GCAP 2017: Full Schedule

9:40am AEDT

Opening Keynote

Speakers

Karla Zimonja

Tuesday October 24, 2017 9:40am - 11:00am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)

11:00am AEDT

First Pass Final Pass: making animation rock while on the indie clock

You've memorised the 12 principles of animation, juice your UI for breakfast and have both volumes of Muybridge propping up your monitor but none of it matters if your main character walks like they have a brick in their pants. Welcome to the world of gameplay animation, we don't have much time.

This talk is a no frills approach to making 3D character animation read effectively. Witch Beam artist and programmer Tim Dawson discusses techniques picked up over a decade of character animation that survived his transition to indie unicorn, argues that mass controls everything and timing is the closest most of us will get to having magic powers. Hear insights on getting animations functional quickly and where time is best spent.

In a perfect world, every animation would get the love and attention it needs. In ours it helps if they hit the ground running.

Speakers

Tim Dawson

Assault Android Cactus

Tim Dawson worked as a 3D animator at studios including Ratbag, Team Bondi, Pandemic, Tantalus, Creative Assembly / Sega Studios Australia and Kixeye before co-founding the Brisbane based Witch Beam Games and developing the PC/PS4 title Assault Android Cactus.

Tuesday October 24, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

11:00am AEDT

Investment Models and Taking on the ASX

I will detail the work that I have given over the past three years as I have been directly seeking major investment in my company in Western Australia. I will be talking about investment models, the trade offs, experiences with dealing with different people within the investment finance sector, from VCs to Angels, to stock market investment firms.

This will be a candid and honest account of my experiences and will have a lot of my opinions about the investment models, but also I will be aiming for a discussion about why to seek investment and what the trade-offs are. Given that financing is always a hot-topic amongst indie developers, and with no movement for a new AIGF, this is a pertinent time to talk about why private investment can be a necessary evil.

Speakers

Vee Pendergrast

Consultant, Screenwest

I do investment, business development, wrangles legals, organise marketing, do logistics and anything that keeps a game studio fed and watered. I'm the bottom level on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for a studio.

Tuesday October 24, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Business (room 207)

11:00am AEDT

What Were We Thinking!? - Design Hindsights from Long-Running Games

Are you hoping to release game updates and make money from them five years after your game has launched?

If so, the decisions you make now may come back to haunt you, whether your business model is free-to-play, subscription or premium with DLC. Luckily, “games as a service” have been around for a while and some games have already crossed the 5-year-old mark which gives us a chance to learn from their 20/20 hindsight.

Drawing from hands-on experience, this talk lays out game design considerations and habits that we wish we’d known in the early days of long-running games. They’ll help you create the right ripples through the lifetime of your game, and Future You will be thankful for it.

Speakers

Emilie Poissenot

Buy Somewhere

As the Lead Game Designer of Buy Somewhere, Emilie uses her 10 years of experience in game design, production and narrative design to craft an upcoming location-based game that’s “like Monopoly in the real world”. Over the years, she has developed games in a wide variety of... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT

Design (room 203)

11:00am AEDT

Extending gaming creative - Trailers and Narrative Marketing

A memorable trailer can be a huge asset in helping promote a title. It is often the first contact with prospective players and needs to convey quickly and memorably the core creative themes of a game.
Luke will talk about his experience working with a range of developers and publishers in developing narrative extensions of their games for marketing purposes. He will focus on case studies involving small & medium development teams looking to produce effective trailers and narrative content that capture the heart and soul of their games. These case studies will look in depth at some of the creative, technical and business hurdles commonly faced and creative solutions on tight schedules and budgets.

Speakers

Luke Bicevskis

The Sequence Group

Luke is Creative Director / Partner at Sequence Australia, an animation company specialising in servicing the games industry and film. Luke is an accomplished artist with many award winning spots across advertising, games, documentary and film under his belt. He has applied his diverse... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Marketing (room 210)

11:00am AEDT

Decima Visibility in Horizon Zero Dawn

Visibility queries, i.e. quickly finding the smallest possible set of geometry required to render a given scene, are a feature of almost all game engines. They are almost always on the critical path for performance since they need simulation to be complete, and prevent rendering from starting until the results of the query are available. This makes efficient visibility data and code very important to overall game performance.

This is an experience-based talk, so I'll be going into real problems that we faced and solutions we came up with for rendering the world of Horizon Zero Dawn. I will describe the issues we faced in moving from the relatively constrained environments of the Killzone series to the open-world vista of Horizon, and how they affected our visibility system in particular.

I'll talk about where we came from, the goals for visibility in our new world, and the system we built to fulfil these goals. I'll go into our visibility data in detail and talk about how we take advantage of the PS4's asynchronous compute capabilities to query the millions of objects and quickly produce results for the renderer to consume.

I will sum up by talking about lessons we learned in shipping the game on the current visibility system, and where we're planning to take it next.

I'll explain things as I go along, but a basic familiarity with GPU compute will be helpful to get the most out of this talk.

Speakers

Will Vale

Second Intention/Guerrilla Games

I'm a real-time 3D and optimisation specialist with a particular interest in close-to-the-metal game development. Originally from the UK, I've been in the industry since 1998 and moved to New Zealand in 2004 to start a consultancy business. Since 2005 my main client has been Guerrilla... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

11:00am AEDT

Programming Productivity

Sponsored by Unreal.

With games as a service becoming a popular business strategy for many game studios, new interesting challenges have appeared. Unreal Engine 4 is a step ahead and this talk will focus on three methods to help you meet those challenges head on.
Topics:

Using JSON as your primary data set.
- JSON driven properties; JSON defines property values for class defined UObjects.
- JSON driven objects; JSON defines UObjects.
Using automated testing for continuous development.
Creating your own tools for improved productivity.

Speakers

James Tan

James Tan is one of the directors of Digital Confectioners, a 100% independent studio that developed Depth, a game in which you play as a shark or as a diver in a dark aquatic world. Overcome your enemies by employing cunning, teamwork, and stealth!

Tuesday October 24, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Unreal (room 208)

11:00am AEDT

From Aussie Indie to 100M users (again!) - A Deep Dive Into Strategies Behind Growing Your Games and Conquering the Largest Mobile Games Markets in the World

Mobile gaming is now a global market with huge opportunities as well as cut-throat competition. Henry Fong is the Founder and CEO of Yodo1, publisher for multiple Aussie Indie titles that have become global hits, reaching upwards of 100+ million downloads globally.

This session takes you on a deep dive into the global strategies growing three Australian Indie mobile games in some of the largest and most difficult to penetrate markets in the world. Learn how Ski Safari became a household name in China with over 250+ Million players; hear some of the stories behind how Crossy Road earned topped spots in markets like Korea on it's path to global success; and finally, learn how Rodeo Stampede climbed the charts in multiple markets and continues to grow in difficult to penetrate markets like China...

Speakers

Henry Fong

CEO, Yodo1

Henry is Co-founder and CEO of monetization experts Yodo1, a leading company in the industry focused on helping Indie game developers promote and monetize their games world wide. With seven-plus years of experience, they’ve formed unshakable partnerships and friendships, and amassed... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Yodo1 (room 209)

12:00pm AEDT

Let's get serious: the Wonderful World of Character Design

The Wonderful World of Character Design will challenge game artists on what makes a deep, effective, believable character design from an artist’s perspective. Yue’s talk will examine great character design examples, and break down what makes them effective and efficient. Tips, tricks and the artist’s own process when creative characters for Crossy Road, Framed 2, Charming Runes, Maid with Love and more will be shared. Those who attend will be invited to a Character Design Challenge available online following the talk, with examples of Yue’s own approach included and an opportunity for professional feedback.

Speakers

Leonie Yue

Mighty Games

Leonie Yue is an Australian illustrator, character designer and visual development artist. Yue currently works at Melbourne studio Mighty Games as an Artist on titles including Crossy Road and Charming Runes, as well as freelance work for Loveshack on Framed 2, and various other local... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

12:00pm AEDT

The Awakening: Brands Love Mobile Games

As mobile games have grown up, so too have many major brands’ interest in them (finally!). We’ll discuss how developers can leverage ad monetization, land promotional brand integrations, and even license known IPs to boost revenues. With the right knowledge, tools and global partners all of these are possible for developers anywhere around the world.

Featuring a Q&A mini-session with Ella Macintyre from Mighty Kingdom, this talk explores how developers of all sizes can leverage brand ad networks, brand integrations, and even well-known IPs to boost their revenue and company profile. As mobile games have grown up, so too have brands’ interest in them (finally!). With the right knowledge, tools and partners developers anywhere can feel the love from global brands.

