Thanks to Blitz for posting the news on the AGDC update.. they give a hint of who's coming this year...
quote:AGDC 2003 promises to be a memorable event featuring: the Creative Director of Eidos Interactive UK; the visionary behind Microsoft- XBOX; Publishers of Tomb Raider, SIMS, Freedom Fighters and Lord of the Rings; the Age of Mythologies Lead Designer; the developers of Nokia N-Gage and much, much more.
Schedule is [url="http://www.agdc.com.au/conference/conf_schedule_fri.php"]up here[/url].
Yea :) I noticed Zaph was presenting. Great to see!
Also - for the female devs out there I saw that on Sat. Sheri Graner Ray from Sony Online Entertainment is presenting Gender Inclusive Game Design - Expanding the Market. She will be worth a listen. Shes active in the Women in Dev egroup as well as a member of the IGDA's Women In Game Dev comittee.
For those who get the Game Dev magazines I noticed that Noah Falstein of The Inspiracy will be presenting on Friday. He has been doing the recent design articles. Something like 400 Design Mistakes.
I'm suprised there's no seminar concerning outsourcing and freelancing which I believe is a very important topic and will play a major role in the future of games development... many overseas studios are turning to art outsourcing to keep their core teams smaller and overheads down and this avenue has great potential for Australians/New Zealander's to capitalise on due to the value of our Dollar.
Just thinking about it, I'd be more than happy to talk about how to set yourself up as a self employed freelancer in the games industry, from my experience I've learnt the pitfalls and advantages and exactly what studios require when outsourcing... I'd be interested to see if there is enough interest in this area to warrant a seminar dedicated to the topic.
I'm going to re-post Blitz's AGDC message here rather than reply to his post in another thread..
Blitz wrote:
Now that all the info is up, what are people interested in?
I think the prices are around the same as last year (not sure about the student prices). They don't have the saturday conference pass in there this year.
- No mention of the unsigned games booth yet, although by the looks of the expo layout the AIE got their wish of not being located right next to it this year :P (surprise..:))
- I really like the "Paid to Play" job/education fair thing, although it's gonna be a dead loss if they don't get a helluva lot more companies signed up for it!
- Keynote speakers are looking good, including, da man Seamus Blackley.
- Talks that look interesting...
: Scott Selfon, Microsoft- XBOX Developing a Practical Interactive Audio Engine
: Sheri Graner Ray, Sony Online Entertainment Gender Inclusive Game Design - Expanding the Market
: Guennadi Riguer, ATI Technologies The Dark Secrets of Shader Development
: Mario Wynands, Sidhe Interactive Building a game development studio today : Stuff you need to know! - Format workshop
And thats just on saturday!
Not to mention my AIE tutors get to rag on us in "'Learning by Doing' - Game Development at AIE" :P
And of course what would the AGDC be without the parties. Big party night at the Hi-fi bar this year, and i quote "battle each other in the giant boxing gloves". Seemingly NOT this year sponsored by MF :P
It's looking pretty good to me, other than the lack of career expo people, and a seeming lack of exhibitors at this stage.
I've typed too much.
CYer, Blitz
Apart from Paul Steed's tutorial on "Building a Digital Goddess" the conference doesn't have much too much to offer for artists. All the other Art and Development stuff is relevant to programmers. Of course, the conference is trying to cater to everyone, and I see there's a good mix of everything else in there that's interesting to attend to. Good to see a lot of the business development stuff..
Personally, I'd attend:
Paul Steed's tutorial (the guy really is good - so you modellers better rush to get a spot. Don't miss out!)
Noah Falstein, The Inspiracy The 400 Project - Using Rules of Game Design..
Steve Fawkner, Infinite Interactive 20 Things I have Learned in 20 Years of Creating Games - 20 years worth of experience... definately some valuable knowledge to be had here!
Thomas Daniel, Sony Computer Entertainment Introduction to PSP... Not much really is known about the PSP apart from the specs, so this would be a very interesting one to go to...
Kevin Burfitt, Atari Melbourne House Monkey Madness ? Using Monkeys to improve the game development process.. Zaph is on at the same time as the PSP one, but I would go to this too. I usually find monkeys to be smelly and cheeky. And always stealing ya stuff. [B)]
Mario Wynands, Sidhe Interactive Building a game development studio today : Stuff you need to know! - Format workshop...
Actually, I'd attend a lot of the Business Development stuff.
Yeh, interesting about the small amount of exhibitors.. they have another 3 months to get more I guess though..
quote:Originally posted by JonathanKerr
quote:Originally posted by Daemin
So are we going to meet up again this year, and have like a big bash on sunday night or something, or perhaps on saturday night instead of the dinner?The dinner is actually worth going to. Probably the best place to make contacts, I feel.
As long as your boss isn't in close vicinity ;)
Actually, if you check the website, all the schedules, keynotes (and names), expo booths etc. are all up there. Perhaps the news should be edited to reflect this :)
CYer, Blitz