Game Connect Asia Pacific

Talk:  Shipping, Ports, and Other Naval-based Parts of Game Development

Speaker: Neil Forbes-Richardson (Wargaming)

Developing games is difficult work, before even thinking about what platforms the game is intended to be played on. Shipping you may encounter problems with various hardware differences, input devices, fullscreen & windowing, different OS versions, and even other applications interfering with your game!

This talk will go over some of the technical problems we've encountered, how we've solved (or worked around) them, and what trade-offs sometimes have to be made to get game out.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Strategies for Quality Content™

Speaker: Emily D’Elia

Market competition is brutal. We face a saturated digital landscape, falling engagement rates, sceptical consumers and the dreaded a l g o r  i t h m.  A good game can fail if it is not a competitive game.  So, how can we add value to our core product offering in order to help it reach the heights we want? When it comes to marketing your game in 2019, “content is king”.  

This talk will explore how developers can leverage their unique IP for kick-ass content that creates added value and a competitive edge. Using an example of a game she just made up, Emily will take the audience through the key pillars of creating a competitive content marketing strategy.

The talk will ask developers to consider a more targeted approach to their content and suggest ways in which they can employ SEO principles and empathetic storytelling to reach niche audiences. It will cover different types of marketing content and match them to appropriate channels and purposes.

There will also be a discussion on the management of visual assets and include examples of free software tools developers can use to get started. Remember: games are for everyone, but yours doesn’t have to be.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Wild Life: Critter Clash Paid User Acquisition Postmortem

Speaker: Katie Stegs

As the competition in the mobile market increases, how do unknown or independent games grab a slice of the market? Is it possible, and how do you do it? Big players with unfathomable budgets hold their positions for years at a time, and every chart position and keyword has a price. Join Katie Stegs as she discusses how a small team with limited resources was able to put their first title in front of millions of potential players.

Lumi Interactive’s debut title, Critter Clash released in 2019 on Android and iOS. This talk will detail the platforms, partners and pitfalls of paid user acquisition for Critter Clash.

Katie will outline platform relationships, partnerships and budgets, and will do a detailed breakdown of two different UA analysis methodologies. She will share her UA set- up, pipeline and internal tools in order to highlight effective and ineffective uses of UA. This talk will be accompanied by all the real data, from the CPIs and CPAs achieved to the pre-launch and post-launch, featuring Lifetime Value (LTV) and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) of real players.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Engineering Live Ops on Call of Duty: WWII

Speaker: Josh Caratelli

Post-launch support can bring a host of tough engineering challenges to a development team; some of which can be foreseen and others which can’t. However, with the appropriate planning and best practice engineering principles in place, the issues which arise can be mitigated or outright avoided.

This presentation covers a variety of engineering practices used at Sledgehammer Games both pre and post-launch for Call of Duty: WWII to ensure the best possible experience for both the players and the development team.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Unpacking Game Design: Creating a game without fail states or scores

Speaker: Wren Brier

A zen game about taking items out of boxes after a move might sound extremely niche. But Unpacking by Brisbane studio Witch Beam has garnered international attention from players to industry folk alike. It’s been invited to showcases, nominated for awards and even gone viral, all in its first year of development.

The game lacks many conventional game design components: there are no scores, no time limits, no fail states, no consequences to choices, no dialogue. What’s left when all of that is taken away? How do you tell a story through such strict limitations? And why design a game like this?

This talk will cover extracting gameplay from unexpected places, finding a balance between puzzle and player expression, and how to stuff 69 household items into an isometric kitchen.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Visual Game Design: Keeping Teams Aligned Through Minimal Documentation

Speaker: Alex Carlyle

Keeping large teams aligned with the vision of a game is always challenging. Having spent many years creating design documents and battling to keep teams up to date with the latest direction of the game, I developed alternative methods that were faster to update and iterate and more effectively allowed team members to consume the information that they needed to make the best game they could.

