Game Connect Asia Pacific

How do you have a 'face' of a company, without anyone wanting to constantly show their face? How do you engage with fans when you can't talk about what you are making for another year?

This talk looks into the relationship between developer and (potential) fan, with a focus on taking positive customer experience to the digital platform. There will be a lot of questions posed, anecdotes told and very likely a reference or two to Gilmore Girls and craft beer (sorry, not sorry).

With everyone working from home during these exceptionally difficult times, leaders put in extra effort to keep their team connected, healthy and productive. The right tools can enable you to be that positive force!

This is the third instalment of my popular talk series where I condense my favourite people management tools and techniques into memorable, actionable cards. This year, I want to bolster your deck with new connection, psychological safety and emotional intelligence cards that help me foster creative collaboration and maintain team morale through times of increased stress.

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 whether you’re working from home or back in the office.

You know that dialogue will bring life and emotion into your game and you're considering hiring voice actors. Do it! Well, check your budget first.

Calculate Costs:

Calculate how many minutes of dialogue you need to produce, and how many hours in the recording studio this will take. Kathy shows you how and provides a rough guide for converting this to costs.

Select recording studio and actors:

Choose the studio – so many pitfalls.

Choose the actors – get them to send you voice clips, and get them to make alterations. Kathy provides an example. Make sure you’re happy with the alterations you requested.

Contract with agents:

Deal with the agents – be prepared. Be very, very prepared. Kathy has a list.

Prepare the actors:

A pre-recording meeting is included in those very high acting fees! Tell the story of the game, give character sheets, give lines, find preferred lines format, give studio address and contact details, discuss time preferences, ask about special needs.

Make a recording schedule:

Start with the clearest cleanest voices. Allow time for settling in and equipment calibration. Calculate which line to get up to each quarter day so you can track progress.

Recording session:

-what to bring

-how to direct –a real live voice actor will help demonstrate

-demo clip etiquette

-credit takes

-ideas for thanking voice actors

Post processing and file naming:

– surprise! Kathy has a list.

A full Quixel ecosystem walkthrough exploring Bridge, Mixer, and the UE4 plug-in.

Discover how easy it is to bring photorealistic content into games, as well as manipulate scan data to be stylized using Quixel Mixer.

Being an artist in an industry setting can prove challenging. Paul Skinner talks about his experiences as an artist throughout his 12 year career, the pros, cons and challenges associated with being an artist. With Daniel Visser, Paul will also touch on the typical art pipeline at Wicked Witch, including the character photogrammetry pipeline Wicked Witch has purpose-built for capturing photogrammetry data of sportspeople.

Paul and Daniel will explain the initial hardware setups testing processes behind the scenes that led up to the eventual character photogrammetry pipeline that exists today. Paul will cover the steps involved in shooting an actor or talent and taking the required photogrammetry data before it’s processed through the pipeline.

Paul will be expanding on the processes involved in turning that photogrammetry data into a final character featured in a Wicked Witch sports title, as well as some insights into how to maximize the output efficiency of that system. Meaning how to make 300+ uniquely identifiable character models based on real people in a cost-effective and time efficient manner for game development.

This talk showcases ideation, art direction, and lighting design for the virtual reality experience, MINIMUM MASS. It will outline the technological and creative constraints around implementing a photographic visual style, performance requirements, and the overall look and feel of a surreal but gritty reality.

Covering the principles of how cinematic lighting can be achieved for 6dof VR, it will give a detailed look into the UE4 based pipeline used to create the experience’s natural and speculative environments. It demonstrates the path of an environment from conception to production with a particular focus on how feature offline visual effects lighting practices can be adapted for indie immersive real-time workflows.

How does a non-Indigenous composer try to create an Indigenous Australian game score? By connecting with some of the most talented Indigenous Australian musicians around.

Composer Meena Shamaly details his process of collaborating with First Nations musicians to create a culturally respectful, celebratory, and entertaining score to Innchanted, a game set in a fantasy Australian world.

