A fine chap called Gordon 'Muun' Calleja has written his account of the Australian Game Developers Conference 2005 at www.mmorpgdot.com. His article includes a summary of the talks by the three keynote speakers, Rob Pardo from Blizzard Entertainment, Ian Livingstone from Eidos, and Greg Borrud from Pandemic Studios...
"Greg gave a series of invaluable tips to pursuing the thorny path of the independent game developer. An important aspect to Pandemic's success was creating their own technology and making it reusable for future games. He divides Pandemic's history in three phases. In the first frantic phase they worked on getting things going and securing whatever titles they could. The second and crucial phase involved building their reputation. The key point here was to demonstrate to publishers that they can deliver a good product on time, as well as taking up projects which they might not have been too enthusiastic about, yet were essential in solidifying their relationships with leading publishers. The third and current stage focused on execution."
Gordon finishes his article with some welcomed information on entry prices for the next Australian Game Developers Conference...
"John De Margheriti, the founder of the Australian Game Developers Conference announced that this would be the last edition of the AGDC as we know it. Next year the conference will be run on a different model administered by the Game Developers Association of Australia. The only information we were given regarding the different model was that the entrance fees would be lowered."