Last year Spry Fox had a hit on its hands with the free-to-play mobile game Alphabear, but it wasn't the studio's first attempt to make a word puzzle game with cute bears.

It wasn't the studio's second attempt, either. Alphabear's pair of predecessors both failed, for different reasons, "but we said fuck it, third time's the charm," said Spry Fox CEO David Edery at GDC this year.

He was introducing his postmortem of Alphabear's design and development, which encompasses lessons Spry Fox learned about making great free-to-play games and (perhaps more critically) earning revenue from those games.

It was a great talk, and now you can watch the whole thing for free via the official GDC YouTube channel.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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