Launched in 2007, Apple’s iPhone has, in its brief lifetime, created a new market for independent developers looking to create highly-innovative, smaller-scale projects.  This panel explores the issues, challenges, and successes that the iPhone brings to traditional developers.

Neil Rennison

Paul Motion

This session takes a look at the place of games in the wider screen culture, and also showcases projects using games and games technology in unique and innovative ways

Jim Shomos

Mike Cowap

Steven Mieszelewicz

This session looks at the process of creating the soon to be completed Imperial League from Primal Clarity from a development, future business, and research perspective.

The talk will look at the massive amount of content which modern games require and at procedural software solutions which allow even the small developer to produce games on a grand scale.

There is an increasing trend in the industry to utilise procedural content generation for everything from textures, animation, vegetation, landscapes, and even entire cities.Rather than threaten the  artists role in producing content, we should embrace these techniques as they allow us to produce more and better work.

Proceduralism is not all about pushing a button to make art, it is fact about allowing an artist, through a sequence of decisions, to produce work of greater scope and detail in a shorter time frame.

Games have, in a short time, become a defining force in our culture, but what do practitioners of other creative forms really think of them?  And have we reached a stage where games are influencing art, literature, or film, or are they just imitators of those more established forms?  This session explores how far games have infiltrated people’s creative minds, and whether or not they’re at a stage where they can stand on their own.

Gary Groeneweg

Liam Routt

Others tbc

Petri Purho, creator of Crayon Physics Deluxe, makes a game every month within a strict 7-day time limit.  We ask him the how and the why of it all.

The visual style of a project can have a huge impact on the player’s experience. This session looks at the challenges & approaches in maintaining a meaningful, consistent style that works in concert with gameplay.

Nathan Thomas

Agile development is an attempt to allow development to be more reactive to change, to increase iteration speed, and to increase communication between members. This workshop looks at the pros and cons of using agile in a real world game project.

With two screens and touch input, the Nintendo DS is the leader in handheld consoles. Presented by Thuyen Nguyen, whose own DS homebrew has been featured on Kotaku and Joystiq, this session will be a primer for everything you need to know about getting started with using and developing homebrew for the DS. Topics include flash carts, development tools, homebrew examples and general dev & design tips. This is not a coding session!

The collaborative nature of games development is one of it’s most rewarding facets, and also one of the most difficult to get right – from estimating tasks, to scheduling milestones, to handling communication, many starting developers struggle with this shift away from their core discipline.

This workshop looks at the fundamentals of managing projects and teams.

Creating small independent games can be a tricky process. This session will demonstrate the entire creative process from concept to final release, looking at two original iPhone games.

Learn the tricks, tips and tribulations from two industry professionals turned independent.

Daniel Kirchner

Australia has a reputation for delivering licensed titles – including Spongebob Squarepants, Transformers, The Fast and the Furious, and others. This panel looks at the challenges involved in working within the constraints of somebody else’s idea – and how you maintain your own creative voice while doing so.

Craig Duturbure

Blake Mizzi

Cameron Lee

The games industry has developed alongside the internet, giving everyone with a modicum of technical savvy the ability to have their voice heard – for better or worse.

This panel looks at the issues around games criticism and journalism, and how interaction between creator, critic, and audience impacts everyone.

Logan Booker

Shaun Heath

Drew Taylor

How do you become an indie?  What are the challenges involved?  What are the benefits?  And can you actually make a living out of it?  This panel looks at people who’ve made the leap.

Michael Shamgar

Damian Scott

Others tbc

The past few years have seen games courses crop up all over the place – from vocational training colleges to university degrees.  This panel explores the relationship between education and development, and what they can learn from each other.

Helen Stuckey

Phil Wilkinson

Christian McCrea

At the first Freeplay in 2004, there was no steam, no App store, no XNA, no Xbox Live Arcade, no PSN, and no WiiWare.

This panel looks at where we might be in another 5 years.

David Hewitt

Steve Fawkner

Those outside the games industry see it as a homogenous blob, chasing the 18-35 male demographic, and producing nothing but space marines trudging through brown corridors killing aliens, or stories of hitmen violently pursuing consequence free sex with prostitutes.

What is the reality?  Is development becoming more diverse?  And does that increase in diversity result in a shift in the types of games we make, and the audiences we can attract?

Mark Flanagan

Daniel Graf

Others tbc

Throughout Freeplay, we’ll be handing out feedback forms & asking people to vote for speakers they’d like to see again, and put forward specific questions you forgot to ask.  We’ll then bring them back for this final session, ask them the thorny questions, watch them squirm, do some prize-giveaways, then let you loose back into the world to start creating your newly inspired indie projects.

The role of design documentation is sometimes largely mis-understood as the bible of everything game related, with basic core functionality sometimes equating to many many pages of drivel. It should serve as communication and productivity tool for all departments; It should support interdisciplinary communication and be a useable and useful resource for the entire team. But when is too much, too little? What’s the best way to format documents for usability? How do you make it a highly valuable project asset? How do we make people want to read it?

Ashley Leach

Games development is all about creating innovative content – but how do you make sure that you are rewarded for all your hard work? This session will cover the different types of intellectual property protection available to game developers, how to manage and protect your intellectual property and how to avoid infringing others’ intellectual property.

A seminar for anyone who is interested in being an independent game developer but has a restricted budget. Topics covered include an overview of the development process, engines and tools suitable for small teams, the benefits of prototyping and advice on how to commercialize your games.

How to get quality audio into a project for little or no budget

Audio has long been seen as an expensive component of film, TV and video games; with studios charging exorbitant fees and audio equipment being some of the most costly tech gear you can buy, many independent developers resign themselves to having little or no audio to support their projects. Creating good audio however is as much about attitude and approach as it is costly tools.

A designer with a good understanding of audio manipulation and how to listen to the world around them can produce excellent work without the need of expensive equipment. This workshop will demonstrate some freely available tools and resources, but more importantly it will demonstrate some simple techniques and ideas that will allow anyone with a desire to create interesting audio to take mundane sounds and manipulate them into new and useful audio assets.

This is a practical demonstration workshop so come armed with questions, be prepared to watch and listen to the creative process and think about what sounds you have always wanted to see created. The audience will be asked to participate by suggesting what sounds should be created and providing challenges to the designer. The more you get involved the more you’ll get out of the session.

Have a burning question about how games get made?  This is your chance to have it answered by our experienced, multi-disciplinary panel.

Harry Ravenswood

Tom Johnstone

Garth Midgley

Moran Paldi

Travis Moorfield

A chance to show off your game design and pitch skills.

Teams will be given the chance to workshop and then pitch a small-scale game based on surprise themes and objects to a team of experienced developers, with a prize donated by Infinite Interactive.

DPAD represent Australia’s most talented, avant-garde retro-tech gear heads. For one hour a selection of local artists will showcase some of the finest backyard chiptune magic. Compositions spring from a variety of hardware such as the Nintendo Gameboy, NES and Sega Master System. Come along and get nostalgic.

It’s never been easier to get started in game development. Free tools, tutorials, technologies, opportunities, and avenues for your work to be seen by a broad audience, exist all across the internet. This session looks at some of these tools, where to find them, and how to go about getting the best from them.

Ted Hung