Dissecta Discusses Indie

Location
Victoria

NEXT EVENT TUESDAY 31st MARCH 2009
Opportunities in Independent Game Development with Damian Scott, Primal Clarity and Aaron Styles
A great insight into the Australian independent game development scene.
A free event starting at 6:30pm at the Experimedia, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

Dissecta presents Damian Scott, founder and CEO of Primal Clarity and lecturer at Swinburne along with one of the Dissecta team members, Aaron Styles (previously working at Infinite Interactive) who is currently working on his own independent game which he hopes to get out to market in the future to provide us with an insight into the scope and potential that the Australian independent game scene has to offer.

Date and Time: 6:15pm for a 6:30pm start to 8:00pm, Tuesday31st March, including coffee after the presentation. This event wouldn't be possible without the generous support of the State Library of Victoria.

Venue: Experimedia, State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street, Melbourne. Enter through Front Entrance.

Bookings: This is a free event but booking is essential via the State Library of Victoria booking link. Please direct booking enquiries to (03) 8664 7099.

The page also cites the Creation of the Tim Richards Fund and Victorian Bushfires; both worthy causes, give them a look.

Well I'm just posting this up since Souri hasn't done it yet since I find it quite relevant to all of the Independant Teams we've kickstarted here on Sumea. Not only that, but Aaron Styles (Charcoal) will be giving a talk and direct mention to our initiatives here on Sumea. I'm personally super interested and keen on attending to the point where I might fly down from Sydney for this (just have to run it by the boss first).

Submitted by souri on Thu, 26/03/09 - 3:54 PMPermalink

I'll be expecting a full report by Wednesday!

I know there's only an hour and a half for the talk, but you guys should be providing a brief talk about your project as well. I know there's a big indie developer community in Melbourne, some more established than others, who I'm sure could offer a tonne of suggestions and advice on what you're doing. Make sure you pass on the details for the rest of us!

Submitted by designerwatts on Wed, 01/04/09 - 12:10 AMPermalink

It's was interesting to say the least. The two presentations where of a moderate quality. I wouldn't call them awful or perfect but they did inform us about who the speakers where and what they've done in the past and their current plans.

Which I think was actually somewhat a problem. While a lot of detail was gone into promoting both speakers projects, as a budding indie developer who went to this event with the intent to learn of the opportunities in the Australian indie sector. Very little was actually on that topic in terms of what's available and what's going on at the moment.

Presentations where a little on the long side. Damians presentation needed some condensing as I felt he was repeating himself a little to much and lingered to much on his project rather then musings or advice.

to repeat the press release:
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Dissecta presents Damian Scott, founder and CEO of Primal Clarity and lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology, along with one of the Dissecta team members, Aaron Styles (previously working at Infinite Interactive), who is currently working on his own independent game which he hopes to get out to market in the future, to provide us with an insight into the scope and potential that the Australian independent game development scene has to offer.

In this session, Damian Scott will discuss the topography that faces independent developers, and he will outline his belief that the time is ripe for independent design collectives to bolster traditional game development studios with a suite of pre-production services to maximise the creative and commercial success of their products, whilst funding their own development.
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Where was the discussion on the topography? And while he did promote his studio with examples of pre-production services, there was no solid outline as to why this is the way forward for development studios and how it keys together in the indie scene.

As it's a free event I don't feel cheated, hey it got me out of the house didn't it! :) But by the presentations end I didn't feel informed in what I was hoping to find out. The post mortem of SHUMP was interesting and there was something to take away from that so thanks to Charcoal for that! But next time I hope self promotion is only half of their talks and the other half on the topic of general advice, tips and pitfalls of indie development that one needs to try and sidestep.

Just my two cents.