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NZGDC17

Purchase your ticket for NZGDC17 now at https://nzgdc17.lilregie.com!

Interested in attending a Workshop? If you have a valid NZGDC17 ticket, you can register at: https://nzgdc17workshops.lilregie.com.
We will be checking each registration to ensure this, so please purchase your NZGDC17 pass before registering for Workshops.

5:00pm NZST

NZGDA Annual General Meeting

The NZGDA's Annual General Meeting agenda will include:

Chairperson’s report on the business of the Society
Secretary’s report on the finances of the Society, and the Statement of
Accounts
Election of Committee Members
General business

All members are welcome to join us for the AGM.

Wednesday September 6, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm NZST
WG403

6:00pm NZST

Auckland Game Dev Meetup

This is a free event hosted by the NZGDA: https://www.meetup.com/playmaker/events/243059271/

Wednesday September 6, 2017 6:00pm - 8:30pm NZST
WG403

9:00am NZST

NZGDC17 Intro & Kiwi Game Starter Winner

Thursday September 7, 2017 9:00am - 9:30am NZST
WG403

9:30am NZST

Opening Keynote - Aurelie Le Chevalier

Speaker Feedback

Speakers

Aurelie Le Chevalier

Gameplay Programmer, Ubisoft Montreal

Aurelie Le Chevalier is a gameplay programmer at Ubisoft Montreal. She has worked in AI, UI, and Gameplay on the games 'Rainbow Six', 'Child of Light', 'Shape Up', and 'For Honor'. She is interested in data-driven gameplay systems as a means to increase productivity and creativity... Read More →

Thursday September 7, 2017 9:30am - 10:30am NZST
WG403

10:40am NZST

The Cost of Making a Game

Speaker Feedback

This session will focus on the tangible and intangible costs of making a game, with attendees given the chance to see the 'real' cost of running a small independent team - ranging from overheads to stress management. This talk will utilize Opaque Space's journey into their VR title 'Earthlight' and cover the methods used to not only make a sustainable studio, but also discuss the failures, challenges and difficulties encountered.

Speakers

Emre Deniz

Director, Opaque Space

Emre Deniz has been working in Virtual Reality for the past four years, being one of the first developers in Australia to work on the HTC Vive as well as having worked as both lead game designer and artist on multiple projects in Virtual, Augmented and Mobile experiences. Emre has... Read More →

Thursday September 7, 2017 10:40am - 11:25am NZST
WG403

Production & Business

11:35am NZST

Taking the luck out of luck: Visual confirmation of game behavior

Speaker Feedback

If you’ve ever made a random-based algorithm that seemed entirely too orderly, or had a character that ended up moving faster on the diagonals, then this talk is for you! I will be covering how to use well-crafted debug display to visually confirm algorithms, check design assumptions, and ensure proper game behavior all the way through production. By following a few straightforward principles, you’ll see that it can be easy to keep yourself in control of everything that happens in your game. I will demonstrate this by sharing visualizations of several common algorithm and behavior mistakes that frequently pop-up in published games. By the end of this talk you’ll have a few more tools at your disposal to make sure that you don’t need to be lucky to make a great game.

Speakers

Christopher Cork

Programming Team Lead, Gameplay, Ubisoft Montreal

Christopher is a gameplay programming team lead on an unannounced project at Ubisoft Montreal. With 7 years of industry experience, he has worked on several different brands including Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. He specializes in the creation and iteration of gameplay... Read More →

Thursday September 7, 2017 11:35am - 11:55am NZST
WG403

Code & Infrastructure

1:15pm NZST

Managing Your Career Through Turmoil

Speaker Feedback

Game development is a career filled with ups and downs. Turmoil can be good and bad-but it always takes a toll on you personally and professionally. Learn how you can anticipate challenges, minimize the impact of change and disruption, and recover for maximum health, happiness, and career impact.