Speakers

Dan Laughlin

HyprMX

Dan has spent his career developing partnerships between developers and platforms. He now manages HyprMX, a brand-focused monetization and mediation service for apps. Prior to HyprMX, Dan managed games-related partnerships at Flurry. Previously, he led the global business development... Read More →

Ella Macintyre

Mighty Kingdom

Ella has 6 years experience in the entertainment industry, ranging from Film, Television and Games. She leads design, development and live operations of Free-to-Play games at Adelaide’s Mighty Kingdom, and is passionate about sharing her love and knowledge of mobile Free-to-Play... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Business (room 207)

12:00pm AEDT

Creating a World and Making it Stick

World-building is an incredibly involved business, as you're not just serving the interests of the narrative but also that of the gameplay. More than that, you're creating an Intellectual Property, one that could potentially span multiple games and even products that aren't games, and there are many questions that will need to be answered beyond the simple details of the setting like history and culture. This lecture will walk you through the creation of the world in BioWare's Dragon Age, the successes and problems it encountered as well as how it evolved from one title to the next - and how the lessons learned could be useful for other developers building their own game worlds, whether they be for triple-A RPG titles or not.

Speakers

David Gaider

Beamdog

David is a game design veteran, having started his career in 1999 working on BioWare's "Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn" as a narrative designer. His later credits include Neverwinter Nights (2002), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), and more recently the Dragon Age series... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

12:00pm AEDT

The Best Time to be Over Budget is Never: Tools to Help Build Shippable Games

For many games, limitations are something that can not be avoided. Limited memory, limited disk space and throughput, limited CPU and GPU time. This session will present some techniques, processes, and tools used during production at Insomniac Games that we use to keep track of how our games compare to the limitations of our target platforms, and to help our game teams to make the most of the features in our engine. We want to be creating content that is shippable from the start, identifying problems early, to be able to prioritize and address the problems efficiently - because we can make better games when we do so. This session will include discussion and examples of the following: Taking ownership of the platform Know the limitations of the target hardware and know what your games needs - then set, communicate, enforce, and manage budgets wherever you can. Making it easy to find the right person to attend to a problem Out of frame. Out of memory. Too big. Long load times. What should be done? For problems that may not be caused by any one person, it is important to have accurate data, good tools, and clear processes that make it easy to route to the right person. Shortening feedback loops There’s a lot of value in putting well justified constraints as close to content producers as possible. Immediate feedback on the shippability of some new content increases artist efficiency and can prevent expensive problems later in production - but it can be complicated.

Speakers

Jonathan Adamczewski

Insomniac Games

Jonathan is a lead programmer on the Core team at Insomniac Games where he has worked since 2012, doing what he can to help the studio deliver great games, in frame. Originally from Tasmania, he completed his PhD on the topic of PS3 memory management at the University of Tasmania's... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)

12:00pm AEDT

More than Luck: Strategies for Success on Steam

Steam is the make or break platform for digital PC, Mac and Linux game sales, but with several games released daily developers need to know how to cut through the noise. Matt Trobbiani, local Steam-whisperer and creator of Hacknet teams up with Lauren Clinnick from local marketing and PR team Lumi Consulting to bring you tips, tricks and guides to help your store presence shine.

Learn how to get the most out of Steam as a store platform with a guide to sales, improving your chances of being featured, how to use Steam tools and backend, the benefits of translation, a list of must-have assets, description tips and much more. Whether you’re about to launch and want to make a splash, or looking to improve visitor conversion for your game already on the market, this talk is for you.

Speakers

Lauren Clinnick

Lumi Consulting

Lauren is a marketing maven in the games industry, co-founding Lumi Consulting with Katie Gall as Managing Director. An advocate for creativity, sustainability and diversity in the industry, Lauren is a GDAA Committee Member and the MCV Pacific Women in Games Ambassador for 2016... Read More →

Matt Trobbiani

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Marketing (room 210)

12:00pm AEDT

Build the multiplatform games of your dreams with UWP

The Universal Windows Platform (or UWP) was created so that developers of all types could build their software for every platform that Microsoft creates. The great news is that this means that game developers can use one common codebase and create games for Windows 10, Xbox One, and mixed reality (including HoloLens)! Features like Xbox Live Creators Program, Game Mode, and Mixer add additional rich features that can take your game to the next level. Dream up great ideas, and build them with Unity and UWP, so that people can play them on the platform of their choice. This talk will give you the insight into how UWP has evolved and how it all helps you build great games.

Sponsored by Microsoft.

Speakers

Andrew Parsons

Andrew Parsons is the Game Developer Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, based in Seattle. Parsons has been involved in the games industry for almost twenty years, first covering it as a games journalist, then leveraging his software development background to evangelize and teach... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

12:00pm AEDT

Planes, games and automobiles - interactivity beyond games

Sponsored by Unreal.

Real time technology is beginning to integrate with every form of business and its use cases are virtually unlimited. Jack and Liam from S1T2 will focus on the advantages and issues working within the real time environment outside of the traditional gaming sphere. This talk will walk through some of the projects that S1T2 have had the pleasure/pain of working on. In this machine gun style most mortem they’ll highlight the endless opportunities and harsh realities involved in working within this exciting and undefined space. Showcasing the breadth and depth of real time technology, they’ll illustrate the power of game development and design outside of the world of gaming, inspiring you to experiment with the vast potential of what real time technologies are making possible.

Speakers

Jack Condon

S1T2

Jack Condon is currently leading the real time rendering team at S1T2. With a background in photomedia and fine arts Condon aims to push the boundaries of technology by experimenting with the application of game design in arts discourse, business and research. In doing so, Condon... Read More →

Liam Stephens

S1T2

Liam Stephens is a creative technologist at S1T2. He uses his programming and creative thinking skills to help realise the amazing experiential and VR experiences S1T2 provide for clients and events. Liam studied a bachelor of Fine Arts at UTAS majoring in graphic design and worked... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Unreal (room 208)

12:00pm AEDT

Publishing your PC Game in China: The Good, The Bad, and the Extremely Frustrating…

Premium PC Games have been picking up steam in China, but the government is cracking down. Join Matthew Butler to find out how to successfully navigate the China PC gaming scene not only from a regulations standpoint but also in terms of ‘culturalization’ and distribution. This session will also take you through the launch preparations behind Defiant Development’s Hand of Fate in China as well as the game’s government licensing process and launch on Tencent’s WeGame platform.

Speakers

Matthew Butler

Business Development Manager, Yodo1

Yodo1 is a leading China and global publisher dedicated to bringing a diverse portfolio of casual, midcore and hardcore mobile and PC titles to China and worldwide audiences. Building off its success with Crossy Road and Rodeo Stampede, Yodo1 is setting its sights on helping talented... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Yodo1 (room 209)

2:00pm AEDT

Real Time Filters: The Art of Aesthetics

Aimed at intermediate developers, [TITLE] will cover the techniques used when designing an aesthetic experience. For this talk Mike pulls from his experience sculpting the world of Dead Static Drive, and Izzy reveals the secrets of her photography and upcoming title, Intergalactic Space Princess.

Covering concept to execution, Mike and Izzy highlight basic cinematography: colour theory, lighting, and lenses before diving into practical demonstrations: Look up tables (LUTs), shaders, particles, deferred vs forward shading and post processing.

Speakers

Mike Blackney

Mike was a programming lecturer at SAE Institute for five years, from 2012 to 2017. He has been a developer of Unreal mods since UT2K4, for which he made an award-winning vampire mod complete with night and day cycles. Working at Transmission Games, he started on the ill-fated Sin... Read More →

Isabelle Gramp

Izzy Gramp is a game developer and photographer from Melbourne. She’s currently working on the upcoming mobile adventure game title Intergalactic Space Princess – which is currently exhibited at ACMI. This game was also worked on at the accelerator Stugan - which took place in... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

2:00pm AEDT

Yonder: The Startup Chronicles

Yonder: The Startup Chronicles covers the journey that Brisbane based indie developer Prideful Sloth took from inception through to releasing its debut title Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. Co-founder Cheryl Vance covers a range of topics including setting up the company, securing funding, development, outsourcing, promotion, launch and support. At every stage Cheryl explains the thought process and decisions made, along with honest assessment of how successful those decisions were, and reflects on whether the studio would do the same thing again.

This talk aims to cover a balance of practical takeaways for start-ups, as well as delving into the thought and decision process Prideful Sloth took on its journey to launching Yonder.

Speakers

Cheryl Vance

Prideful Sloth

Cheryl is a Co-Founder and Co-Director of Prideful Sloth - a micro-AAA developer known for technical excellence in world-building and a focus on player-driven experiences. Cheryl is passionate about reviving high-quality console development in Australia — when the time was right... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Business (room 207)

2:00pm AEDT

Designing Ethical Interfaces: Mixing the web's accessibility with games' potential for inclusiveness

Games are pushing the boundaries of UI and are often the place where the best and worst new ideas come to light. The web has a long history of creating standards and tools for accessibility but moves at a glacial pace. Lets bring the two together.

Often when we think about accessibility in UI design, we think about people with disabilities, but what about issues that are more subtle?