It is a process of complete openness and extensive cultural dialogue, as well as collaborative experimentation and free-spirited improvisation from the musicians. Meena draws on his knowledge as a game composer, his own cultural experience as a session musician, and his extensive research involved in presenting the music of video games on ABC Classic (not to mention his lifelong obsession with video game music).

This talk will break down Meena’s sessions and conversations with some of Australia’s most talented First Nations musicians, including Allara Briggs-Pattison (NIMA 2020 finalist for New Talent of the Year), Kiernan Ironfield (of DRMNGNOW), and Eric Avery (renowned violinist, dancer, and creator of Dancing with Strangers).

It will showcase how a game score can be composed not just in response to the game itself, but also to the musicians’ innate connection to culture and language, no matter the instruments on which they express themselves.

A talk by Meena Shamaly

Windbound is 5 Lives Studios' latest multi-platform release, featuring fantastical creatures, magic, mystery, a lot of sailing, and an awful lot of sounds.

The game features a unique interactive soundtrack, adaptive sound design, and a bunch of good old-fashioned Foley work to bring the various creatures to life. Have a peek behind the curtain at the process of planning, creating, coding, and composing the audio of Windbound.

In 2018, Riot Games committed to transforming our company culture to be safer and more inclusive for all Rioters.

In this talk, two leaders from the Diversity & Inclusion team share what we’ve learned as a company and key takeaways for game developers and studios to implement in their everyday work culture.

Hosted by Soha El-Sabaawi & Audrey Gallien

[Proudly presented by Film Vic]

With the average career duration of 5-7 years in games, there is a shortage of people to offer insightful and professional mentorship in junior and intermediary roles. There is also a general lack of understanding about how to design a mentoring relationship, on both sides of the equation.

This talk will look at the who, what, when, why and how to have a great mentoring relationship. Often folks don't feel ready to be mentors - they believe they have to have loads of expertise before they can offer valuable insights to people earlier in their careers. Their imposter syndrome gets in the way of wanting to share knowledge. Mentees know that they don't know things but they aren't sure how to go about getting a mentor and they feel awkward asking for guidance. Better understanding both sides of the mentoring relationship will help you decide if you're ready to be a mentor or mentee!

Making videogames is hard and people are weird, then imagine trying to make money doing that too. In this talk League of Geeks co-founder and director, Trent Kusters, details the pillars and practices (and many, MANY missteps) that have assisted them in building their renowned culture that has taken LoG from a tiny out-of-hours indie outfit to one of the world's most respected Triple-I studios with 40+ team members. For people managers, producers, studio heads, or frankly anyone who cares about the 40 hours a week we spend making videogames together, come hear LoG's beliefs on how game development can be better.

Morgan Jaffit as he interviews one of the industry's most iconic and interesting indie developers, Mike Bithell, creator of Thomas Was Alone, Volume, John Wick Hex, Subsurface Circular, Quarantine Circular and The Solitaire Conspiracy.

Talk: VMDO Presents: Games + Music; Your Perfect Soundtrack

Speakers: Yasmin Naghavi, Sebastian Wolff, Mason Lieberman, Niamh Houston, Fabian Malabello

Note: There is an error with the recording where it's pointing at the wrong side of the stage for half of the presentation.

Yasmin Naghavi ( Media Arts Lawyers), Sebastian Wolff (Materia Collective), Mason Lieberman (Tencent), CHIPZEL, Fabian Malabello (The Otherworld Agency, Boss Battle Records).

Music’s importance to video games is indelible: enhancing an immersive experience, connecting to characters, driving play on and so much more. How do you find the right piece music or the right artists to create, perform and record it and then how do you navigate the complexities of licensing, publishing and masters? This panel of international experts will demystify the global video game music industry and discuss their own experiences to help ensure you’re armed with the tools to find the perfect soundtrack.