I will talk about learnings from projects like LA Noire, the benefits of visual communication and creating environments that encourage teams to view and talk about the game they are creating, improving overall collaboration and alignment.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Subverting Genres: I Think I Rogue-Like You

Speaker: Lucy Morris

Roguelike, dating sim, RPG - every genre definition evokes certain expectations from a player of mechanic, function and content. When we dig in to a genre, examine these expectations and subvert elements of how they function, we can explore interesting mechanic innovations within sometimes tired (and unsuitable) labels for games.

Using Starcolt's first title ‘Best Friend Forever’ as an example, we'll take a look at the upsides and downsides of using genre definitions, and how we can twist and explore these to work in our advantage as game designers to create fresh, interesting experiences.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Can I Have That in a Spreadsheet Please?

Speaker: Cherie Davidson

Collecting, tracking and communicating complex relational data is the everyday work of producers and leads in teams. “What's the status of our game? How does our workload track against our timeline? Are my team members working effectively towards a shared goal? Is another play test cycle feasible before release?” What tools and processes can we use to make the answers to critical questions like these tracked, visible, and easily digestible?

In this talk, Cherie will leverage her production experience from Media Molecule and as a Melbourne-based freelancer to propose various tried and tested methods of collating and viewing this interconnected data.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: More Cards Against People Mismanagement

Speaker: Emilie Poissenot

With the right tools, leaders help a team navigate the tumultuous waters of game development and stick together until they reach their destination. You can be that guiding light!

In last year’s talk, I condensed some of my favourite people management tools into cards that help empower team members, bond with them and troubleshoot tensions. This year, I want to further

build your deck with techniques focused on communication, motivation and coaching, so you’re better equipped to lead the way for your team.

Whether you’re currently in a leadership position, aspiring to be or needing tools to better your relationship with your manager, this talk will give you practical tips to improve your team interactions as soon as you’re back in the office.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: What to Expect When You’re Expecting (A Producer)

Speaker: Lisy Kane

When considering bringing on a producer or if you're in the throes of onboarding ones, what are the considerations and questions you should be asking yourself and the team to ensure they are the given the best opportunity to level up your studio?

Lead Producer from League of Geeks, Lisy Kane is going to talk through what production looks like at LoG as well as exploring what types of production roles are out there and how they can fit (or not!) for your team.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Pitching Games to Publishers

Speaker: Cheryl Vance

Cheryl Vance, Co-Founder of Prideful Sloth, walks through the not-so-subtle art of pitching to publishers. This talk is aimed at answering the question: what exactly does it take to get publishers to (happily) part with their cash?

This session will help guide developers through the less trodden path of publisher funded development, giving an understanding of the steps, resources, and general preparation required in pitching to publishers.

This includes putting together pitch decks, budgets, and schedules; answering what it means to enter into a partner-relationship; navigating the ancillary resources you may need; and hopefully busting a few myths along the way!

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Production Process, Publishing & Platforms: A Simultaneous Release Crash Course

Speaker: Samuel McCully

Shipping games is hard, it gets harder when managing a simultaneous release across multiple different platforms. So what happens when you discover a week before launch that you're missing localisation on two platforms? Or you've announced your release date with one platform having still not passed certification?

This talk is designed to offer some best practices on how to manage different platform releases and mitigate some of the risks involved, using personal experience as to where things have been less than ideal before launch of past projects.  

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: The Life Of a Japanese Composer, with Manami Matsumae

(ft Alex Aniel as translator)

Speakers: Manami Matsumae & Alexander Aniel

Manami Matsumae, the legendary Japanese composer best known for her work on Mega Man (1987), Mega Man 10 (2010), and Mighty No 9 (2016), will be visiting Australia for the first time to attend MIGW 2019. In this talk we’ll learn about how the Japanese video game landscape has changed from the 1980s to now, and what the life of a Japanese video game composer entails in 2019.