Speakers

Jen MacLean

Managing Director, IGDA Foundation

From the start of her career in 1992 at Microprose Software, through senior roles at AOL, Comcast and StoryArc Media, Jen has managed game development, strategy, marketing, business development and partnerships across multiple gaming platforms. Jen earned a BA in international relations... Read More →

Thursday September 7, 2017 1:15pm - 2:00pm NZST
WG403

Production & Business

2:10pm NZST

Giant Killer Robots: a cinematic approach to game design

Speaker Feedback

Join Paul Tobin, co-creator of Giant Killer Robots, as he discusses how a senior team of world-building concept artists at Weta Workshop, applied their collective experience in film-making to create the new action packed board game GKR: Heavy Hitters.

Speakers

Paul Tobin

Art Director, Weta Workshop

Paul Tobin has been a concept artist at Weta Workshop for the last 15 years, and worked across a large variety of titles such as Avatar, Ghost in the Shell, Power Rangers, The Expanse, Shadow of Mordor, the Hobbit trilogy and the Chronicles of Narnia. He is a co-creator of Weta Workshop’s... Read More →

Thursday September 7, 2017 2:10pm - 2:55pm NZST
WG403

3:30pm NZST

The struggles of transitioning Depth to a service based game

Speaker Feedback

There are plenty of pain points and struggles when transitioning any game to a service. This is the story of how we did that for Depth and how we did it.

Speakers

James Tan

Director, Digital Confectioners

James Tan is one of the directors of Digital Confectioners, a 100% independent studio that developed Depth.

Thursday September 7, 2017 3:30pm - 4:15pm NZST
WG403

Production & Business

4:25pm NZST

Path of Exile. Story telling through concept art and design

Speaker Feedback

An in depth look at how to enrich concept art with good story telling, history and shape design. Taking a stereotypical concept and making it unique.

Speakers

George Lovesy

Concept Artist, Grinding Gear Games

George Lovesy is a Conceptual Artist and Illustrator working at Grinding Gear Games on Path of Exile. Graduating in 2009 with a Diploma in Character Animation, George freelanced as an illustrator and concept artist for various studio around the world until taking on a full time position... Read More →

Thursday September 7, 2017 4:25pm - 4:45pm NZST
WG403

9:00am NZST

Welcome Back

Friday September 8, 2017 9:00am - 9:15am NZST
WG403

9:15am NZST

Analytics for independent developers: How to benefit from game analytics, without the headaches

Speaker Feedback

We all know there’s a goldmine of precious information about your users’ gaming habits locked inside that game analytics data of yours, but the trick is trying to get to it. Despite what you might think, you don’t need a PhD in Data Mining to extract meaningful lessons from your analytics. Join analytics and monetisation guru Christina Chen for a practical talk targeted at Independent Developers to crack open that tough nut of data and get to the tasty information inside.

Speakers

Christina Chen

Managing Director, Second Sight

Christina Chen is an expert and entrepreneur in the field of data-driven player optimization and monetisation design. With a background in software engineering, Christina played a significant role in the formation of the SaaS approach at Microsoft. She worked on the payment services... Read More →

Friday September 8, 2017 9:15am - 10:00am NZST
WG403

Production & Business

10:10am NZST

You're Not Lucky To Be Here: The Art Of Overlap

Speaker Feedback

The greatly anticipated follow up talk to last years hugely successful presentation on "The Art of Exaggeration." Formatted in a ranting raving presentation with quick fire tips and tricks thrown in at regular intervals, the hope is that with this talk you will leave with more knowledge on Animation than when you walked in, and take with you some animation techniques to animate without actually animating anything all...

Speakers

Sam Batty

Animator, Aurora44

Sam is an Animator at Aurora44, while new to the games industry he is not new to NZGDC talks having delivered another animation talk in 2016. His focus is on delivering practical tips and tricks with a little bit of entertainment to make sure you don't fall asleep.

Friday September 8, 2017 10:10am - 10:30am NZST
WG403

10:40am NZST

Creating Studio Culture: Dino Polo Club Year 1

Speaker Feedback

Studio culture is incredibly important to studios of all sizes, but for something that can make or break a studio, it isn’t widely talked about. Navi will discuss the conscious development of studio culture at Dinosaur Polo Club as they navigate their first year of having employees. Full of useful takeaways about how to start looking at your own studio culture and where to start improving it, this talk isn't just for indie studios, promise!

