GCAP 2011 Sessions
#gamedev: We Need To Aim Higher
Mike Acton – Insomniac Games
Keynote Session Description:
It’s time for game developers to get out of their own way. To refuse to be boxed in by fear or creatively diminished by rigid, outdated schools of thought. We need to reclaim our genius, expand our visions, and get back to doing what we do best: Evolving our products and ourselves and taking the world along with us. We need to aim higher.
GCAP 2011 opening address and Mike Acton keynote presentation
Video (Courtesy Tsumea)
Neil Rennison and Ben Britten Smith – Tin Man Games
Session Description:
A detailed account of how Tin Man Games brought alive Gamebook Adventures and the reasons taken as to why we decided to look at a long-term approach (the long-tail) over one-off individual game developments. How important was creating a brand in this decision?
Details as to how GA was inspired by 80s gamebook series such as Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy, and how GA is now mentioned alongside those brands whenever digital versions of such series are mentioned in the press.
Why did we name the series Gamebook Adventures? Keeping the title simple and memorable, as well as describing exactly what the series was within the name was very important.
Designing the logo. How was this important for merchandising?
Where do we see GA moving forward? What happens when we start working on licensed IPs and how we aim to continue using the GA brand. How valuable is GA?
A quick look at the perception of made-up characters. How we used the imagery of “The Tin Man” to help us reach over 2000 twitter followers in just over a year.
Video of Session
Creating EPOCH for iOS with UDK
Andrew James, Ed Orman and Ryan Lancaster – Uppercut Games
Session description:
The pros and cons of working with a tool like UDK for iOS development. Using UDK to it’s strengths, not trying to make game it’s not suited for. Our development methodologies, prototyping and fate iteration of core game play ideas, using Engine artist tools like Matinee and Kismet (Scripting).
Video of Session
Designing for Innovation or The Aristocracy of the Hardcore vs. The Great Unwashed of Farmville
Session description:
The talk will predominantly deal with concepts of “technicity” and “cultural capital” and how we need to overcome these to truly innovate and appeal to a large audience. By employing these and explaining these terms I hope to explain the mechanisms behind the shift from classical “hardcore games” to more casual titles that are able to reach an ever-expanding audience.
As such the talk will be loosely based on concepts explored in my PhD. and also take its historical approach into account.
So what do the terms refer to?
Technicity is that aspect of identity expressed through the subject’s relationship with technology. Particular tastes and their associated cultural networks have always been marked by particular technologies, e.g. rockers with motorbikes and mods with scooters. In the 21st century, technicities associated with the consumption and manipulation of digital technologies become key characteristics of the preferred subject, which in turn means the marginalisation of other kinds of technicity.
The dominant identity/technology interfaces were born in a male environment, laboratories, the MIT Model Railroad Club, etc., and influenced by such popular myths as that of the ‘hacker’. In the biographies of what we call dominant technicities there is a remarkable homogeneity rather than ‘creolization’.
Games have been produced by very particular kinds of people who have developed very particular cultures and tastes which command a disproportionate amount of ‘cultural space’. This resulted in contents and marketing strategies which did not appeal to large demographics such as women or ethnic minorities.
It took until Nintendo’s Wii to finally break with this dominant form of technicity was playing digital games. The hardcore crowd hated it, there were hardly any “real” games on the “white box of waggle” – they, the “true” gamers were threatened in their identity and did not react kindly. The market didn’t care and the Wii made billions.
The next question is; why is this dominant technicity so difficult to overcome? Yes, there’s the aspect of threatened identity, however, it is also very closely related to the issue of distinction and “cultural capital”.
With the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on symbolic economies on power I will demonstrate how the resistance against more accessible games and the people who play them is motivated not only by a threatened hardcore identity, but also by a threat to the “traditional” players’ distinction and devalued cultural capital; they can’t set themselves apart as an elite anymore.
It’s a similar to mechanisms we witnessed when movies made their impact felt and the keepers of high culture opposed them – their legitimacy dwindled, no one cared about them and their inaccessible art anymore, an art that only the “truly cultured” understood.
From a Team of 50 to a Team of 1, the Awesome Power of no Meetings!
Jay Kyburz – Iron Helmet Games
Session description:
I’d like to talk about the differences between running a studio with over 50 people to working as an independent. More interestingly, I’d like to highlight what things are the same as many of the differences are obvious!