Gender, sexuality, cultural and racial differences, body diversity, neurodiversity and more. Time and time again, games get tripped up by not thinking ahead about what might be insensitive or outright harmful to players.
We'll walk you through the hits, misses, tips and tricks of creating UI that works for everyone.

Speakers

Alayna Cole

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Manager, Sledgehammer Games

Alayna Cole is the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Manager at Sledgehammer Games and the founding director of Represent Me. She champions diversity and inclusion in the games industry, with a particular research focus on LGBTQ+ representation.Alayna co-wrote 'Cooperative Gaming... Read More →

John Kane

John Kane is a game designer and programmer working for the past five years under the name Gritfish. Gritfish is best known for the sci-fi narrative Killing Time at Lightspeed and cute puzzle game Mallow Drops. His games have featured at the IndieCade festivals in Paris and Los Angeles... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

2:00pm AEDT

No Such Thing as Free Money: How to Win the Funding Game

From crowdfunding to traditional publishing deals, venture capital to government investment, game developers have more options than ever before to find money to develop their dreams and support their businesses. However, each of these funding sources brings its own pitfalls, and game developers need to be aware of the pros and cons of every potential funding source. In this talk, leveraging her experiences on both sides of the deal, Jen will review the potential advantages and disadvantages of 7 common funding sources (publishing deals, venture capital, government investment/grants, private company/private equity funding, angel investment, work-for-hire bootstrapping, and crowdfunding), including how to understand the best option for your unique situation, risks you need to be aware of, and ways to succeed in the funding game.

Speakers

Jen MacLean

IGDA

From the start of her career as a playtester at Microprose Software, through senior roles at AOL, Comcast, 38 Studios, and StoryArc Media, Jen has managed game development, strategy, marketing, business development, and partnerships across multiple gaming platforms. Jen earned a BA... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)

2:00pm AEDT

Rise of the Tech Influencer - Small steps you can take to extend your reach

When I came to GCAP 2 years ago I had only a few followers on social media, now I have a few thousand. It's not a few million... but it's building. I'm not in sales or marketing, just like many of you, I have a day job that doesn't have much to do with games - but my influence is growing and I'm learning something about how to do that and what value that returns to me each day.
It must feel tremendous to reach the point where that game you have been working on for the past 2 years is nearly ready to launch. You've got a lot of support from the community, a bit of support from the major platforms but what is going to happen on launch day? You only have a few hundred followers on social media, the only people talking about your game are your mates and your mum (and she doesn't really get it).
I am the #1 Social Seller on LinkedIn within Microsoft Australia, and the #2 in the world. I have more influence and engagement across that platform than people in my organisation who are way more famous than me. I think I have a few tips and tricks to share with you that will help enable your engagement as well.
I'll give you some practical advice about how you can:
* Establish your professional brand
* Find the right people
* Engage with insight
* Build relationships

I'll talk about each of the major tools, what to use for what and why. Make sure you warm up your Twitter - because it's certainly the main way to stay in the loop at #GCAP2017.

When to Snap? When to Tweet? Why Facebook live? Why Instagram?

We’ll look at some of the most influential people in Games and pick out what they are doing and why, if nothing else – you might see someone you know.
I'll share with you the small steps I take each day, the things I do each week and the things I am learning about what I need to do next. It will be a very practical demonstration where I will walk you through exactly what I do, why and how. And how we, as a community, can leverage the influence we have and help each other to reach the world

Speakers

Michelle Sandford

Chief Evangelist & Storyteller, Microsoft / TechOutsiders

Tedx Speaker, Tech Girl Superhero and 1 of MCV's 30 Game Changers 2017. Vice Chair of the ACS in WA. Works at Microsoft. Founder of TechOutsiders. I care about Indie Games. I care about STEM. I care about diversity, inclusion and accessibility. I have a small lion called Leo.

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Marketing (room 210)

2:00pm AEDT

Scaling Multiplayer Games with Open Source

Awesome! You’ve built the next Overwatch! You have your game client, and your dedicated game server to power each of these game sessions as your players duke it out in your new game.

Now you’ve just got to write code to spin up a game server for each match, power up machines to run those game servers, autoscale them based on server load, handle log aggregation, health checking, deploying new versions of your game servers, and…

Wow. That’s a lot.

The good news is, there are open source projects that can solve almost all the problems outlined above, for both dedicated game servers as well as their supporting applications, such as matchmaking and account management. Namely software containers with Docker and the Kubernetes project to help orchestrate them.

Kubernetes allows us to take advantage of the abstraction that containers provides over any kind of software, and thereby gives us common solutions for deployment, health checking, logging, scaling and more. In this talk we will look at the basics of how these two projects work, and how they can be used to scale, and autoscale, both our game servers and their supporting infrastructure, with relatively low effort compared to coding this infrastructure by hand. Finally we will run a Unity based multiplayer game on our newly built infrastructure, so you can see it all in action!

Speakers

Mark Mandel

Google

Mark Mandel is a Developer Advocate for Google Cloud Platform and one half of the Google Cloud Platform Podcast. Hailing from Australia, Mark built his career developing backend systems for over 15 years, writing open source software and building infrastructure in the cloud. Mark... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

2:00pm AEDT

Optimizing and Overheads

Sponsored by Unreal.

An in depth presentation outlining both CPU and GPU related overheads, identifying bottlenecks and how to plan optimization strategies and pipelines early and as a team. This talk will cover optimization hurdles faced by Epic Games in their development of Fortnite, Paragon and Robo Recall and the features that were brought into Unreal Engine as a result to mitigate these issues in the future.

Speakers

Chris Murphy

Epic Games

Chris Murphy is an Evangelist for Epic Games with game development credits across PC, Vive, Oculus, PS4, iOS and Android. Chris has over 10 years of experience with Unreal Engine, a Bachelor of Computer Science and a Bachelor of Multimedia, culminating in a broad skillset across a... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Unreal (room 208)

2:00pm AEDT

Successfully Navigating the Regulatory Landscape in China’s $25 Billion Gaming Market

China’s regulatory efforts for gaming have become more broad based and stringent. In order to launch your title on both mobile and PC platforms in China, you must obtain a licensing number through an exhaustive government approval process. What would it take to get your game through this process? This session dives deep into the regulatory process behind the world’s largest gaming market. Learn the steps necessary to get a game through this process as well as some best practices that we have learned along the way.

Speakers

Henry Fong

CEO, Yodo1

Tuesday October 24, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Yodo1 (room 209)

3:00pm AEDT

3D Anime Visuals in Indie Games

One of the key visual elements of Necrobarista is its’ 3D, anime-inspired graphics. While most visual novels use anime-style graphics, most utilize 2D engines with sprite-based assets. Our aim was to create an efficient way of generating modular, reusable assets for our game to counterbalance the increased costs of working in 3D.

In this talk we explore the various techniques we used in Necrobarista to create an effective NPR pipeline emulating anime art-styles while maintaining a cost-efficiency suited to an indie budget. Topics covered include shaders, facial rendering, animation, and pipeline integration of assets from Maya to Unity. The talk will also detail pipeline and budget breakdowns targeted towards small to medium sized studios, as well as specific top-down design principles we applied to our pipeline.

As part of the talk, we will be working off a live Unity project to demo the discussed techniques as they are explained.

Speakers

Kevin Chen

Route 59

Born in Taiwan, Kevin Chen moved to Brisbane at the age of 5 with his family, before moving to Melbourne, where he now resides. With a burning passion for Games, Visual Novels and Anime, he helped found Route 59 in 2015 in order to create narrative games that explore the intersection... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

3:00pm AEDT

Tackling the 'Fear': Entrepreneurship in Games

Join Emre Deniz as he talks through the establishment of a company described by NASA as 'the Australian Space Program', but really is best described as a bus on fire speeding down a cliff pumping the brakes. We all feel the 'fear' around running a business, managing runway and trying to turn a start-up studio into a sustainable workplace. This talk will cover establishing company culture, planning product releases, avoiding the mistakes and overcoming the challenges of establishing a game studio – by someone who did it for the first time, the only time.
Using a case study around the establishment around Opaque Space, the takeaways will also include fundraising, state of the market for emerging technologies, negotiating venture capital as well as advice for developers looking to pursue game developer start-ups in various sectors.
The talk is geared at developers and business owners who are feeling like they are losing control of the situation around their business, as well as those who are looking to start moving from bootstrapped operations to seeking funding or becoming a sustainable operation.
Alongside the case studies, this talk will also provide focused advice for developers working in VR, AR and emerging technologies, looking over the shifts in the industry and ways that game development can be viable, sustainable and even profitable with the right targets.