This session will feature an extended Q&A component, so bring your best questions, your best spirits, and get ready to chat with one of the industry’s most iconic composers.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Indigenous Culture in Video Games

Speaker: Phoebe Watson

The sensitive presentation of culture in video games is a relatively new concept to the medium. It has continually been able to reach wider audiences over the years. With this ability to create and share stories and experiences, we can make a seriously positive impact.  

In this talk, Phoebe will speak to her experiences working with the Indigenous community in videogames and the processes that were taken to involve them in the production of Chaos Tavern by DragonBear Studios. Following, she will express her opinion on the importance of including Indigenous culture into videogames; Highlighting how it can preserve one of the oldest living cultures on the planet and aid in closing the gap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Making Games More Interactive on Twitch

Speaker: Richard Deveraux

Streaming has become a big part of how people engage with games from tuning in to watch their favourite streamers, to cooperatively playing a game through text chat via Twitch Plays. With Extensions, Twitch has made it even easier for developers to add viewer interactivity to streams with games like Borderlands 3 now offering in-game loot for viewers that participate in live-streaming events.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Ensuring the Quality of your Quality Assurance: the studio guide on getting the most out of your QA team

Speaker: Callum Harrington

Whether you’ve just started your own studio, about to launch your first game or you’re a big name company with multiple projects under your belt, there’s one thing that will never change: your game needs testing. Probably more than you thought you would. But who should be testing?

And when?

And how?

And why?

In this talk, we’ll be covering what are the best practices when it comes to hiring QA roles and what steps studios can take to better support their QA teams. Whether your considering contractors or employing a new member to your team, it’s best to have a firm understanding on the different QA roles and what preparation will be required when bringing them onto your project.

To light the way, we’ll dive into the day-to-day tasks, the month-to-month plans, and the year-to-year goals of QA, to ensure your studio can facilitate a high quality QA team.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Anime and the Illusion of Visual Simplicity

Speaker: Ngoc Vu

Anime despite it's minimalist appearance, can be a difficult style to work with. What defines it from western animation? What can we do when the elements and design seem so established?

For any artists hoping to adopt an anime artstyle into their concept art and games, this talk will go through the specific visual tools, methods, and thought processes that were considered when establishing Ngoc's artstyle for her anime inspired work and how practical they were in a game studio environment.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Puzzles to be explored but not solved: Designing ambiguous navigable worlds

Speaker: Alexander Muscat

How can we create worlds to be explored but not fully understood? This talk discusses how to design game levels for experiences of exploration and curiosity by introducing spatial ambiguity. Focusing on the design of award-winning WORLD4, a multi-view exploration game where players chart out a layered abstract world, I will describe an alternative approach level design by reframing game levels as something to be scrutinised and understood.

By presenting multiple design strategies designers can learn how to heighten player perception and vary navigation, seed uncertainty and encourage investigation, and subvert expectations to create surprise and foster interpretive readings. Through these insights attendees may build an understanding in how to enrich their own designs for exploratory and narrative player experiences.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Monitoring Performance on Massive Games

Speaker: Tony Albrecht

Monitoring the performance of your game as you build it is relatively easy, but how do you do that with a game that has already been released? And has millions of players? On thousands of different hardware configurations? Is the average FPS enough? This talk will dig down into how we do this on League Of Legends - how we do it, why we do it and what benefits it gives us. We'll start with simple metrics and progressively refine them as we discover problems until we have something that makes intuitive sense.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Storm Boy: The Game Game Director Postmortem

Speaker: Ellen Jurik

From the first meeting with IP Holders to the multi-platform simultaneous release, “Storm Boy: The Game” had a nine-month full development cycle. To hit this goal, the team had to control scope, iterate, and make decisions fast. In this talk, Game Director Ellen Jurik will cover her approach to defining a game’s vision and how this vision is carried across to all aspects of the game. She will also discuss the process of adapting an existing IP of another media to a game, and the production and design challenges for releasing a game across eight platforms in a limited timeframe.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Do you find yourself confused by colour theory?  Have you been overwhelmed by sliders?  Ever Wondered what things like agnostic or triptic colour schemes so you try googling them only to find out that they’re actually spelt Analogous and Triadic and it’s too late to take back that message you’ve already sent to your colleague?!? Well! Then this talk is for you! This talk doesn’t really tell you what any of those fancy words mean, but it will tell you how to make your colours look nice and consistent using data, research, colour matching, rulesets and other colour grading techniques.