Example: There is the same amount of “Games Design” done. There is roughly the same amount of game mechanics that need to be developed, iterated on, and tuned. This is because the decisions making for the player, the things a player can do is about the same in an indie game as it is in a AAA console game.
Example: There is just as much crunch time and crappy working conditions. You’ll crunch because every hour spent on your game will be rewarded with more money in your own pocket, and all those perks, well you have to pay for those yourself!
Video of session
Video (Courtesy Tsumea)
From Conception to the Console: A practical guide to beginning your own Start Up
Session description:
This session aims to demystify the process of creating your own start up company. It will flag and discuss the most important issues that people first encounter when beginning an indie studio. The session will discuss the process of getting started – who you need to speak to, and the decisions you will need to make. The session will cover the following aspects:
- company structures and partnerships;
- essential copyright principles;
- taxation basics;
- employment law principles;
- dealing with funding bodies (inc Film Victoria);
and other issues that indie studios will face in their first year of operation.
Green Sprouts Among the Wreckage – Building a Profitable Independent in Australia
Session description:
From studio closure to thriving independent developer in 5 easy steps. Morgan Jaffit from Defiant Development will discuss how to build a strong, growing, independant development studio in Australia. Outlining the transition from the point of closure of Pandemic Australia through to the current day, Morgan will discuss in detail how to go from having a studio shut down to running a 12 man studio launching multiple games per year, including details on the high profile war journalism sim, Warco. If you’ve been involved in a studio closure and are thinking about heading out on your own, this is the talk for you.
Healthcare, Pedagogy & Serious Games
Associate Professor Marcus Watson – Executive Director, Clinical Skills Development Service – Queensland Health
Session description:
Healthcare, as one of the world’s largest industries, is experiencing significant long term growth due to an aging population in the developed world. Australia needs to quickly address the current clinical skills shortfall to meet the demands of an ageing population and to address the serious patient safety issues in healthcare. Healthcare must transform the way it trains clinical staff to cope with the large increase in training requirements and more importantly as part of a long term solution to make healthcare safer and more efficient. Significant start up funding has been allocated by Health Workforce Australia for the integration of simulation into clinical training. Traditionally healthcare has used face-to-face simulations to augment learning in clinical settings; however, the advancements in serious games will allow a greater proportion of the training to be delivered through a blended approach to learning.
How Serious Games and Simulations Are Used For Training at the FBI
Randy Pargman – FBI
Session description:
Randy Pargman from the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia will talk about how the FBI is using video games, simulations and 3D interactive animations to help Special Agents learn and better understand topics such as firearms operation, tactical arrest planning, crime scene investigation and room clearing techniques. This is an interactive presentation, so please bring your Internet-connected laptop, tablet or smart phone.
I Love Randomness, Sometimes: Working with and designing ‘random’ systems.
Luke Muscat – Halfbrick Studios
Session description:
The designer on a puzzle game marches across the room, heading straight for the lead programmer’s desk. “Well, this build is totally busted!” he snaps. “I’ve been playing for a full minute now, and I’ve had nothing but L shaped blocks. Clearly, the random block generator is broken”.
The programmer looks up at the designer for a moment, and takes a deep breath. “I keep telling you, it’s not broken. It’s random, just like you wanted.”
Humans brains are finely tuned, pattern finding machines. We find shapes in the clouds, faces in ink blots and strategies at the casino. It’s this natural wiring that makes working with completely random and procedural systems so challenging.
This talk will cover both the power, and the problems with procedurally generating content in Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride and Monster Dash.
Invisible Art – Throw Your Work Away
Yangtian Li – The Voxel Agents
Session description:
In this session, Yangtian Li will present the art progression of The Voxel Agents’ current working title. She will showcase roughly 30 artworks that have been discarded, from the very first idea to what’s in the latest build of the game. She will also talk about a communication tool that she used for communicating the art direction with the designers and programmers.