Speakers

Emre Deniz

Director, Opaque Space

Emre Deniz has been working in Virtual Reality for the past four years, being one of the first developers in Australia to work on the HTC Vive as well as having worked as both lead game designer and artist on multiple projects in Virtual, Augmented and Mobile experiences. Emre has... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Business (room 207)

3:00pm AEDT

Idle By Design: UI/UX for Incremental Games

Using PikPok's recent hit title Dungeon, Inc. as a case study, this talk will discuss best practices and challenges in designing interfaces and user experiences for incremental games. As 'idle games' grow in popularity on the mobile store, crafting a satisfying UI/UX is key to setting your game apart. Incremental games lean heavily on UI to convey the vast majority of their gameplay, which is often complex and number-heavy. Learn just how a good UI/UX can facilitate an enjoyable incremental game experience, drawing from a post-mortem of Dungeon, Inc.'s UI design and other idle game examples.

Speakers

Lucy Morris

Studio & Creative Director, Starcolt

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

3:00pm AEDT

So You've Been Called Out

Let’s say you’ve built a game, released it, and are checking your Google Alerts. Suddenly you’re finding people on Facebook, Tumblr, and Reddit with a serious and unexpected axe to grind, never mind your Twitter mentions. Maybe a diverse character’s representation unintentionally ended up in a hurtful or unfortunate way. Maybe a line of dialogue has an unexpected interpretation you didn’t see in user testing that has players feeling attacked or upset. Or maybe you and/or your team, being human, made a mistake and something went into your release that has people agitated. This outcome -- especially with regards to issues of diversity and representation -- is basically inevitable. Even the most well-intentioned, careful individual can make a mistake that has unexpected repercussions. However, in the games industry and in games culture, there can be a marked tendency to mishandle these situations, making the situation far worse: angering already-upset players, drawing critical ire, and most importantly, potentially hurting people anew who were already wounded by what may have been a simple mistake. This talk aims to give developers and other public-facing game dev professionals some context for how players -- especially marginalized players -- react to situations they find problematic, the ways those reactions play out on social media, and most importantly, how you as a dev can and should respond to those situations. Part sociology and cultural studies, part simple practical advice and suggestions, this talk will provide some perspective on how to deal with people who have been hurt by something you were responsible for, regardless of if you intended that harm or not. With advice ranging from how to word your social media responses and apologies to knowing when and how to scale your reaction appropriately, devs will leave this talk with additional tools for connecting with their players when things go bad, and ideally, with a better understanding of how to avoid those mistakes in the future.

Speakers

Todd Harper

University of Baltimore

Todd Harper is a professor in the Simulation and Game Design program at the University of Baltimore. His work centers on games as cultural communication, with a focus in issues of representation of gender, sexuality, and body type, as well as e-sports communities. In addition to his... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)

3:00pm AEDT

Sticks and Stones: Adventures in Community Conversations

A warm sunny day may be welcomed by the masses, but WizardCannon420 might have sensitive skin, X_ZombieKisser_X might have screen glare and DavidSchwimmer69 might have a real passion for big fluffy jackets.

They all tweet in unison, “I HATE THIS DAY!”

This talk will be for all of the consumer facing gamedev folk out there and will provide an in-depth guide for the intricate dance of public interactions. I will stand in front of you, town crier style, sharing glorious and ugly tales, yelling about best practices for interpreting your audience and communicating effectively, ALL while driving a positive perception for your games and studios.

Forum posts, reviews and comments are all wide open for your current AND potential community to marinate in. I can help you make your community-perception-marinate taste better and in return can you please help me with my metaphors.

Speakers

Darcy Smith

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Marketing (room 210)

3:00pm AEDT

Small Towns, Small Screens: Porting “Night in the Woods” to iOS

How do you fit a game that was built for the PS4 into your pocket?

“Night in the Woods” was a huge hit, and received particular praise for its visuals. Trying to fit the game into a much more tightly constrained platform - both in terms of memory, processing ability, and input - required significant work. In this talk, we’ll discuss both the technical and human changes that needed to be made to the game in order to make it fit the iOS platform.

In particular, we’ll discuss the techniques developed to compress frankly enormous number of sprites into the available memory, how we adapted each of the dozen-or-so different types of interactions in the game to touch screens, and how we stayed on top of the game’s content through the development of lots of custom tools.

Speakers

Jon Manning

Secret Lab

Jon Manning is the co-founder of Secret Lab, an independent game development studio. He's written a whole bunch of books for O'Reilly Media about iOS development and game development, and has a doctorate about jerks on the internet. He's currently working on Button Squid, a top-down... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

3:00pm AEDT

From Student to Startup: Taking Your Game To The Next Level

Sponsored by Unreal.

Roman and Sam share the lessons they have learned as they took Hyper Jam from a student project to their studios first game.

This talk is primarily aimed at newer game developers to highlight common pitfalls that we ourselves fell into, as well as showcase the things we believe we do well.

A variety of topics will be covered including design choices, workflow tips and how to get the most out of UE4.

Speakers

Sam Bonifacio

Bit Dragon

Coder and tech artist, Sam has developed for multiple Melbourne-based studios and co-founded Bit Dragon, who are now polishing up their first title Hyper Jam out of The Arcade.

Roman Maksymyschyn

Bit Dragon

Roman is a co-founder of Bit Dragon, a new startup working on their first game out of The Arcade.He spends his days flipping between managerial and developer roles to ensure Hyper Jam sees the light of day.

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Unreal (room 208)

3:00pm AEDT

Community First: Empowering and Influencing Your Mobile Game Community

Imagine what you could do by simply aggregating your most dedicated mobile gamers together in a single community, interact with them, and influence their behavior in your mobile game. This session will cover some of the ways leading developers and publishers are engaging their players in new ways to turn them into their biggest advocates, both in and outside their mobile apps.

Speakers

Ethan Collins

Business Development Manager, Yodo1

Ethan is a business development & marketing manager for Yodo1 games, where he spearheaded global marketing efforts for the title Rodeo Stampede, a game which has reached over 100 Million downloads worldwide. Ethan also is the director of global operations for KTplay and in-game... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Yodo1 (room 209)

4:30pm AEDT

The UI Artist's Survival Kit

Mobile game UI is vital to a good user experience, but creating it can be a minefield of different devices and resolutions, shifting creative vision and hundreds of constantly-changing image assets. How do you ensure your design looks good on both an iPhone and an iPad? How do you work across 20 screens at once without ending up with 20 files or a thousand layers on one canvas? How do you keep all of your mockups up to date when your UI assets keep being redesigned?

Through trial and error, games artist Wren Brier has devised a workflow for herself that helps keep projects under control and allows for fast and easy iteration and implementation. In this talk she will lead you through her UI creation process and show you how she makes use of six Photoshop tools -- from newer additions like Artboards and Generate Image Assets to surprising tricks involving the old and familiar Proof Setup.

Learn ways to make your UI creation process better and faster through examples and video demonstrations. Join Wren and equip yourself with the tools to survive your next project!

Speakers

Wren Brier

Creative Director, Unpacking

Wren Brier is the Creative Director of indie game Unpacking. She's been working in the games industry for 9 years, starting at Halfbrick and later working as a freelance artist before joining Witch Beam Games.In addition to her game development roles, Wren has spoken on panels and... Read More →

UI Artists Survival Kit pptx

Tuesday October 24, 2017 4:30pm - 5:20pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

4:30pm AEDT

Succeeding at Scale: Why Bigger is Sometimes Better

The collapse of the big game studios in Australia has led to a renaissance of creator-driven studios, but the aftershocks of that collapse are still being felt. One unexpected consequence has been a rejection of big studio culture and a desire to stay small, nimble and lean.

But for the Australian games industry to not just survive, but thrive, it needs to have studios operating at every scale, from AAA console development to smaller indies and everything in-between. If we want to win back federal support for our industry then we need the power of thousands of voices. We need to stop the talent drain that occurs when people are forced overseas to advance their careers. We need to be seizing those opportunities that only present themselves at scale.

But how can we get bigger whilst still retaining the core values that have been so fundamental to the resurgence of gaming in Australia?

Growth has always been a key component of Mighty Kingdom's strategy to rebuild the industry in South Australia, and that means I spend a lot of time thinking and tinkering with strategies to support that growth.

In this talk I will go into the good, the bad, and the ugly of our journey to grow Mighty Kingdom into the largest studio in Australia (WIP). I will highlight some simple processes that can be implemented to remove barriers for your employees, and how you can retain the small studio culture as you grow.

Even if you decide that growth is not for you, I will show you how and why you should support those studios who do want to grow. Bringing AAA back to Australia will have a knock on effect throughout the industry. By being actively involved we can avoid the mistakes of the past, and ensure we build a resilient and thriving industry for everyone.