This talk will first focus on getting enhancing the colours you’ve already got and how to grade things using the various tools that engines like Unreal and Unity provide (as well as how to generate a look up table in photoshop so you can use all of photoshop’s tools!). We’ll then look at ways to coming up with a cohesive colour scheme for games as well as easy way to generate colour palettes for items, shaders and textures. Finally this talk will finish up on with a case study on creating thousands of colours, research and inclusivity of skin tones, colour ux, and share some data and analytics on colour schemes. This talk isn’t so much about reinventing the colour wheel, but destroying it (and maybe setting it on fire.)

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Composing The Music for Florence and Necrobarista

Speaker: Kevin Penkin

Kevin will present on two recent game projects he's written music for, Florence and Necrobarista, to compare and contrast the vastly different aesthetic, stylistic and interactive approaches to both soundtracks.

He will then deep dive into how he worked with the development teams, music supervisor and other musicians to create the distinct sound worlds of both games.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Who Are You Helping And How?

Speaker: Shane Trewartha

Over all the years I’ve worked in games, especially since also working in games education, the one universal truth that I have noticed that seems to plague our industry, even through all our ups and downs, is that it is “hard to get into”, often opaque, and sometimes outright hostile to newcomers.

What if we changed the way we thought about growing the industry? What if we realised that creating art/entertainment/media/all of the other great things games can be is not a zero sum game? What if we realised that anyone can do it, most people just need to be pointed in the right direction?

So I started a studio with these exact goals in mind, Mana Tea. I had seen year after year, dozens and dozens of talented, enthusiastic, versatile and valuable graduates bounce off our industry because there “wasn’t enough room” for all of them. The thing is, they had everything they needed right there between them. With the right guidance, they could have been making their own games rather than someone else’s.

As well as telling my own story, this talk is going to be a thought provoking call to action to everyone in the audience to get out there and help the newbies. Our industry has the potential to be so much broader, richer and more diverse, but for a little bit of effort on our part to stop accidentally keeping people out.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Being A Multi-Disciplinary Artist: Games, Film and Beyond

Speaker: Hannah Crosby

The presentation will cover insights gained through the presenter’s experiences working within multiple creative industries as an artist.  Specifically, looking at the fundamental principles that underlie the creation of good art, regardless of medium, and which skills allowed the presenter to move between the video games and feature film industries by applying concepts relevant to both.  Creating believable art is strengthened through understanding real fabrication methods which will allow the artist to elevate their art with a real understanding of how physical objects are built and weathered. The talk will explore the importance of traditional art training for games artists, not just the study of specific digital software or games-specific art ideas, and why this creates better artists who are more resilient and creative.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Co-operative Game Development

Speakers: Maize Wallin & Jason Bakker

When making games in a team, you need to decide on how to legally structure your group; how IP is held, how liability is shared, how decisions are legally made, etc. The path that most teams take at the moment is to set up a private company, but this hierarchical structure may not gel with how your team works together in the longer term.

Co-operatives are an alternative to companies, and are founded on the concepts of democracy and equality. In this talk we will discuss how their unique democratic structure affects the many facets of running a business, including ownership of shares, how profit share is handled, team member obligations and recompensation, private investment in its many forms, team decision-making, and how new members joining or current members leaving the team is handled.

At Ghost Pattern, we are converting to a co-operative, and have done a significant amount of research into both the nature of co-ops in Australia, and various games co-ops around the world. In this session we’ll share with you what we’ve learnt about the pros, cons, and gotchas of incorporating as a co-operative. Overall this should give you a solid grounding in what co-ops are, how they differ from companies, and the basis of what you need to understand and prepare in order to decide which direction to go in for your own team.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au