Presented by the Victorian Music Development Office VMDO). The VMDO is focused on supporting the Victorian contemporary music industry now and into the future. An initiative of the Victorian Government, the VMDO is delivered by Music Victoria. www.vmdo.com.au

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 Australian gamemakers told me about making games in Australia

Speaker: Brendan Keogh

Since the beginning of 2018, Brendan Keogh has been funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate the state of game development in Australia. So far Keogh has conducted 150 interviews with gamemakers in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Tasmania; he also conducted a nationwide survey that attracted another 280 responses.

Across these interviews, Keogh identified a wide range of identities, challenges, and ambitions driving Australian gamemakers. Some of these were specific to different local contexts; others were felt similarly across the nation.

In this session, Keogh will report back to the community some of the preliminary findings of this ongoing research through directly drawing from quotations and statistics from this ongoing research.

The goal of this is to help individuals in the audience to better understand their own local and national context as game developers, ensuring that collective challenges they face are not felt as solely individual failings.

Further, by presenting this national and local snapshot of the experiences of Australian gamemakers, it is hoped this talk’s information will help local gamemaking communities consider collective responses and strategies to the near-ubiquitous feelings of precarity and instability observed in this study.

Also featuring final remarks from Sav Emmett Wolfe and the GDAA 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: Being A Game Design Tradie

Speaker: Nic Wechter

The study of "Game Theory" has developed massively as the industry has grown giving a huge well of knowledge to draw from as they slave away at trying to create the next breakout hit.

Over the years making games I've developed a unique approach to distilling ideas, mechanics and environments into gameplay that has more in common with artisan tradespeople such as carpenters and metal fabricators than it does with the more academic approach usually associated with game theory. This talk will explore these concepts.

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: Programming: The First Few Years

Speaker: Liam de Valmency

Getting a job as a programmer in the games industry for the first time can be overwhelming, especially if you haven’t worked on a larger team before.

This talk focuses on how to adjust and make the most of your early days in the industry; things to focus on, how to continue to grow, and why writing code is just a small part of working as a games programmer.

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: Divergent thinking and iteration process: a hands-on creativity workshop

Speaker: Elaine Gusella

Since grade school we are encouraged to proceed through a very narrow set of ways to achieve an expected result. By contrast, the iteration process - highly praised in game development - occurs in a non-linear, emergent process. This workshop will help you unlock your creativity by giving you tools for problem-solving, rapid prototyping, efficient collaboration and idea-generation.

Come play through this hands-on creativity workshop to learn different brainstorm strategies and renew with your productive creativity.

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: Don’t Get Shipwrecked - Production for Small Indies

Speaker: Matthew Dyet

There is a common misconception among many small independent studios that they simply are not big enough to require any sort of project management on their games. After all, why would you ever need project management when you only have a handful of people working on your small project? But this sort of thinking is a trap that result in overworked teams and the never-shipping game.

Whether you are a team of 10 working with a government grant or a solo indie creating your passion project, having a plan and a process is going to be an essential tool in ensuring you don’t overwork yourself and actually deliver a product at any point in the foreseeable future. But don’t go rushing out for that Agile certification just yet!

In this talk, Matthew Dyet will lay out the strategies and techniques that you can make use of in your small teams to implement some production process and maintain control of your projects, all without needing to go and hire somebody else to do it for you. It doesn’t need to be over-complicated!

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: Why Fashion in (Most) Games Sucks, and Why You Should Care

Speaker: Victoria Tran

Fashion in games is one of the most downplayed parts of the medium; just like in real life, clothing is an outward expression of one's personality. A game's choice of dress or even the ability to HAVE different outfits (and not just color swaps) is both the gamers' expression of themselves and a way to create more diverse and interesting environments. Character customization, after all, could be considered another form of dress up.

Offensive or lackluster fashion can be a representation of the troubling perspective that games have no space for "feminine" interests. Some have captured fashion well (think 'Splatoon' and 'Persona 5'), but much of game development has to catch up on this, like the infamous Quiet outfit from 'Metal Gear Solid V' or the lackluster outfits from 'The Sims 3'.