Speakers

Philip Mayes

Mighty Kingdom

Philip has been working in the games industry since 2005, working for SA-based studios Ratbag Games and Krome Studios Adelaide. He founded Mighty Kingdom in 2010 and has grown it to a team of 35 people by partnering with top tier toy brands, including Disney, Shopkins and Lego. He... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 4:30pm - 5:20pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Business (room 207)

4:30pm AEDT

Developing and testing Safety Beach - a game for Surf Life Saving WA

Stirfire created "Safety Beach" for Surf Live Saving WA to help children learn important rules to keep them safe at the beach. We wanted to demonstrate to the customer that a game of this kind would be effective as well as fun. In developing the game, we focused on the design principle of "procedural rhetoric" to make sure the rules of the game reflected the safety rules of the beach, so it was teaching not just what the rules are, but why they're important. Before releasing the game we did some qualitative testing with children to see whether it really did work as designed. The results were very useful for us as well as for the customer. Stirfire would like to share what we learned to help other studios develop serious games on a tight budget for customers that are perhaps hesitant to go in this direction.

Speakers

Matthew Dyet

Stirfire

Matt is a man of many hats, with several years of Art and Programming studies under his belt. He eventually found his way to Production, where he discovered a keen interest for project and team management. A GDC scholarship in 2013 solidified his interest in the field, and he returned... Read More →

Lisa Evans

Stirfire

Lisa has been working in the Perth games industry since 2003, after originally studying to be an astrophysicist. In recent years she went back to part time study in science, and started a PhD in 2014 combining her interests in science and games, landing in the serious games space... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 4:30pm - 5:20pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

4:30pm AEDT

How to Europe - Tips for promoting your game on the old continent

Europe offers one of the most attractive markets for game developers; but it is also fractured, and one of the hardest to reach. This session will explore useful tips and common pitfalls for those developers who wish to promote their games in European countries. The talk will highlight country specific traits that are essential for reaching the target audience, such as how the the media landscape works per country, what news they cover, what social media platforms are essential, what assets should be translated for which markets and which game types are popular in which country. The talk aims to highlight the most important cultural, legal and social similarities and differences to consider when promoting your game in Europe; all learned through years of working on pan-European projects.

Speakers

Thomas Reisenegger

Future Friends Games

Thomas is the founder of Future Friends Games, a UK-based indie games PR company. He has promoted over 30 games; from big titles like League of Legends, Smite, Paladins and Endless Space 2, to indie hits like Northgard, Blackwood Crossing or A Normal Lost Phone and events like IndieCade... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 4:30pm - 5:20pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)

4:30pm AEDT

Unity at 60FPS and Beyond!

Tim (Witch Beam) and Brendan (Stirfire Studios) reveal some of the pitfalls of using Unity to ship high performance games on console by discussing techniques used in the chaotic Playstation 4 twinstick shooter, Assault Android Cactus and PlayStation VR title Symphony of the Machine.

This talk covers common performance bottlenecks and their resolutions, the danger of garbage collection and tips to avoid allocation and some of the methods and strategies it takes to reach a sweet sixty frames a second.

Speakers

Tim Dawson

Assault Android Cactus

Brendan Ragan

Stirfire

Brendan Ragan has been working in the games industry since Interzone came to Perth in 2006. Since then he has shipped titles on many platforms - from iPhone 3GS through to the PS4 both in Unity and in other engines. He is one of the founders of Stirfire Studios and is their technology... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 4:30pm - 5:20pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

4:30pm AEDT

Unreal Engine: Developing Success

Sponsored by Unreal.

A 1 hour talk about Unreal Engine 4 developments and an overview of the amazing projects being made in games, VR, AR and Enterprise.

Speakers

David Stelzer

Epic Games

David began his career in the music industry at KROQ in Los Angeles. After attending law school and working as a litigator. He became the Director of Business Affairs for House of Blues Entertainment and went on to become the General Counsel for Sega of America and Southpeak Games.David... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 4:30pm - 5:20pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Unreal (room 208)

4:30pm AEDT

Positioning - how to discover and amplify what is remarkable about your game

When people talk about marketing it's usually about promotion - how to get more visibility, how to talk to the press, how to set up a trade show booth. However, none of that is any use unless you first have something interesting to promote.

In the inherently noisy, crowded market for games, the ones that succeed are the ones that stand out. The games that are remarkable.

Through this talk we will teach you the process that we use at Surprise Attack Games to figure out what is remarkable about a game, what does or could make it interesting enough to stand out and how to turn that into a one sentence pitch that will get attention.

Developed through years of working in both the AAA and indie spaces and tried and tested on over 100 games such as Hacknet, Armello and Orwell, our positioning exercises provide a simple, structured way of thinking about and discussing this critical aspect of game development and marketing. You'll walk away with practical knowledge that you can apply immediately.

Speakers

Marla Fitzsimmons

Felix Kramer

Chris Wright

Chris Wright is the Founder and Managing Director of indie label Surprise Attack Games, games marketing and PR agency, Double Jump Communications and a new exciting thing that is being announced during MIGW.After 10 years working in the AAA games industry including senior marketing... Read More →

Tuesday October 24, 2017 4:30pm - Wednesday October 25, 2017 5:20pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Marketing (room 210)

9:40am AEDT

Second Keynote

Speakers

Tony Albrecht

Riot Games

Tony Albrecht is a Senior Engineer at Riot Games, where he is currently working deep within the bowels of the League of Legends code base. His almost 20 years of professional game development experience has seen him working with studios large and small across the globe on platforms... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 9:40am - 11:00am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)

11:00am AEDT

Force Multiply – The art and science of accelerating workflows in CG pipelines

Repetition is the mother of invention. At least that’s how a new pipeline starts, and that’s how Technical Artists are born. Sr TA Nils Gleissenberger walks through the development of a TA and the life cycle of a professional CG pipeline across both video games and visual FX with small and large studios in mind. You’ll learn about challenges from the technical to the political and come away with a set of best practices to help you succeed. You’ll also learn why carrots are important.

Speakers

Nils Gleissenberger

Nils Gleissenberger, Sr Technical Artist, EA Firemonkeys Over a career spanning 10 years and half a dozen disciplines, Nils has created art and built CG pipelines in both video games and visual FX. He has turned from full-time artist to full-time programmer in pursuit of ever greater... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

11:00am AEDT

Audio: The Invisible, Untouchable, Ultimate Creative Paradigm

Audio is a 'medium' that is invisible, weightless, untouchable, and yet is one of the most immersive paradigms that is used across VR/AR/MR technologies and verticals. Sound recordings instantly transport people, they can give you synesthesia-like experiences of memories of times long past. Despite this vast immersive and emotive power, audio is often relegated to the "we can do it last" or "that's easy" categories and hence the vast power and benefit of audio in our new immersive technologies is forfeited. In this presentation, we will unpack the benefit of audio to your VR/AR experiences, how it is different between standard games, VR, AR, 360 platforms, as well as basics on the pipeline, and some creative workflow and ideation approaches that will help non-audio-savvy professionals and audio professionals alike, from any vertical, make use of Audio to deepen their experience.

Speakers

Sally-anne Kellaway

Wednesday October 25, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Audio (room 208)

11:00am AEDT

Rami Ismail vs Teddy Dief: PowerPoint Face Off

Gamemakers Rami Ismail and Teddy Dief go head-to-head in a challenge of wit and brutal honesty. Longtime friends will become rivals for one hour as they each prepare a PowerPoint presentation for the other, filled with topics they've always wanted revealed by the other. They will push each other to reveal new secrets, raw opinions, and dig deeper to answer the questions thrown at them about Nuclear Throne, Hyper Light Drifter, Ridiculous Fishing, Square Enix and whatever other deep cuts they may be hiding.

Speakers

Teddy Dief

Square Enix Montreal

Teddy Dief is a game designer and writer, now Creative Director at Square Enix Montreal. He previously co-designed indie RPG Hyper Light Drifter. Formerly a designer at Disney and game narrative researcher at USC. Co-founder of LA game collective Glitch City. He has hosted and produced... Read More →

Rami Ismail

Vlambeer

Rami Ismail is the Business & Development Guy at Vlambeer, a Dutch independent game studio known best for Nuclear Throne, Ridiculous Fishing, LUFTRAUSERS, Super Crate Box, GUN GODZ and Serious Sam: The Random Encounter.

Wednesday October 25, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

11:00am AEDT

When Monetisation Breaks

Free-to-play is a tricky business model, and a lot of things can go wrong. Even when you have a great game loop, unexpected problems can interrupt the playing experience and drive players away. A game might even be an enormous success with millions of downloads, but find that those downloads don't translate into IAPs. This lecture will go into some of the surprising ways in which games can sabotage their own success, and provide advice on how to avoid these pitfalls.

Speakers

Christina Chen

Second Sight

Christina Chen is an expert and entrepreneur in the field of data-driven player optimisation and monetisation design. Her previous experience involved working on the first version of Supercomputing Server at Microsoft, and adapting popular PopCap games into China. Her work has also... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

F2P (room 209)

11:00am AEDT

HoloLens + Unity = Amazing

Sponsored by Microsoft.