Truna aka J. Turner, Giselle Rosman and Matt Ditton
Panel Session description:
We are no longer an industry (alone) we are a sector. Where the model once consisted of industry making games, we now see the rise of a cultural sector playing in the game space – industry, indies (for whatever that distinction implies) artists (another odd distinction), individuals and well … everyone and their mums. This evolution has an affect – on audiences and who they are, what they expect and want, and how they understand the purpose and language of these “digital game forms’; how we talk about our worlds and the kinds of issues that are raised; on what we create and how we create it and on our communities and who we are. This evolution has an affect on how these works are understood within the wider social context and how we present this understanding to the next generation of makers and players. We can see the potential of this evolution from industry to sector in the rise of the Australian indie. We can see the potential fractures created by this evolution in the new voices that ask questions about diversity and social justice. And yet, we still see a ‘solution’ type reaction to the current changing state of our sector which announces the monolithic, Fordist model as desirable (albeit in smaller form) – with the subsequent ramifications for ‘training’ and production of local talent. Experts talk about a mismatch of graduate skills and industry needs, insufficient linkages between industry and education providers and the need to explore opportunity for the now passing model in new spaces such as adver-games and serious games. Head counts of Australian industry don’t recognise trans media producers as being part of their purview or opportunity, they don’t count the rise of the cultural playful game inspired creative works as one of thier team. Such perspectives are indeed relevant to the Australian Games Industry, but what about the emerging Australian Games Sector? How do we enable a future in such a space? This emerging sector is perhaps best represented by Melbourne’s Freeplay audience: a heady mix of indie developers, players, artists, critical thinkers and industry. Such audiences are no longer content with an ‘industry’ alone; they are the community who already see themselves as an important, vibrant cultural sector. Part of the discussion presented here seeks to identify and understand the resources, primarily in the context of community and educational opportunities, available to the evolving sector now relying more on the creative processes. This creative process and community building is already visibly growing within the context of smaller development studios, often involving more multiskilling production methodologies where the definition of ‘game’ clealry evolves beyond the traditional one.
Making and Owning Future Serious Games for Defence – There’s an App for that – but an App Store as well
Dr Mike Brennan – Director General Simulation
Session description:
The defence industry and international defence forces have been amongst the first and most prolific adopters and users of serious game solutions. The Australian Defence Force is one of those early adopters, constantly exploring every opportunity to enhance capability through cutting edge initiatives. This presentation is a forward-thinking exploration of how Defence is using serious games now, how Australia’s allies are applying games and what does the growth path for increasing adoption look like. Defence has also maintained a healthy and interesting relationship with the video gaming industry and this presentation will explore where that relationship is going, particularly where it relates to applying standards and governance. Defence training, experimentation and evaluation determine national security and operational integrity. It’s a serious business that requires serious solutions.
Media Saints – The Journey of a Successful Startup
Michael Woods – Executive Producer, Media Saints
In this presentation I will analyse the startup success of Media Saints. The aim is to review some key business, creative & cultural decisions made that have enabled the business to successful operation today. In the presentation I will be breaking it down to around 10 major decisions that were hard decisions at the time, though in retrospect have been the enabling factor for our success.
Meeting the Needs of an Evolving Games Industry
Neil Boyd, Sebastian Perri, Epona Schweer – AIE
Session description:
Every day the games industry is changing and shifting around us. There are more games being made in a variety of sizes, genres and styles and the approach to game development changes from company to company. How do we meet the needs of an industry that is constantly reinventing itself? What can we do, as educators, to prepare graduates to both actively contribute to and grow the Australian industry?
Phil Larsen – Halfbrick Studios
Session description:
Many developers discussing the development of their next title agree that “Yeah! We have to do marketing!” without entirely understanding what that term as a whole actually means. This session will highlight one particular aspect of the marketing function – positioning. It is how the image of your company, and your game, will be viewed by consumers in relation to other games, competitors, and as a product on the marketplace. What makes your three-star physics puzzler so unique? Why should you theme your XBLA game with radioactive ponies instead of Amish pirates? Is making a radioactive pony game a dumb idea given the available research? You’ll find out about where you need to be making key decisions and gain some insight as to how to position your game, your company and your brands – with sexy results!
Video of Session
PR For Australian Game Developers – Tools to Build Your Profile and Success with the Right Audiences
Corrie McLeod – Espresso Communications
Session description:
PR can be an invaluable and cost effective tool for a company when done well or a waste of time and money when done poorly. This session has been designed to help attendees to ensure the former. It will provide attendees with the skills to implement PR activities that can help developers raise the profile of their company, bring new product releases to the attention of the right audiences and cut through traditional media and online noise. The session will include an overview of the media and influencer process and how to best work with it and how to develop a great media release that maps back to business messaging and strategy.
Attendees will take away practical materials that will help guide them through the process of announcing information to the media. This includes media release templates and tips, steps to develop a launch strategy and what to include in a media kit. They will also leave equipped with a framework for developing a set of key messages for their company that will help ensure clear and consistent messages throughout all communications.
