Craig Duturbure, Daniel Golding, Matt Ditton, Chair: Rob MacBride
In a time of closures & acquisitions, in layoffs and apparent opportunities, this panel looks at the real reasons we got into making games in the first place and tries to remind us why we do it – and why we should continue to do it.
Andrew Goulding & Ben Kosmina, Luke Muscat
Local developers discuss the games they were playing while they developed their own.
Thomas Apperley, Jens Schroeder, Others tbc. Chair: Floyd Mueller
The internet has changed our audience and our peers from those directly near us to everyone in the world with an net connection and a computer. This shift requires us to be aware of not only what works locally but internationally too. This session looks at how Australian development has evolved, is represented, and is perceived as part of the world stage.
Yangtian Li & Henrik Pettersson, Jason Bakker
Local developers discuss the games they were playing while they developed their own.
Ben Eltham, Kieran Lord, Jeff Brand, Truna. Chair: Daniel Golding
Videogames don’t exist in isolation. They are part of artistic, cultural, and political spheres – even if some would much rather they weren’t. This panel takes a look at the way videogames are used as political tools and how we as developers and critics can better engage with that, and perhaps wrestle some of the conversation back into our hands.
Indies, academics, and institutions
Lubi Thomas, Conor O’Kane, Hamish Curry. Chair: Sean Fabri
The conversation goes back and forth – education doesn’t understand development; development doesn’t understand education; cultural institutions should better support development; development is all about money. What are the real pressures that inform these conversations? And what could be built from a better understanding between education, cultural institutions, and indie development?
Join us for our closing, crowdsourced call to arms / keynote / experiment.
In the competitive world of mobile gaming, particularly the iPhone market, it pays to put your art into perspective. This workshop explores why that extra layer of polish to your art is game changing.
I Don’t Hate Mondays : Creating a Company You Might Actually Enjoy
The Games Industry in Australia has been around a long time, and recently it’s had some big shake-ups. To head forward into a brave and sometimes scary new world, companies need to change the way they relate to their staff, their publishers, and their audience. This talk takes the listeners through the early days of one of Melbourne’s newest developers, Fiasco Studios, and outlines the conscious choices being made to create a better culture, a better employee lifestyle, and hopefully, a much healthier and more enjoyable local industry.
Just because the devices are small doesn’t mean we need to skimp on audio quality. This session looks at ways to squeeze the best out of our back-pocket gadgets, and some innovative ways of using sound and design to create new portable experiences.
Ways of thinking about the world
Ideas are cheap. Good ideas are slightly more expensive, and slightly harder to identify and nurture. This workshop looks at ways of developing new ideas, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and adapting and integrating feedback.
Code and the Player Experience
Code is the invisible scaffolding of a game, but decisions made at those low levels can easily influence design decisions and the resulting player experience. From premature optimisation to garbage collection methods to exposing variables, this workshop looks at some of the ways a seemingly unimportant coding decision can change the development of a game.
The internet has turned our audience and our peers from local developers into anyone in the world with a connection. This shift enables new ways of working, with teams spread out across the world producing code, art, design, and audio. This workshop looks at some of the ways of managing teams and some of the pitfalls and opportunities in this new model.
Farbs, Scott Reismanis, Rick Chen
In the traditional studio model, the cry of ‘he who controls the gold makes the rules’ is at the root of everything. Independent development aims to remove that restriction, but we all need to eat. This panel discusses some of the innovations in funding, their good and bad, and some of the best practices in each to make sure that the one controlling the gold is you.
In these microlectures, developers, educators, critics, and artists give you the one piece of advice that they hold above all others.
Growing up in a gaming culture
Luke Bennett, Daniel Donahoo, Leena van Deventer. Chair: Hamish Curry
As the first generation of games players grow up, get married, have children, settle down, they face some interesting questions about how to integrate their past-time into their new life and how to engage their children with it – as well as facing off against the crop of moral guardians and media personalities who, inevitably, have never played. This panel looks at what it’s like to grow up in a gaming culture and what we hope to pass on.
In these microlectures, developers, educators, critics, and artists give you the one piece of advice that they hold above all others.
Drew Taylor, Alison Croggon, Ben Croshaw, Andrew McMillen. Chair: Leigh Klaver
Essential to the development of any cultural form is a strong critical culture, one that can place work in context, articulate for an audience what it is attempting, and shine a light on flaws and success. This panel looks at the role of criticism, review, and the broad spectrum of games reporting.
Hugh Davies, Trent Kusters, Sayraphim Lothian, Lisa Dempster. Chair: Matt Ditton
The past 12 months have been a time of upheaval and opportunity. This panel looks forward to the next Freeplay and tries to predict those things outside of our control and pin down those things we’ll be able to grab with both hands.
How Every Little Decision Can Bring You Closer To or Further Away from Creating Crap
Christy Dena, David May, Floyd Mueller, Luke Muscat
A (self-described) “handsome and debonaire stranger” said to me the best way to avoid creating dull projects is “don’t work for shit companies” and “only go indie if you have a brain”. But what happens if you (think) you don’t work for a shit company and you have a brain? Are there still little things you can do that gradually and inevitably steer your project into the sea of mediocrity? This session is a discussion about how all of those little design and process decisions build to make or break your game.
Embroiled in development, it’s easy to forget that what we make is designed for players. This workshop looks at ways of gathering information on player behaviour, how to interpret it, and how best to use it to support their end-experience
Rolling your own
Game audio is the only element of a game that is unburdened by the game’s physical domain. Graphics, controls, and player actions all take place within the confines of the screen or the console, but a game’s audio design can fill a room, and music is an essential part of that as it supports or reflects what’s going on inside our little gameplay boxes. This session looks at how to think about music, what to look for in writing a brief for it, and how it can be used to enhance the player experience.
How to Design the Same Game, Twice
Two different designers (representing their respective companies) compare and contrast how they approached creating games based on the AFL. A lively discussion about design approach, limitations, license restrictions and other random things in the context of sports games.
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