The benefits to paying attention to style? Just think of the success of 'Overwatch' skins, as one example! This talk from Kitfox Games' Victoria Tran explores the recent history of fashion in games and provides multiple tips for success.

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: Changing your career in games without having an existential crisis

Speaker: Jo Lammert

Making the jump into a videogame career already comes with its moments of nerves, doubt, and imposter syndrome, but shifting into a new role in the same industry (or even considering shifting into a new role) can bring these feelings out all over again, sometimes even more so. As an indie, is it possible to apply for a job in AAA (or inversely, as a AAA dev, is it possible to run your own indie studio?)? After years as an artist, can you apply for a producer position? How do you apply for a job at a game publisher when you’ve only worked at a game developer?

This session will explore all of these questions in a variety of ways, from preparing your CV and portfolio appropriately for a new job opportunity, to managing the emotional challenges that accompany changing your career trajectory in the games industry. Jo Lammert's career has run the gamut in experiences, from librarianship to indie game dev to community organizing to government stewardship to freelance to currently publishing, and there's a lot of things she's learned over this past decade she wishes she could bestow onto her younger self- instead, you can reap the benefits from her past self-doubt, insecurities, and quarter-life crisis!

No matter how different your previous work seems, there’s always opportunity for those experiences to complement a brand-new role with new responsibilities.

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: Zen and the Art of Team Maintenance: A Producers Guide to Getting Sh!t Done

Speaker: Amy Dallas

As Producers, our jobs often revolve around expectations, whether it's setting them, managing them, or meeting them. That all sounds straightforward, until you start to factor in how the individual members of your team may respond to those expectations. Some people are going to be great at meeting deadlines on their own, while others may require more hand-holding and accountability.

Some will have no problem setting effective boundaries, while others might take on too much and burn out. Some are going to be happy carry out an assignment as requested, while others may need to understand the reasoning behind the request before they can truly engage. And, of course, some need to do things their way, or not at all.

In other words, there is no ""one-size-fits-all"" solution to ensure that the people on your team are meeting deadlines, doing great work and achieving project goals as well as their own. Which means, sometimes, we as Producers have to get a little creative, when it comes to getting sh!t done.

In this session, Amy will talk about how to apply Gretchen Rubin’s “Four Tendencies” framework to working with teams. Through it, you’ll better understand how your individual team members could respond to internal and external expectations, as well as some strategies to improve their efficiency and overall happiness, while reducing stress and burnout.

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 Unionism Adds To Your Workplace

Speakers: David Haidon & Morgan Little

Game Workers Unite presents a look at how collective bargaining builds a better workplace for everyone. Learn about the role of unions across history, how working together creates trust, improves standards, and builds a safe place for vulnerable people. Representatives from GWU Australia and from Australia’s trade union movement will answer questions on pay standards, worker co-operative ownership, and workplace health and safety issues.

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: Technical Direction for One

Speaker: Alex Holkner

Regardless of whether you’re the sole developer on an indie game, leading a small group of programmers, or the technical director overseeing multiple engineering departments, you will face the

same problems and decision points in the choice and use of technology on your projects.

By the time your game has shipped, you will have made hundreds of decisions around coding standards and best practices, use of testing and automation, continuous integration and deployment, release processes, client and server technology, and middleware selections. As the technical expert on the project you will likely have also had to make decisions around IT issues such as version control, backups, hardware and software purchases, and security.

Besides developing a game, you will find yourself building bespoke tools for engineers, designers, artists, producers, QA and customer support, and processes to go along with them.

If you’re a solo developer or head of a small team, ideally your decisions are setting up your studio for growth and sustainability; whereas if you’re already leading a large team you are already well aware of the difficulty in maintaining high productivity with so many hands on deck.

Drawing on his experience leading both large and small teams, Alex will explore these issues and provide guiding principles for technical directors at all levels of experience, with a particular focus on risk assessment and mitigation, and setting up processes and practices up-front that can scale as a team grows.

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 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