Speakers

Navi Brouwer

Producer, Dinosaur Polo Club

Navi is the producer at Dinosaur Polo Club (makers of Mini Metro) and an organiser for two of Wellington’s yearly game jams. Her first career was in the wilderness of Vancouver, Canada as a primary school teacher. She then shifted into games as a QA Tester at PikPok before picking... Read More →

Friday September 8, 2017 10:40am - 11:25am NZST
WG403

Production & Business

11:35am NZST

Kickstarter Success! now what?

Speaker Feedback

Looking at the success of our Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns from almost one year ago, how we did it and what we would do differently now and then what has happened since.

Speakers

Gustav Seymore

Founder/Creative Director, Lost Goblin

Gustav Seymore has been in the industry over 10 years now at various sized studios working on different platforms and media. He is an experienced designer and producer and has a breadth of knowledge across multiple disciplines. Lost Goblin is his second indie studio and he successfully... Read More →

Friday September 8, 2017 11:35am - 11:55am NZST
WG403

Production & Business

1:15pm NZST

Excuse me, I think there’s been a mistake. Is this marketing in my narrative?

Speaker Feedback

When we think about narrative in games, marketing is probably the last thing that comes to mind. Isn’t marketing for business people, for PR consultants and startup nerds? What the hell does marketing have to do with dialog, story or narrative?

A whole lot, as it turns out.

Speakers

Liam Esler

Narrative Consultant

Liam Esler is a narrative consultant, diversity advocate, producer and event manager from Melbourne, Australia. He works with the Game Developers’ Association of Australia to manage Game Connect Asia Pacific, Australia’s game development conference, and is Co-Director of GX Australia... Read More →

Friday September 8, 2017 1:15pm - 2:00pm NZST
WG403

Narrative & Storytelling

2:10pm NZST

Keystones for Scheduled Expansions

Speaker Feedback

There are some key differences between making expansions and ongoing content as opposed to new games. This talk discusses production, design and communication with your team and audience when making content on a schedule.

Speakers

Carl de Visser

Lead Producer, Grinding Gear Games

Carl de Visser is Lead Producer and Manager of Game Design at Grinding Gear Games, working on the online Action RPG Path of Exile (GameSpot 2013 PC Game of the Year), and its expansions. Before working in videogames, Carl made boardgames, including co-designing the eurogame Endea... Read More →

Friday September 8, 2017 2:10pm - 2:55pm NZST
WG403

Production & Business

3:30pm NZST

Doing That Representation Thing

Speaker Feedback

You've heard about this 'representation' thing. Making a game with women/queer people/people of colour in it. You want to give it a try, but you're worried about making mistakes and upsetting the people you're attempting to include.

Worry not; this talk is here to help! Giving an overview of where to find information about tropes and stereotypes, how to seek feedback on diverse characters, and what to do if you've caught a misstep too late to completely fix it, this is a beginner's guide to doing that representation thing, intended for those confused or anxious about giving it a go.

Speakers

Maddi Mackenzie

Independent

Maddi is an independent narrative designer based in Auckland who's passionate about integrating interesting people, places, and cultures from real life into game worlds. To that end, they've recently completed a Masters thesis on the topic, and released a visual novel -- Inverness... Read More →

Friday September 8, 2017 3:30pm - 3:50pm NZST
WG403

Narrative & Storytelling

4:00pm NZST

Closing Keynote - Delaney King

Speaker Feedback

Speakers

Delaney King

Art Director, Tantalus

In her 20 years as a video game artist she has racked up an impressive list of AAA credits. Her creatures and characters appear in Dragonage:Origins, Unreal Tournament 04, Stormreach: Dungeon & Dragons Online, Civilization IV, Lord of The Rings Online, Fury, Mythos, Warlords: Battlecry... Read More →

Friday September 8, 2017 4:00pm - 5:00pm NZST
WG403