The Free Play: Next Wave Independant Game Developers Conference website should be up next week with all the official information, but for the meantime, some more speaker and session detailes have been announced!
State Support for Game Development: The Official Low-down
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State representatives holding the purse strings give indies and startups advice on how to access state support through grant programmes, investment, sponsorship and other initiatives.
- Amelia King (Film Victoria, Digital Media Fund)
- Mark Bishop (Multimedia Victoria)
- TBC
Trade Secrets of Character Animation
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Effectively the actors of the computer game world, character animators breathe life (and death) into every aspect of our games. They are the ones who make us laugh, cry, or just want to hit things a lot. Anything that walks, crawls, slithers or swims across our screen has been labored over by these often forgotten members of the art team.
So come along and learn the deep dark secrets of what it takes to bring a world to life from these secret puppet-masters of the games industry.
- Andrea Blundell (selectparks)
- Rod Green (Atari Melbourne House)
Game Audio Middleware for Indies
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A demonstration of stuff that indie game developers and demo sceners can do for free with the popular fmod sound system; and a look at open game audio scripting systems and tools.
- Brett Paterson and Andrew Scott (Firelight Technologies)
- Lorien Dunn (La Trobe University Game Technology)
Mod and Game Project Team Recruitment Forum
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Need a texture artist for your mod? Need a physics programmer for your game project? Need a tea lady for your office? Five minutes each to propandise for your project, outline your requirements and agitate for recruits. All those looking to get involved in a new project should come to this session to check out what's on offer.
MC to be announced
Women in game development
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The games industry often hires female "talent" (as booth bunnies and in industry magazine ads) to attract male developers, hoping they'll buy their development tools, or apply for a job at their studios. But whatever the industry is doing to attract women developers, it doesn't seem to be working too well. Why not?
In search of answers to such mysteries, we sent out a team of anthropologists to track down some instances of that perplexing and rare breed, the female game developer. We managed to round up some healthy specimens to give us an insider perspective on what it's like to be an exotic species in the world of game development. What are the pros and cons of working in an all-male environment, and what's their attitude towards the games they make? We've also lined up a token male panelist ready to give us a perspective from the other side of the gender divide.
- Kathryn Burt (Atari Melbourne House)
- Melinda Chapman (ThatGame)
- Eve Penford (AIE Melbourne staff)
- Matt Curtis (AIE Melbourne staff)
- Camille Scaysbrook
I've decided to put together all we know so far about the conference in one page until the official website is launched. I'll be updating this page as more information is received. Click on the link below to view it!