Talk: Evolving Together

Speaker: Stefano Martincigh

Collaboration is the heart of our industry and as such is worth a lot of effort. Nowadays there are a number of well proven frameworks which should help us find the way; however, in the gaming industry we often struggle to find the balance between producing the next big hit and equipping ourselves for a sustainable production. In this talk I will give a number of examples of good and bad implementations of Scrum, its evolution and Lean Kanban. I will analyse how best practices were applied, or not, and I will show the consequences of our choices.

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: Realtalk; Politics, games, and the inescapable maw of responsibility.

Speaker: Zhia Zariko

Politics in and around games has always been a contentious and much-debated subject. Whilst this talk may not settle this discussion in its entirety, it is vitally important that designers and consumers of games are aware of what it means to consider ‘politics’ in the context of game design.

Specifically, this talk will attempt to unpack the idea of whether or not it is possible to create an ‘apolitical’ game. It will explore the concept at numerous levels, both in terms of what politics are – and how they are understood by the consumer audience – and how they are represented by games. It borrows heavily from film and literature, which has laid strong foundations in the bedrock of 'politics'.

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: Claude De-goosey: On turning classical piano into videogame serendipity

Speaker: Dr Dan Golding

How do you take two sets of piano preludes from the early twentieth century by composer Claude Debussy, and turn them into a videogame soundtrack? How does that music then act like an invisible silent film pianist, accompanying the game state, and providing moments of serendipity and humour for the player? In this talk, composer Dr. Dan Golding will explore the creative decisions and process behind creating the soundtrack for House House’s upcoming Untitled Goose Game.

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: Designing from the Heart: Putting yourselves in your games.

Speaker: Osama Dorias

Working in the games industry can be hard enough as is. Add to that our daily life struggles and it can sometimes feel like an impossible feat. So how can we use game development as a way to explore our identities and struggles? And how can we turn these struggles into a strength?

This presentation will draw from the experiences of the speaker as a Muslim and a person of color working in the games industry for over a decade. The speaker will explain how his personal life journey has inspired his creative works and he will share the stories and experiences of other notable video game professionals who have done the same.

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: Machine Learning for Boardgame AI in Race for the Galaxy

Speaker: Theresa Duringer

Race for the Galaxy uses a temporal difference neural network to power its AI.  This knowledge-free system does not require human input to generate training data, which makes it extremely efficient for a small team with limited resources.

Even though our AI has trained on just over 30,000 games, because of this reinforcement learning model which uses predictive data to hone itself at the turn level, it has effectively benefited from over a million turn events.  The neural network we use actually has twelve bifurcations, each to support a specialized configuration of players, expansion content, and game preferences.

For each of these twelve, we support two flavors of neural network function, one to predict an opponent’s next move, and one to evaluate the board state, which is used when the AI simulates forward to choose its next move.  This talk will speak to how the Race for the Galaxy neural networks are architected, and how and when developers should use similar models.  

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: Player Hygiene: How to Mitigate Abuse and Cultivate Communities

Speaker: Gabriella Lowgren

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single studio in possession of a good game, must be in want of online harassment.”

Salty Austen

As our industry grows, and the way people behave in online spaces evolves, so must the management of our players. This talk will first look into some of the reasons we have seen shifts in player behaviour towards developers and video games, before exploring ways both in and out of game to foster positive and supportive communities.

It is important to consider the safety of a game’s developers, players and community managers. By implementing community driven game features and creating a framework within which to build strong and conscious communities, developers can decrease the amount of abuse they receive, as well as that of their staff, and other 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: On Your Left: Survival, Support and Growth of our Industry

Speaker: Stephan Schutze

The geeks among us may recognise the title of this session and its significance in coming together to overcome adversity. Creative work often leaves us vulnerable, that vulnerability is not a weakness, it is a core aspect of reaching within ourselves to create art, and it also allows us to communicate with our peers.

I have been surprised on many occasions at how being prepared to be publicly vulnerable can be hugely beneficial to others in my industry. By sharing, we allow others to understand that their struggles are not unique.

This session will explore how there are many challenges that we unknowingly share and that we do not diminish ourselves be speaking about our issues, instead we often raise up our colleagues by letting them know, they are not alone.

Mental and emotional stress are key issues that drive many from our industry and prevents others from achieving their desired goals

Those of us with experience and established careers can provide incredible support for others around us simply be being prepared to share honestly.

This session is designed to support all levels of industry practitioner. Those of us with established careers can support both our peers as well as newcomers, and those new to the industry are a constant reminder of the dreams we may have lost sight of.

We all need heroes to lift us up and to show us the way, many of us do not realise that our heroes are already among us.

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:  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