Talk: The clothes that words wear: A typographic journey via Rihanna, Abba, KISS, Lady GaGa, George Michael and lots, lots more.

Speaker: Stephen Banham

Ever wondered why you hear an English voice when you read Gill Sans? Ever wondered why the film industry loves Trajan?

This presentation will take you on a journey, via pop culture, to understand the meanings and potentials of typography in creating just the right tone and voice (yes, even for games).

And yes, we will be mentioning Comic Sans.

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: Graphic Design and Videogames

Speaker: James Raftopoulos

Studio at Large is a small group of people with big design ideas. The studio is founded on the belief that good design starts wit a willingness to listen and to form strong, collaborative relationships. Studio at Large specialise in design and strategy for people, places and spaces.

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

Buildbots and Testbots are an innovative set of tools engineered by Mighty to help developers go from build to test using ‘zero touch’ tech and automation. Technical Director, Ben Britten and Senior Programmer, Matt Ditton will explain how Mighty went about building the ultimate companion to strong quality assurance procedures, that has been used in-house for over 5 years on more than 10 titles.

Made up of the Builder, Testbot and the Autotester, each provides a step towards more efficient deployment and testing on multiple capable platforms; mobile, PC/Mac, or console. Learn the secrets to get your production pipeline streamlined and set up with QA automation.

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: I can't get no (client) satisfaction

Speakers: Jo Ann Tan & Jerry van Koppen

Whether you are AAA doing co-dev, a mid sized studio doing work for hire or an indie working with a publisher or investor, wouldn't it be nice to know exactly where you stand with your client and what you could do to maximise the chance for future work?

It can be hard when these people are busy and difficult to reach so we've developed a minimally intrusive way to measure their current perception and highlight what already going well and areas to improve upon. We will take you through our journey, looking at the research, current best practices, and lessons learned in implementing these findings in Wargaming Sydney.

Covering challenges, like cultural/personal differences, limited availability of clients and also effectively measuring trust, loyalty and advocacy to develop meaningful metrics for client satisfaction.

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: Where to from here? Putting the spotlight on the Australian games industry

Speaker: Philip Mayes

Our industry has come so far since the lows of the post-GFC collapse. We have rebuilt an industry that is far more diverse and resilient than what came before. We have proven that world class games can be made in Australia. And the world has been paying attention.

Change is coming. Publishers are coming back. Companies are being bought. Consolidation is happening. Subscription platforms have started a gold rush for content. New consoles are just around the corner, and streaming services want to eliminate consoles altogether!

Are we prepared for this new era? Have we invested in the right areas? Are the foundations we have built strong enough to withstand another global recession?

In this talk I will attempt to answer these questions (and more), by taking stock of where the industry currently stands, and what we can do to take advantage of the opportunities that the future holds.

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: Ship it: An incomplete server-side checklist

Speaker: Luis Van Slageren

A pragmatic guide to shipping an online multiplayer game without lighting the server room on fire.

Join me as I walk you through my incomplete list of tasks and things to be considered when architecting your server environment, or at the very least before you push that big red button.

This talk will cover

- Continuous integration and deployment

- Load testing and automated tests

- Monitoring, alerts and Incident response plans

- Disaster recovery, and user data

- Updates, maintenance and security

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: Rapid Prototyping 101: Crucial UX Design skills for every team

Speaker: Anna Brandberg

Rapid Prototyping is a great tool to help your team think through and solve problems. Solutions come to you through sketching, feedback and multiple design iterations. By training ourselves to think fast, seek validation for our decisions through testing, and refining our UX Design processes, we can create better and more meaningful gaming experiences for our players.

By learning the process of Rapid Prototyping, you create something functional that you can test with users, and that you can then iterate on more accurately. It is a crucial part not only of the early stages of game development, but also for developing and integrating new features into existing games. It is therefore an important skill for all kinds of teams to master, not just those in pre-production, but also those working on games in live service.

Come learn how to break down effective UX Design processes into 3 stages: Prototyping, Reviewing and Refining. Find out how Rapid Prototyping helps you solve big, complex problems, quickly test the utility of your design, and thus make relevant modifications.

This talk will teach you tangible skills for how to draw useful Sketches, how to translate them into Wireframes and Clickable Prototypes - and why these are all uniquely important steps. This will be a practical demonstration of how to work in Adobe XD, and develop functional prototypes for any device (mobile, console, web, etc).

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 Architecture of Designing story-focused Games - Lighting the Way through the Narrative

Speaker: Mel Taylor

It is widely believed that games should first and foremost be driven by their mechanics and only after this (if at all) focus on narrative design.

This talk offers a different approach and is about designing a solid and engaging story first and then designing the mechanics around it.

Designing the narrative of a game is a bit like planning a prank: You are not going to know how your “victim” will react, but you should plan for the most likely outcomes. Lighting the way through the story and guiding the player is essential for them to get the most coherent and engaging experience out of it.

This talk will give attendees tools for this design approach as well as an understanding of how to “grow” mechanics from theme, how to pace your level design to fit storytelling and using symbolism in mechanics and environmental design in order to support the game’s themes.

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: Flow Chart - How Scope Creep Happens

Speaker: Leigh Harris

Objects in Space released in March this year, three and a half years after its initial expected release date of late 2015. The game was the largest project Flat Earth Games had ever undertaken, and while the concept was likely going to blow out right from the beginning based on the concept alone, there were several key points throughout development where the team made decisions which would compound the workload and cause chaos and distress throughout development.

In this talk, Lead Designer Leigh Harris will be showing the process of scope creep through an ever-expanding flow chart.

The chart will begin with the game's core pillars, and slide by slide new elements will be added showing the decisions which were made, dependencies which were created and HUGE interconnected nature of every feature to reveal a gigantic maze of every feature needed to get this mammoth game over the line.

The end result will be a massive infographic of decisions made during development which led to a team needing to refinance four and a half times to get our dream game made.

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 Forest Paths Method of Narrative Design

Speaker: Alexander Swords

Some paths are found. Some paths are forged. Some travellers want to be led. Others just want to explore.

The Forest Paths Method is about recognising how concepts of drama can be applied as a

theoretical framework, and then wielded as a method to develop narrative design at any part of the design process, on any scale.

This session will be an overview of the method, cover its strengths and weaknesses and then help writers and narrative designers at all levels understand how it may help them. We’ll also cover how this method can be used to recognise narrative design patterns common across genres and game types, and how this might provide a shorthand for development in the future.

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