Video of Session
Serious Games – A Vanilla Slice
John Welsh – Defence Program Manager, Sydac Pty Ltd; Owner, The Serious Games Consultancy
Session description:
There has been substantial hype with regards serious games (and all its derivatives); and much of it justifiable given the range of applications and increasing uptake associated with the subject. So why are serious games not yet the mainstream solutions that they have the potential to be? Serious Games are technologically and even socially a revolutionary capability. However, they are not a silver bullet, either for the video games industry or for those industries wishing to use them. Instead serious games are game changers…for every industry. This presentation is an introduction to the GCAP 11 serious games forum, focusing on the critical elements of serious games as both capability and business opportunity. Touching on the diversity of what’s currently available, this presentation provides a vertical slice of current applications, who are using them and why. In particular it establishes that the strength of serious games capability is in engagement. And that any successful engagement first needs a strong relationship.
Stop Building Games, Start Building Brands
Jesse Divnich – EEDAR
Session description:
With the revolution of tablet, social and mobile games, new business models are beginning to emerge that focus on smaller teams and lower development costs. This shift, however, is temporary and as these new markets mature established games brands will increasingly receive a bigger slice of the growing pie. Divnich’s presentation will provide an in-depth look at the power of brands, the role the brand equity plays in the purchasing decision process, and how independent developers can capitalize on these emerging technologies to create the powerhouse brands of tomorrow.
Video of Session
Streamlining Your Games Development Pipeline
Ben Kilsby – Holopoint; Kevin Schooler – Autodesk; Carl Callewaert – Unity and Simon Joslin – The Voxel Agents
Panel Session description:
An informative 1 hour panel discussion that gives you the chance to learn about pipeline modeling and the most efficient way to manage your workflow. Hear from leading technology vendors as well as your peers who have made pipeline optimisation into a fine art. Topics to be covered include:
- Overcoming workflow issues
- The ability to link between your game development tools
- What works the best (and what doesn’t)
- Build your own vs. off the shelf
- Ease of integration between the tools
- Q & A
Video of Panel Session
Video (Courtesy Tsumea)
Paul Callaghan, Chris Wright - Surprise Attack, and Morgan Jaffit
Panel Session description:
Submissions to any funding agency go through a process of assessment and evaluation that involves those administering the funds and outside experts who bring a range of experiences and lenses through which to view the applications. This panel brings together assessors who have worked for state and federal agencies, including Film Victoria, Screen Australia, and Industry and Investment NSW to share what they look for in an application, what works and doesn’t work, and how to make your submission stand out.
Video of Panel Session
Video (Courtesy Tsumea)
Amir Rao – Supergiant Games
Session description:
In this session Amir discusses how Supergiant Games created the award-winning, self-funded downloadable game Bastion.
After the studio cofounders quit their jobs at Electronic Arts, they set out to build a team, a technology base, and an original intellectual property from the living room of a house in suburban California. The session covers the company story, displays the early prototypes and outlines the strategies used to develop, market, and publish an original game from conception to certification.
Video of Keynote Session (and GCAP 2011 closing)
The Evolution of Audience Engagement
Richard Iwanuik – Bioware
Session description:
BioWare will discuss its history, lessons learned, and future plans in building and maintaining audience engagement at a time where customers and technology are evolving at an accelerating pace.
Video of Session
The Pros and Cons of Working With Established Video Game Publishers in the Age of Digital Distribution
Jim Willson – Konami Digital Entertainment
Session description:
A comprehensive overview of the benefits and drawbacks of distributing a title with a major video game publisher in the digital realm. The proliferation of digital distribution channels hasn’t resulted in a level playing field. These new channels can offer significant revenue opportunities but the lack of experience or knowledge regarding those channels can be signification barriers to success. Successful video game publishers still have the all important distribution relationships, marketing budgets and general expertise in the space that can many times mean the difference between a hit and a failure. Gesundheit!, the Revolutionary Concepts developed, Konami Digital Entertainment published iOS title will be examined as a case study.
The Rise of Free to Play on Mobile: Best Practices
Eros Resmini – OpenFeint
Session description:
Free to play developers successfully leveraged social features on Facebook to achieve viral game distribution, user acquisition and engagement. Recent changes to Facebook have limited what developers are able to do and as a result, the free to play market is rapidly shifting to mobile. Traditional developers are also transitioning to free to play to take advantage of what seems to be the winning business model on mobile.
