Portuguese game development scene, what is happening, what games are coming out of Portugal. A short and quick overview of the environment and how the european crises gave a punch and push to a new era of industry. Videogames degrees didn’t emerge from the academia but from professionals developers and the degrees network created covers from programming, 2D and 3D videogame art, UI Design, Game Design, Production and Marketing. With 200 students finishing their degrees around videogames every year Portugal small industry is growing and attracting some known studios to the country.
Our 70s heisting simulator went through Steam Greenlight and Early Access, culminating in its release in the beginning of June. We built the game "out in the open", sharing stuff we worked on actively and doing our best to involve the community. This is a post mortem of that experience, with focus on how we handled building, involving and managing the community.
Building a game is not too different from building any kind of product…or as a matter of fact building anything. There are phases in game development that need a certain type of attention and certain expectations have to be fulfilled.
In this talk, Dan will run you through the production cycle, by sharing his experience and lessons learned during the years and giving examples from the development of the games he worked on.
This topic should serve as inspiration and discussion starter to improve building great teams and great games; one brick at a time.
The (German) game industry concentrates mostly on the digital market, but there are also many business opportunities off the beaten paths.
Chime, the music puzzle game from 2009, will return at the end of 2015 as Chime Sharp, an upgraded and rebooted version for PC and Mac. Ste Curran discusses the gameplay changes that made him return to the game, why he chose to crowdfund the project and the rules he's learned for a successful Kickstarter; financially and, crucially, emotionally.
This panel will discuss experiences and lessons learnt in Early Access – which approaches to take in communications upfront and during launch, when to go for Early Access and when not, what to expect when going for it and which best practices everyboday learnt and would advise on in general.
Ellen will focus on the unpredictable nature of live development, what it is like to release new features in a live environment with 60 million players, and what it’s been like working with a big publisher like Rovio.
HOW TO THRIVE
IN THE MODERN DIGITAL AGE