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Game Connect Asia Pacific

GCAP19: Ben Britten & Matt Ditton - Always be testing: A journey through Buildbots and Testbots

Speakers
Ben Britten
Matt Ditton
Mighty Games
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Jo Ann Tan & Jerry van Koppen - I can't get no (client) satisfaction

Speakers
Jo Ann Tan
Jerry van Koppen
Wargaming Sydney
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Philip Mayes - Where to from here? Putting the spotlight on the Australian games industry

Speakers
Philip Mayes
Mighty Kingdom
Speaker Date
-

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

GCAP19: Luis Van Slageren - Ship it: An incomplete server-side checklist

Speakers
Luis Van Slageren
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Anna Brandberg - Rapid Prototyping 101: Crucial UX Design skills for every team

Speakers
Anna Brandberg
Firemonkeys
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: The Architecture of Designing story-focused Games - Lighting the Way through the Narrative

Speakers
Mel Taylor
Mellow Games
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Leigh Harris - Flow Chart - How Scope Creep Happens

Speakers
Leigh Harris
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Alexander Swords - The Forest Paths Method of Narrative Design

Speakers
Alexander Swords
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Erick Blandin - Games as a Therapeutic Tool

Speakers
Erick Blandin
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: Games as a Therapeutic Tool

Speaker: Erick Blandin

People have been playing games as a hobby for a long time but they can also be used to help with mental, physical and emotional therapy. Fast moving games are great for ignoring pain, calming games are great for helping with anxiety and games with big repeated motions are good for exercising damaged muscles or just getting the blood flowing.



Hospitals around the world are just starting to think of games as a tool in their practice and are always looking for fun games that also happen to be useful in their therapeutic goals. There are components they look for in games depending on the therapeutic goal, and many games fit these niches without even meaning to.

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

GCAP19: Ally McLean - Thank U, Next: Embracing Change in Stormy Weather

Speakers
Ally McLean
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: Thank U, Next: Embracing Change in Stormy Weather

Speaker: Ally McLean

If there's one thing that's certain in the games industry, it's that everything changes. Companies rise and fall, new technologies and business models emerge, and "the way things are done" is in a constant state of flux. What was true when many of entered the industry or started degrees is no more. This dynamic environment isn't settling any time soon, so how do we learn to embrace the chaos?

In a year of particularly turbulent change in the ANZ games industry, this talk will present advice, strategies, stories and questions from people in our community impacted by change, and those making the change, to how we make games. This talk will dig into our community definitions of game development success, and reflect on what remains meaningful in an ever-changing environment. Also, there will be Ariana Grande.

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

GCAP19: Drew Taylor - Accessibility as a primary design consideration

Speakers
Drew Taylor
Speaker Date
-

Talk: Accessibility as a primary design consideration: the early journey of Blind Sparrow Interactive

Speaker: Drew Taylor

By now, most of us know the importance of accessibility and its numerous benefits. But what does it really mean to the development of your game when you decide to factor in accessibility as a primary design consideration? (Especially if you’ve never done so before, or, more frighteningly, you’re new to game development.) This is exactly the situation that faced Blind Sparrow Interactive, a small indie development studio that was founded on principles of accessibility and inclusion. Through numerous practical examples, the studio will open the doors on it’s journey and the development of its current project, offering suggestions on how you can start to think about - and apply - accessibility features right from your game’s initial design stages.

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

GCAP19: Paris Buttfield-Addison - Why did medieval knights fight giant snails?

Speakers
Paris Buttfield-Addison
Secret Lab
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: Why did medieval knights fight giant snails? And what does this have to do with games?

Speaker: Paris Buttfield-Addison

"...vehicles for delight, disgust, and befuddlement..."

"...delightfully detailed (and occasionally rather gruesome)..."

"...silly, dramatic, and puzzling..."

Are these quotes from game reviews, or are they comments made by people looking at late-medieval marginalia? We'll find out together!

Was there a giant snail problem in the late Middle Ages? Illuminated manuscripts from the late medieval period are full of beautiful, dramatic, hilarious imagery of knights fighting giant snails (and many other seriously weird stuff™).

Scholarship on the medieval era is full of such intriguingly titled works as “The Snail in Gothic Warfare”, “What’s so funny about knights and snails?", “Snails: the central problem of high middle ages warfare”, and “Snails—rethinking our ancient foe”.

What’s going on? Was there a species of giant snail, long since extinct? Or some kind of collective hallucination?