HoloLens and Unity, build the amazing.

You already know Unity, it’s why you’re here. With the world of Virtual and Mixed reality opening up and demand for these types of experiences climbing, how can you take advantage of it. Come learn what the Windows Mixed reality platform means for you as a Unity developer and how you can use your skills to be at the front and center of VR and MR development. Hear about the new devices coming out and how you can have your creations built in Unity deployed across MR and VR devices now and in the future.

Speakers

Rocky Heckman

Rocky is the regional manager for HoloLens at Microsoft covering Asia Pacific, Japan and China. With the new era of computers emerging through holographic computing, Microsoft’s HoloLens is the world’s first fully untethered holographic computer. Designed to bring digital assets... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Microsoft (room 205)

11:00am AEDT

Efficiency is everything - Managing the development pipeline of an MMORTS

Battle Pirates has been a hugely successful game for KIXEYE. How do we manage a team of 25+ developers to provide weekly releases for an always online game? I’ll share with you our development pipeline and process; what works, what doesn’t, and how it has evolved over the last 6 years. You'll come away with ideas for optimising your team, and what the key factors to consider are when constructing your pipeline.

Speakers

Peter Henry

KIXEYE

Peter Henry is a Technical Director for San Francisco-based games company KIXEYE, where for the last five years he has guided the engineering team on the hugely successful MMORTS Battle Pirates.Peter is passionate about efficiency and removing bottlenecks, empowering developers to... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Production (room 210)

11:00am AEDT

Get closer to 100M users

11:00am AEDT

Don't be THAT Programmer: Engineering for quality and maintainability

In the fast moving world of mobile application development concessions made at the beginning of a project can become major problems as the software reaches its maturity. We all know the right thing to do but often competing pressures make this difficult. This session looks at how you can approach engineering decisions throughout your game development process to help reduce the pain that comes as a Game grows as develops. It will leave you with key questions to ask yourself while developing systems and features that will make sure you do not become THAT programmer.

Speakers

Anna Tito

Technical Lead

Anna is a passionate promoter of code quality and good supportable software architecture. She has worked professionally across the full stack of mobile game development, as both a senior server and client engineer. She has worked on a wide range of titles including KIXEYE's VEGA Conflict... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 11:00am - 11:50am AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

12:00pm AEDT

Make It Jiggle

Josh goes through his movement-first approach to design and explores how the language, timing and aesthetics of motion are integral to creating captivating interactive experiences.

Understanding and applying the core principals of animation - through colour, shape, camera, characters and more - can bring players deeper into a world, make them snort with laughter, or at least make them sit back and silently mouth 'woah'.

Speakers

Joshua Bradbury

The Voxel Agents

Josh is an Animator and Designer who wishes he knew how to sew. He is constantly making things move, jiggle and shake - including additional animations for Framed, Framed 2 and Armello. He is currently Lead Animator on The Gardens Between, an upcoming game from The Voxel Agents.

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

12:00pm AEDT

Texture and Tempo. The unsung heroes of our ninja game.

This talk will focus on how texture, tempo and audio integration can be utilised to transform a game’s soundtrack into more than just underscore. We plan to challenge developers and music composers to consciously examine these fundamental elements in music and games.

Using examples from the monochromatic ninja multiplayer Kieru, we will demonstrate how each track composed and integrated into the game is texturally and rhythmically unique from one another. The purpose behind designing music like this is to disrupt the expectations many players have of battle music in video games. In Kieru, layers of atmospheres and weird noises take precedent over big drums and massive guitars.

There is a deliberate inconsistency in the music. Each match draws you into a completely different array of sounds and rhythms, constantly keeping you guessing about what will happen next. The core idea for the music is to drive feelings of suspense and uncertainty through integration. I will explore the risks and challenges of this in-progress development, explaining that while exploring concepts such as this is appealing, it must also be backed up by practical application to both music and gameplay.

Using examples in the middleware Fmod, we intend to leave developers and composers with a desire to integrate texture and tempo into their game music in a different ways. The appeal for developers and composers alike will be that gameplay, narrative and immersive elements in their game can be exploited through musical theatrics to force the player to question certain actions they have or must take.

Speakers

Jack Knobel

Pine Fire Studios

Jack Knobel is the Lead Programmer at Pine Fire Studios which was started in 2014 with friends from AIE Canberra. Since then they have been hard at work on their first title Kieru; A first person multiplayer ninja game set in a stark black and white world. Whilst working on Kieru... Read More →

Kevin Penkin

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Audio (room 208)

12:00pm AEDT

“Multiplayer is Dead” Examining why people loved and hated Screencheat

Receiving a 92% positive rating on Steam and a average of 70% from press Screencheat’s lifespan is one of bad decisions and poor timing. The most interesting of these is our favourite review from our fans simply put *Thumbs Down* “Multiplayer is Dead”. User reviews are a notorious place to find unwarranted and unwarranted criticism for our games that’s often crude, unintelligible and crass. But what if we look past the rough veneer and find out what in our games drives derision.

This talk uses Screencheat’s design and production decisions to discuss how those features affected the games perception by the players and the press. Normally we discuss features in terms of cost of development and their raw design value. This talks is about the dirty fact that when you sell a product you still need to think about it as a product for a consumer even if it’s art.

Come to Multiplayer is Dead to find out why Screencheat failed to capture a significant audience and how you can think about design in terms of its perception and not just it’s quality.

Speakers

Nicholas McDonnell

Samurai Punk

After founding Samurai Punk in early 2014 with his Co-Founder Winston Tang, Nicholas led the Art and Design on Samurai Punks early projects including Hazumino, Fruits of a Feather and the award winning Screencheat. He now leads the studio as Managing Director and Artist.

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

12:00pm AEDT

The Customer IS Always Right: How To Make and Measure Your Free-to-Play Design Choices

The Free-to-Play market is more competitive than ever and dominated by huge companies with endlessly deep pockets. It can be challenging to know what game to make or how to make meaningful improvements once it’s live. While daunting, this can be advantageous. The Free-to-Play market offers a constant feedback loop; a discerning audience who vote with their time and wallets. The challenge can be knowing what to create, what to measure and how.

Ella will share methodologies for tackling these challenges and the (many, many) lessons learnt developing and supporting Mighty Kingdom’s most recent Free-to-Play game Shopkins: World Vacation. She’ll discuss how the team approached every stage development to allow data, not opinion, to inform almost every decision they made and the ripple effects they saw as a result (inducing a 300% increase in a key metric). Using concrete examples applicable to every genre, she’ll discuss how to develop your own feedback loop and separate the insights from the noise. Lessons include how to decide what game to make in the first place, how to know what to measure, why user cohorts matter and why the first session is the most important one.

Speakers

Ella Macintyre

Mighty Kingdom

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

F2P (room 209)

12:00pm AEDT

Azure Game Services – Make the cloud work for you

Sponsored by Microsoft.

Speakers

David Holladay

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Microsoft (room 205)

12:00pm AEDT

Data Science on an Indie Budget

Analytics, Data Science and Machine Learning are buzzwords that get thrown around a lot - but what do they mean? And what do they mean when you're a small indie team trying to get a game out of the door on a fixed (and limited) budget? How can you capitalise on some of the amazing breakthroughs in this field in order to make and support better products and start thinking about your development with an analytical lens - whether you're a Producer, Engineer, Designer or any other role!

Speakers

Luke Dicken

IGDA

Dr Luke Dicken is Chair of the IGDA Foundation, a charity for game developers, by game developers, and currently works as a Principal Data Scientist at Zynga Inc. He holds degrees in computer science, artificial intelligence and bioinformatics as well as a PhD in AI specifically for... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Production (room 210)

12:00pm AEDT

We need to talk cashflow: Tips & tricks to modelling a (financially) sustainable studio

Luke Henry

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Studio (room 207)

12:00pm AEDT

Procedural Generation in City of Brass

For City of Brass, Uppercut Games is using procedural generation for the first time. This talk will share some of our experiences learning a completely new way to make games! Audience should learn some lessons from mistakes we have made and also hopefully pick up some tips for techniques they can also use. Primarily covers procedural level generation in Unreal Engine 4, systems and techniques we use to go 'from a bunch of random boxes' to a procedural generated Arabian city.

Speakers

Andrew James

Uppercut Games

Andrew was Lead Artist at Irrational Games Australia / 2K Australia from 2002 - 2010, worked on Tribes Vengeance, Bioshock, Bioshock 2, XCOM. Co-Founder of Uppercut Games in 2011, creators of EPOCH, EPOCH 2 and Submerged. Currently working on City of Brass.

Ed Orman

Ed started in the video game industry in 1997. In 2001 he joined Irrational Games/2K Australia, continuing his work as a designer on several award-winning games. In early 2011, Ed left 2K to co-found Uppercut Games, creators of the EPOCH series, Submerged, and now City of Brass.

