owned by a big media company