What’s the deal? Let’s find out together. Answering this, and other bizarre questions from history, Paris explores why all game developers should learn history, and shows how medieval marginalia (the drawings in the sides of medieval manuscripts) are really just ye olde promotional art, a medieval image-based social network, if you will.

Join a game developer with a PhD in Computer Science and a degree in Medieval History and find out why everyone should learn a little history (and I’ll explain the snail thing, too.) We will look at the world of medieval art, and together we'll find out how and why today's game makers can light the way forward for a better treatment of art and artists by borrowing from the approach of medieval scribes and designers.

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

GCAP19: Dean Walshe - The Art of Void Bastards

Speakers
Dean Walshe
Blue Manchu
Games
Void Bastards
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: The Art of Void Bastards

Speaker: Dean Walshe

Dean will explore the process behind creating the visually distinctive game Void Bastards.

Looking at both the technical and artistic choices needed to deliver the vision of Blue Manchu’s art director Ben Lee.

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

GCAP19: Megan Bowra-Dean - Optimising a high fidelity console game for mobile platforms

Speakers
Megan Bowra-Dean
PikPok
Games
Rival Stars Horse Racing
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: Getting the horse to drink: Optimising a high fidelity console game for mobile platforms

Speaker: Megan Bowra-Dean

PikPok's Rival Stars Horse Racing was initially developed at a fidelity level suitable for current generation console platforms. However we also planned to publish a version for mobile platforms that got as close to the console experience as possible. Here's how we achieved that with Unity's recent performance advances and a lot of elbow grease.

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

GCAP19: Jessica Da Silva - Work in Progress: Lessons learned from experience as a 3D artist

Speakers
Jessica Da Silva
Blowfish Studios
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: Work in Progress: Lessons learned from experience as a 3D artist

Speaker: Jessica Da Silva

This session is built around questions from my mentee where I highlight my experience, the lessons I've learnt and mistakes I've made, providing advice for aspiring 3D artists.

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

GCAP19: June Rhodes - So you want to make a multiplayer game?

Speakers
June Rhodes
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: So you want to make a multiplayer game?

Speaker: June Rhodes



Multiplayer games are huge and have great potential for long term retention of players, and that leads to ongoing revenue for a studio, but to achieve this, you need to make sure your multiplayer experience is excellent. You won’t get that just throwing whatever library you can find on the asset store and hoping for the best. This talk will teach you how to implement multiplayer from the ground up, allowing you to make sure your online player experience is the best it can 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

GCAP19: Lisa Evans - Using Games Design in Citizen Science

Speakers
Lisa Evans
Speaker Date
-
Session type

Talk: Using Games Design in Citizen Science

Speaker: Lisa Evans

Most games are designed to be entertaining so they can drive sales or build a big community of players. For the astronomy citizen science project AstroQuest, we care about how much data we get, whether it's usable by our scientists, and whether we meet our goals for astronomy outreach and education. Lisa will talk about the design of the AstroQuest website and the process the team went through in using game design ideas to encourage citizen scientists to produce more and better data, as well as targeting their efforts where the scientists needed them the most.

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

GCAP19: Zander Hulme - Sonar Solutions For Accessible Gaming

Speakers
Zander Hulme
Speaker Date
-

Talk: Sonar Solutions For Accessible Gaming

Speaker: Zander Hulme

A lot of UX design focuses on visual clarity, but what if you can’t see the video in video games? This talk will cover a few of the ways in which indie developers can use sound and music to make games more accessible to players with reduced vision, and improve player immersion overall. When games sound better, everybody wins!

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

GCAP19: Stefano Martincigh - Evolving Together

Speakers
Stefano Martincigh
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Zhia Zariko - Realtalk; Politics, games, and the inescapable maw of responsibility

Speakers
Zhia Zariko
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Dr Dan Golding - Claude De-goosey: On turning classical piano into videogame serendipity

Speakers
Dan Golding
Games
Untitled Goose Game
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Osama Dorias - Designing from the Heart

Speakers
Osama Dorias
Warner Brothers Montreal
Speaker Date
-

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

GCAP19: Theresa Duringer - Machine Learning for Boardgame AI in Race for the Galaxy

Speakers
Theresa Duringer
Speaker Date
-
Session type

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

GCAP19: Gabriella Lowgren - How to Mitigate Abuse and Cultivate Communities

Speakers
Gabriella Lowgren
Infinity + 2
Speaker Date
-

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

GCAP19: Stephan Schutze - Survival, Support and Growth of our Industry

Speakers
Stephan Schutze
Speaker Date
-

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