Wednesday October 25, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

2:00pm AEDT

Creating the Art of ‘A Thin Black Line’ (VR): Trying very hard to make realtime art not look like a videogame

In this talk, Lead 3D Artist Kalonica will give insight into the development of the art style of ‘A Thin Black Line’, a realtime virtual reality experience that sits at the borderline of film and games.

Rather than a traditional digital concept artist, the team at VRTOV worked closely with contemporary fine artist Vernon Ah Kee to translate his charcoal work into 3D space. It was necessary to move away from traditional videogame approaches to art as the team strived to remain true to the intent, gesture, elegance and physical qualities of Ah Kee’s work whilst also working within the limitations of realtime VR.

Taking the audience through development from the beginning, Kalonica will discuss what the team aimed for conceptually - the visual style, feeling and meaning, and highlight the value of experimentation. She will share details of technical solutions made through concept art, 3D modelling, animation and shaders to create a digital world that celebrates a physical medium, and a realtime experience that does not look or feel like a videogame.

Speakers

Kalonica Quigley

VRTOV

Kalonica is a 3D Artist and Game Developer who has developed award-winning games with small teams and independently. She is Lead 3D Artist at VRTOV, an independent studio that crafts virtual reality experiences at the borderline of film and games. VRTOV’s past projects include the... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

2:00pm AEDT

The creative collaboration between Game Developer and Game Music Composer

This presentation is an entertaining and informative walk-through of the creative collaboration between indie game developer SMG Studios and game music composer Jared Underwood aka BATTERIE. It mostly focused on the process composer Jared Underwood employs to collaborate and produce original music for mobile games. Topics covered are music production technology and software, music components for games, game dev technology and collaborative tools, composing music to a brief and responding to feedback. The two presenters will talk about the process of working together and go into detail with early beta footage, client feedback, the progression of the work and video & music examples of four of their mobile games - OTTTD, One More Line, Thumb Drift and One More Dash.

Speakers

Jared Underwood aka BATTERIE

Jared Underwood is an award winning musician, composer, percussionist, experimentalist and graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and AFTRS (Australian Film Radio and Television School) BATTERIE is his solo electronica act and the name under which he composes and releases... Read More →

Ashley Ringrose

SMG Studios

Ashley Ringrose is one of the founders of Sydney based indie game developer SMG Studios. SMG was one of 10 companies funded by Screen Australia’s Games Enterprise grant before the funding was cut in 2014. Before starting SMG our core team have previously worked together for over... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Audio (room 208)

2:00pm AEDT

Why Ladders are Awesome: A Game Design lesson in Spatial Design

You may wonder why anybody would love ladders. Well, let me tell you: Game Designers love ladders! Why? It is one of many tools in our toolbelt that we use when we need to ensure players look into a certain direction. This talk aims to talk about all kinds of small and large spatial design tricks to enhance your level design and narrative design in your games from different genres. This is particularly true in first-person games as well as VR games and having control over your experience allows for more precise and conscious design. I will go over some examples from popular games on the market that have mastered this principle as well as use an in-depth VR example of my own from Earthlight VR. This talk is mainly useful for game and level designers, but also narrative designers and writers can benefit from learning about the small tricks that you can harness to deliver the experience you’re aiming to achieve. This talk contains some basic psychology and neuroscience.

Speakers

Jennifer Scheurle

Opaque Space

Jennifer Scheurle is a world-travelling Game Designer and public speaker who has worked on 10+ released titles since she started working in the industry 6 years ago. Born and raised in Germany and with a Bachelor of Arts (hons) in game development, she has played her role in Europe’s... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

2:00pm AEDT

(CANCELLED) UX, BI, and other acronyms: the virtuous cycle of understanding your players

CANCELLED

Regardless if Premium or F2P, PC/Console or Mobile, and whatever genre of game, unsuccessful projects have one thing in common: they don’t meet player’s expectations. Using best practices for User Experience and User Interaction to design player experiences, and using business intelligence tools to validate outcomes, makers can understand how and why players use their games to learn what players want and give them more of it. Good UX/UI helps players understand how to play, when to come back, and why to spend, drastically improving retention, engagement, and monetization. In this panel we'll discuss how player personas and mental models inform better design methodologies, establishing how an heuristic approach to UX can improve quantitative research hypotheses, evaluate a data reporting pipeline that can minimize iterative headways for improvement, and design a rationale how the 'soft' and 'hard' components of player validation come together to give players more of what they want.

Speakers

John Kimmel

RevIQ

John Kimmel is Managing Director and Founder of the Canadian-based RevIQ team, a startup working in turnkey business intelligence and product management for mobile F2P. With a background ranging from the development of distributed systems architectures for enterprise clients to film... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

F2P (room 209)

2:00pm AEDT

Producing 'Machines' for Horizon Zero Dawn

Follow along as Guerrilla Games' Senior Producer Dave Gomes describes the development history for the Machines ('robots') in Horizon Zero Dawn. How do you scope and schedule a complex feature you've never built before? How do you create commonalities and systems for elements that desire to be special cases? How can you manage unknown iterations towards an unwavering quality bar under time and resource constraints? This talk will cover production process, best practice and lessons learns for producing one of the largest and most complex gameplay feature areas on a new IP AAA project.

Speakers

Dave Gomes

Senior Producer, Guerrilla Games (Sony)

Dave Gomes is a Senior Producer at Guerrilla Games (Sony). Most recently he worked on Horizon Zero Dawn where he produced gameplay areas such as Combat, The Machines, and Audio.

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)

2:00pm AEDT

Do’s and Don’ts for Independent Devs from ID@Xbox

Sponsored by Microsoft.

Want to maximize your sales on Xbox One? Come hear ID@Xbox program director Chris Charla give a field report offering tips and techniques based on the latest console sales data. What simple to make mistake can cost you 25% of your game’s revenue? We’ll tell you!

Speakers

Chris Charla

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Microsoft (room 205)

2:00pm AEDT

Testing Early and Never Stopping – A Case study of QA at Media Molecule

Media Molecule makes AAA games with one of the smallest AAA teams out there. They are currently developing the crazy game that is 'Dreams'. Such a huge and unique project is made possible with the continuous support of the internal QA team. Despite a studio size of roughly 50-60 employees it has maintained 5 or more people (currently 8) in QA throughout the development of ‘Dreams’ as well as using external QA services.

QA is commonly thought of as something done near the end of development and specifically in terms of finding bugs which makes it seem counter intuitive to bring QA on earlier in development. At Mm there are QA assigned from the earliest prototype and they serve as more than just bug-finders. The advanced levels of support Mm enjoys wouldn't be possible if QA had a high turn over of staff or if they were only brought on near the end of development or for short periods. At Mm, QA serve as a repository of knowledge on all aspects of the game and the studio reaps many benefits from having QA who have been working on the title for years.

Good QA is an amazing boost to any game development studio and seems under-utilised by studios of all sizes.
So let’s take a deep-dive into the QA workflow, and processes at Mm.
We’ll explore how the QA team enhances all parts of how Mm makes games and take a look at what QA can look like at a studio that has made a long term commitment to internal QA.

Speakers

Daniel Kidney

Media Molecule

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Production (room 210)

2:00pm AEDT

Creating Studio Culture: Dino Polo Club Year 1

Studio culture is incredibly important to studios of all sizes, but, for something that can make or break a studio, it isn’t widely talked about. Navi will discuss the conscious development of studio culture at Dinosaur Polo Club as they navigate their first year of having employees. Full of useful takeaways about how to start looking at your own studio culture and where to start improving it, this talk isn't just for indie studios, but for studios and teams of all sizes to reflect on their current culture.

Speakers

Navi Brouwer

Dinosaur Polo Club

Navi is the producer at Dinosaur Polo Club (makers of Mini Metro) and an organiser for two of Wellington’s yearly game jams. Her first career was in the wild wilderness of Vancouver, Canada as a primary school teacher. She then shifted into games as a QA Tester at PikPok before... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Studio (room 207)

2:00pm AEDT

The 12 Principles of Animation, For Programmers

As developers we spend a lot of time making things move. Animation is the art of motion, and even outside the realm of timelines & traditional animation we can learn a lot about how to make movement more appealing by studying the lessons animators have learned over the decades the artform has existed.

Many of the systems we implement as developers control movement in a way that doesn't lend itself to being easily defined by animators and designers on the team. Things like character & camera controllers, the movement of AI controlled and procedurally generated entities, and other 'programmatic' movements benefit from a working knowledge of animation when designing and implementing these systems. That knowledge helps whether you're on a team with animators and designers who will want to have an expressive system that allows them to tweak and polish to create the motion they want, or on a smaller team where being able to make those movements appealing yourself can greatly enhance the character and 'feel' of your game.

