Sydney iFEST 2011
Time |
Main Presentation |
Workshop A |
Workshop B |
| 9:30 AM | iFEST doors open | ||
| 10:00 AM | Ideas, Execution & Winning: Maximise the opportunities for your new game! Phil Larsen, Halfbrick Studios |
||
| 11:00 AM | From AAA to Indie Andrew James & Ed Orman, Uppercut Games |
The on-going evolution of the Australian Games Industry Justin Brow, Economic Development Consultant |
|
| 12:00 PM | The Defiant Development Story Morgan Jaffit, Defiant Development |
Advice for the Newbie Indie Developer: From Starting Out to Staying in Business Epona Schweer, AIE |
Effective Concept Design and Development Ivan Beram, VagabondArmy.com |
| 1 – 2 PM | Break for Lunch | ||
| 2:00 PM | Age of Zombies: An AppStore Post-mortem Michael Dobele, Halfbrick Studios |
Self publishing and Monetizing for Indies Sash MacKinnon, Bit Battalion |
Using BigWorld Technology for Indie Game Development Alistair Phillips, Micro Forté |
| 3:00 PM | Indie to Prindie Simon Joslin, The Voxel Agents |
Fuelling Creative Digital Media in NSW Sue McCreadie, Film & Creative Industries |
Rapid Prototyping with Unity and PlayMaker James Murchison, Freelance Game Developer |
| 4:00 PM | Re-building Australia’s Game Development Industry John De Margheriti, BigWorld |
||
| 5:00 PM | Announcement of Indie Game Comp winners followed by Networking Drinks | ||
Session Information
Ideas, Execution and Winning – Maximise the opportunities for your new game!
Phil Larsen, marketing Director, halfbrick Studios
Great game ideas can come from anywhere. They can take on any form. What form that is, and how they will reward you, comes down to battling a constant onslaught of decisions during many creative, managerial and publishing processes. Hear some insight about how you can make educated decisions from Phil Larsen, who as Marketing Director saw Halfbrick’s popular games Fruit Ninja, Monster Dash, Age of Zombies and Raskulls through development and was tasked with unleashing them onto the world.
From AAA to Indie
Andrew James & Ed Orman, Directors, Uppercut Games
Andrew and Ed from Uppercut Games will discuss the differences they have thus far discovered between their previous work at a large development studio and their new careers as independent game developers. The talk will cover production, art, design and the business side of getting a fledgling games studio up and running.
The on-going evolution of the Australian Games Industry: Where it’s been, where it is and where it could be going
Justin Brow, Economic Development Consultant
Justin will be covering the evolution of the Australian Games industry, starting 30 years ago and rapidly coming up to present day. Find out where the industry is right now and which key companies are driving it. Justin will talk about where the industry is headed as well as the wider opportunities opening up for games technology and people behind it.
The Defiant Development Story
Morgan Jaffit, Director, Defiant Development
Morgan Jaffit is one of the founders of Defiant Development, will be talking about how to grow a small indy developer for less than 800 million dollars.
Advice for the Newbie Indie Developer: From Starting Out to Staying in Business
Epona Schweer, 3D Animation & Game Art Teacher, AIE
An indie game becomes a hit on the App Store or on Steam and we all get swept up in the romance of being Indie! A dashing adventurer with a big floppy hat, average office job by day and rushing off to create brave new worlds by night. But when we try it in reality the results are often bleak, full of stress and with very little game to show for it. So how did the “pros” do it? What did they do BEFORE they were famous?
Effective Concept Design and Development
Ivan Beram, Owner / Designer / Coder, VagabondArmy.com
A discussion and workshop into practical approaches, pitfalls and sources of inspiration for indies of all persuasions to consider when designing and developing their indie masterpieces; so as to create stronger and more effective game concepts, whether commercial in nature of just for fun.
Age of Zombies: An AppStore Post-mortem
Michael Dobele, Executive Producer, Halfbrick Studios
Age of Zombies launched onto the iOS marketplace in October 2010. After being featured by Apple as their Game of the Week in both US and AUS it quickly climbed the charts and even managed to break the top 20 in numerous countries. This unique postmortem concentrates on our experiences post launch and covers the rights and wrongs we made that affected our peaks and troughs in that all important AppStore rankings chart.
Self publishing and Monetizing for Indies
Sash MacKinnon, Founder, Bit Battalion
Sash MacKinnon, Founder of Bit Battalion is going to speak about what he’s learnt about self publishing and monetising games using the sponsorship model. Sash has sold several browser based games including Mr Runner and Chaos Invaders that have been featured on kotaku, indie games, rock paper shot gun, ign and others.
Using BigWorld Technology for Indie Game Development
Alistair Phillips, Lead Programmer, Micro Forté
Learn how BigWorld indie can bring your game to life quickly and can scale as your user base grows. Alistair will give an overview of the BigWorld server technology, world building tools and art pipline for bringing your models to life in the game. Also covered will be how to use python scripts to quickly get your game code up and running.
Indie to Prindie
Simon Joslin, The Voxel Agents
Simon Joslin, Creative Director of the successful indie studio, The Voxel Agents is talking about the transition from indie start-up to being a professional game developer. Simon will also cover strategies for success / avoiding pitfalls for new indies, marketing and promotion and emerging opportunities for indie developers.
Fuelling Creative Digital Media in NSW
Sue McCreadie, Senior Manager, Film & Creative Industries in the NSW Department of Trade and Investment
The session will outline the background to the introduction of the NSW Digital Media Initiative and the support available through the fund for games developers and transmedia producers. What are the criteria, what are the categories of support, what sort of projects is the fund looking for.
Rapid Prototyping with Unity and PlayMaker
James Murchison, Freelance Game Developer
James will attempt to get from zero to gameplay in under an hour using the Unity engine and Visual Logic plugin PlayMaker. He will also be taking suggestions from the audience on how the gameplay should shape up over the course of the session.
Re-building Australia’s Game Development Industry
John De Margheriti, CEO, BigWorld, Micro Forté & AIE
Is there an entrepreneur lurking inside of you and bursting at the seams to get out? If you have aspirations to start your own company, then this could be the launching pad you need to get ahead of the game! John De Margheriti will be discussing some industry support mechanisms for independent developers that the Academy of Interactive Entertainment will be launching to help kick start the next generation of start-up businesses in Australia.