Join Eros Resmini, SVP of Marketing and Developer Relations at OpenFeint, to learn about the implications of the rise of free to play games on mobile. He’ll provide an overview of the free to play model, explain why these titles are the highest grossing on the charts, and describe how community and social features can play a key role in the success of these games. Finally, he’ll discuss best practices on launching a free to play game and how to leverage channel and distribution partners.
Jean-Francois Prevost – Developer Account Manager for Asia Pacific, Microsoft
Session description:
Controller-free gaming affects menu design and in-game controls more than any other part of the game. This is new ground for most developer and in this talk we will introduce some “Rules of Kinect”, some guidelines that you should never lose sight of as you develop your Kinect games. We will explore several items that affect the gamers and therefore, the developers. This will not be a technical deep dive, but should be of interest for anyone on a development team that plans to work with Kinect.
The Simulation Industry & Serious Games – The Reality
Alisha Fisher – CEO, Simulation Australia
Session description:
Simulation Australia operates in a dynamic international environment, with a mandate to deliver national policy and support services for a range of businesses within the growing simulation community. The Training and Simulation Industry in Australia offers world-class capabilities at internationally competitive prices. The business environment promotes competition and innovation, enabling companies to provide best-value solutions to the world market. For over 14 years, Simulation Australia Limited (formerly the Simulation Industry Association of Australia Limited) had volunteers driving to extend the awareness of training and simulation. In April 2011, Simulation Australia employed a full-time team to meet the changing needs. Simulation Australia’s role as an industry leader is fundamental to our remaining relevant to current and future members. Our work must focus on pre-empting the requirements of industry and shaping systems that provide for supporting the industry through change. This presents many opportunities for securing our future and reducing our reliance on membership fees. We need to grow our international exposure and local exposure at National conferences with International attendees. In the next 12 months we will be investing resources to find out the real value of the simulation community in Australia and what the R&D investment is to keep competitive in an international arena.
Session description:
With so much of our development and playtime devoted to screens and technology, it’s easy to think that videogames are a screen medium with the same, or at least similar enough, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for storytelling, or that they’re a technology industry trying to build better, faster, smarter, widgets or tools for creating widgets. Anyone working in games has, at some point, suspected if not outright known that this isn’t the case. This talk looks at other lenses through which to view games, and along the way wonders aloud what it might look like if we broke away from the reliance on screen culture and the surrounding dialogue – and also what we might need to start telling ourselves and others as part of that shift.
Presentation
Screen Australia’s State of Play
Dr Ruth Harley – CEO, Screen Australia
Session description:
Screen Australia presents the key threats and opportunities facing the Australian game industry. The game industry is currently undergoing fundamental industrial, technological and cultural shifts. This report synthesizes original research and secondary sources of industry information to map options for Government support to best leverage the advantages of the local industry and position Australia as a leading hub of interactive entertainment development.
Screen Australia has undertaken qualitative and quantitative research: interviewing heads of local development studios, commissioning executives from major international publishers and local film and television producers, and undertaking economic modeling in partnership with PwC.
Understanding the Chinese Mobile Market
Shainiel Deo – CEO, Halfbrick & Jeff Lyndon – Executive Director, iDreamsky
Panel Session description:
This panel session will provide an overview of the complex Chinese mobile marketplace and offer insights into how to effectively bring your games to this massive potential audience. Panel members from Halfbrick and iDreamSky will outline the potential pitfalls and opportunities associated with releasing game in China using Fruit Ninja as a case study.
Who Says the Australian Video Game Market is Dead? It Doesn’t Even Smell Funny.
Panel Discussion
Jay Wilbur – Epic Games, Jim Willson – Konami, Rod Fung – Microsoft, Tom Crago – Tantalus
Video of Session
Working with Humans – Tools for Talking when Communication is Difficult
Epona Schweer – Academy of Interactive Entertainment
Session description:
We are good at many things as game developers. We craft fantastic worlds to delight and inspire! We create experiences that beg to be retold again and again. We give internet trolls a reason to live and something to flame about! But what happens when the art we asked for comes back three weeks late and doesn’t match the brief? Or when our programmer insists he should be paid more than the sound designer? Or when the team you’re managing works across three different time zones and everyone seems to be working on a different game? When it comes to making great games sometimes the most critical moments won’t be decided by code, art or design but will come down to your skills with people.
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