The 12 Principles of Animation were devised by the lead animators at Disney and represent their combined person-centuries of animation experience condensed into simple guiding principles for how to make motion look & feel great. This session looks at these 12 principles through the lens of games programming, showing how these principles can be applicable in many contexts and applying them to your code can help make more expressive, dynamic, and appealing movement in your games.

Speakers

Maya Kerr

Maya is a freelance developer & tech-artist with more than 7 years of industry experience and has lead development on multiple award winning & nominated games.

Wednesday October 25, 2017 2:00pm - 2:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

3:00pm AEDT

Advanced Unity Shaders

This talk will focus on some more advanced Unity shader concepts. It will focus on global integration tools that can help to unify your shaders with concrete examples of how you can integrate these elements into your projects.

We will be covering Global Variables, Camera Matrixes, Depth Map decoding, custom CG include files, A deep dive into Unity Lighting and how surface shaders work when compiled into the output shaders and some optimisations for VR that can let you get more performance with the existing setup.

These elements will be demonstrated with code examples a look through Unity’s own CG code as well as some examples that were used in previous and current projects.

Speakers

Edward Blanch

I have worked in the games industry in Melbourne for a number of years. I am currently working on my own game Rogue Singularity as well as Art Director for Tin Man Games. In have worked on a number of released titles including Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Legacy of Oblivion, Breath... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Art (room 211)

3:00pm AEDT

Masterclass in Advanced Audio Production

For 18 years I have watched the evolution of game audio and as much as possible I have been involved either directly in developing new techniques, or speaking with those that have developed significant advances in how we create game audio. The evolution of new reality content has given game audio a significant push and many of the newest techniques for audio design and implementation can be utilised across both traditional game platforms as well as the new reality technologies.

This presentation will examine a range of more advanced approaches for game audio and music design and implementation and examine some specific case studies on various approaches to creating game audio. I will draw from my research and practical experience over the last few years of audio development for VR/AR/MR and 360 video and compare it directly to how we work on our current game platforms.
Dynamic environments, interactive music elements, use of spatial audio technology to enhance virtual reality experiences and the overall approach to how we create audio will all be covered in this session. As a Masterclass the audience is encouraged to ask questions, raise topics and help analyse the various subjects of this session so that everyone can come away with a stronger understanding of the current state of game audio and how new techniques can be utilised across all types of projects.

Speakers

Stephan Shutze

Wednesday October 25, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Audio (room 208)

3:00pm AEDT

Creative License: Writing for Someone Else’s World

As game designers, we love to work in worlds we create ourselves. But the reality is that we may find ourselves working in an already fully realised setting. In this lecture, Ellen Jurik (Blowfish Studios) and Anthony Sweet (Black Lab Games) will discuss the challenges and strategies of designing and writing for games set within pre-established settings.

The session will go through all stages of writing for established IPs, including concept development and stakeholder approval, research for narrative authenticity, finding an IP’s dramatic pillars, and engaging fans and entrenched expectations with new content.

Ellen and Anthony will draw from their experiences working on a number of high profile properties and clients, including Battlestar Galactica, Ice Age and various Scholastic multiplatform worlds. The lecture will include examples from their previous and current projects, and practical strategies for writers and narrative designers on how to approach writing for someone else’s property.

Speakers

Ellen Jurik

Blowfish

Ellen is a professional Game (Narrative) Designer, Writer, and Producer. She currently fills all of those roles at Blowfish Studios in Sydney, before which, she was Producer for Ice Age Adventures at Gameloft in Auckland, and Content Designer-turned-Producer at Interzone Games in... Read More →

Anthony Sweet

Black Lab Games

Anthony Sweet is the Lead Designer and Writer at Black Lab Games in Perth, Western Australia, where he has most recently been working on Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock. He has previously worked as a game design freelancer under his label Handwritten Games, and was involved with WA... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Design (room 203)

3:00pm AEDT

Blockchain and Gaming

Sponsored by Microsoft.

Blockchain allows people to own digital assets such as gun skins, in game items, trading cards, or property. This can allow players to prove they own cards before they start a battle in a playground, or securely trade rare assets like gun skins.

This session will give an introductory overview of what the Blockchain is, how it works, then spends the remaining time covering use cases applicable to gaming to help you understand just how this transformational technology could impact the industry.

Speakers

David Burela

Senior Technical EvangelistMicrosoft Australia

Wednesday October 25, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Microsoft (room 205)

3:00pm AEDT

Up Sh!t Creek: Managing the Unmanageable Project

Let's face it. If you are a producer in the games industry for any length of time, you will almost certainly find yourself in charge of a chaotic project with an impossible deadline. It doesn't matter how the project got into the state it's in. It's your job to fix it. Fun, right? But getting a project back on track isn't necessarily as difficult or as daunting as it can seem at times. In fact, it can be as simple as reframing the way you're looking at the problem. In this talk, Amy Dallas will explore a mindset that can help one be successful when faced with managing a seemingly impossible project as well as some survival tips to keep you focused when everything seems to be going sideways.

Speakers

Amy Dallas

ClutchPlay Games

Wednesday October 25, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Production (room 210)

3:00pm AEDT

Gantt Stop, Won't Stop: Wins & Losses in Production & Culture

From Baldur's Gate to The Witcher, through to original IPs and gaming events, Ally McLean (Project Lead, Robot House) and Liam Esler (Writer/Producer on a bunch of things) share the peaks and valleys of production and management. Hear their tales of wins and losses, and the lessons learned in company culture, structuring creativity, and keeping perspective.

Speakers

Liam Esler

Ally McLean

Robot House, Working Lunch

Ally McLean is the Project Lead of Robot House and the Director of the IGEA's women in games mentorship program, Working Lunch. Coming from a varied background in professional cosplay, community management and production, Ally is a vocal advocate for women in tech and has a passion... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Studio (room 207)

3:00pm AEDT

How To Be A Gameplay Programmer Designers Will Love

The title of Gameplay Programmer comes with a great responsibility - it’s your job to enable the design team to design the best game they possibly can. As a result, it’s crucial that you have a good working relationship with your designers. They need to trust you to realise their visions in the most empowering and efficient way possible; and you need to trust them to provide achievable, realistic goals, and to adjust when their dreams need to be brought back to reality. When this happens, the whole team becomes happier and more productive, and the benefits flow on into the quality of the game’s design.

Beginning by detailing some benefits that come from designers and gameplay programmers working closely together, Matt will then delve into a number of practical techniques for architecting your code to both enable your designers’ creativity and react to their ever-changing desires, using case studies from Armello along the way. Finally, he will cover a number of tips and tricks to help you communicate and cooperate with designers, before wrapping up with the how League of Geeks has recognised and formalised this relationship moving forward.

Speakers

Matthew Rowland

League of Geeks

Matt is the Gameplay Programmer at League of Geeks in Melbourne, Australia. After several years working in web development, he decided to chase his dream of joining the games industry, working on some promotional mobile games and personal projects before starting at LoG 3 years ago... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 3:00pm - 3:50pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

Tech (room 204)

4:30pm AEDT

Closing Keynote

Having spent 5 years as Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), Kate Edwards gained a very unique and rather rare perspective on the global game industry. This insight was forged from countless interactions with every kind of game developer, from a vast variety of cultures and geographies, speaking with everyone from solo indie developers to massive AAA studios, engaging government officials around the world, as well as other advocacy-focused non-profits. And of course, she also interacted with the general public on a constant basis to observe and understand their perception of games. Kate accepted the mission in 2012 of running the global IGDA based on her belief in the value of a strong developer community, but even more so from her conviction that the game industry must speak up and have a stronger voice. Over the course of her 5 years of leadership, she became even more emboldened and determined while simultaneously more frustrated and, frankly, full of rage. Why? In essence, Kate has witnessed a game industry that has exploded and become a true cultural and economic force in global society, while also experiencing firsthand that we as game creators still do not receive the respect we've earned and deserve as a creative art form and as leaders in evolving what it means for people to be entertained. In short, we've lost control of the narrative of who we are as game development professionals and what we produce, and we've been essentially at the whim of a meme or negative stereotype that perpetuates to this day in mainstream media and in the general public eye. While it has been changing slowly for the better, the reality is that we as an industry haven't commanded the attention and shaped the narrative. Is that possible? Absolutely. The fallacy is that many assume that our various trade associations have been doing this all along but Kate argues that while they certainly have a vital role to play in industry representation – particularly for government lobbying, true emergence of the game industry as a creative force must begin with every one of us. We must individually and collectively find our courage to stand up, speak out, and help to shape our own narrative here and now – and not wait for the inevitable generational shift in perception that may come in a decade or two.

Speakers

Kate Edwards

Geogrify

Kate Edwards is the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a Seattle-based consultancy for content culturalization and is the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). In addition to being an outspoken advocate and industry leader that serves... Read More →

Wednesday October 25, 2017 4:30pm - 6:00pm AEDT
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center

International (Melbourne room)