The 2017 Indie Soapbox

[Music] hi I'm Brandon Sheffield I am the director of Microsoft games and I'm here to talk to you about taste and had to cultivate it in your games and how you all have it probably there are too many games like these they all look basically the same and give no sense of character or taste whatsoever you look at a screenshot and you think yeah I've seen that I know what that is these games on the other hand regardless of whether you like them come from a foundation of taste you can see that someone had a perspective something to communicate and they went with it you look at a screen here and you might think I haven't seen that I'm curious about it or that's too weird for me but either way it's got your attention and as we all know getting attention is extremely hard right now we should make more games like these there's a greater risk but potentially greater reward as well and why be an independent game developer if you don't want to take risks and do interesting things you may as well just go join a company if you show your

tastes and your passions people will react to it people love to have opinions and they love to share your share their opinions against yours especially these days with youtubers and instagramers and and Instagram stars and all these things people are increasingly defining themselves by what they like whereas they used to say what they do they used to say I'm a carpenter or I'm a mechanic now people say I'm a foodie or you know I'm a film buff if you show your tastes they will react to it in between these two examples there's something more like this reminds me of something I like that I thought nobody else did you want to feel you want people to feel as though you made your game just for them our game that we just released oh dear comes from the tradition of super scalars I can't necessarily say this is the best representation of completely different tastes because driving games exist but we did it in a different way the technology is old because it's all

pseudo 3d there's no actual 3d in it it's all scripted scaling sprites and we added some weird shaders and stuff so we took something that was old and added some twists to it and it made people say oh man this is just what I was waiting for or you made this just for me on the other hand we had tons of people say what is this Atari trash and but you know either way for us it shows that we're staying true to ourselves and we made the game that we wanted to make it's not important that people agree with you but that you know what you like and you make that if you mix the unexpected with the familiar you've got a great platform to stand on obviously overwatch is a great FPS that has layered on top of it someone's taste if this game just being a great FPS if that's all it were if it used assets from the unit unity store that were generic it wouldn't be nearly as possible popular so people say that taste is something that you have or don't and I completely disagree I

believe it can be cultivated and that all of you are capable of self analysis and I don't believe it's subjective it's entirely related to the individual so here a few exercises to bring your own tastes out very important and think about your top 10 favourite songs or albums write three sentences about them and why you like each one what was going on in your life when you heard them first why did they resonate with you then do they resonate the same way now are there any tensions between when you listen to it back then and when you listen to it now and is that interesting in any way watch a movie that your friend likes but which you don't or the reverse talk about your feelings while being respectful of the other person's views force yourself to break down why it doesn't work for one of you but does for the other don't focus on why someone else is wrong focus on why you believe what you believe why you feel what you feel go to a thrift store and find three things of interest there you don't have to buy them or anything just find interesting things that appeal to you or seem weird what makes them interesting who do you think owned these things why

did they get rid of them what were the circumstances there if you're lucky enough to be able to travel go anywhere even if it's a few towns over avoid tourist spots and instead go to a specific restaurant a thrift store or find something on Yelp somewhere else that's very local don't take the easy road get lost walk around you'll learn a lot about people and about yourself so how do you apply this to games once you know who you are and what you like it comes really naturally why should this character be blue when it could be red is there a reason for this person to be a man what if it were a woman what if it were gender is genderless what if it had a dog what are people who you know who have dogs like how would they react in this situation make sure you're asking and answering these questions constantly make choices that matter in your games don't do something because it's popular do it because it means something to you or to your mom or to your team or to your third grade teacher when you make something for yourself or for someone you know it's more likely to resonate with others because it will be genuine and real people respect taste

they crave a connection to it and want to be complimented for having thoughts and feelings everyone has the capacity to do this some people have an easier time than others but everyone is capable of identifying what they like and acting on it I don't care if your taste leads to a rhythm game with only Smash Mouth covers just to make something that means something to you if you make a game infused with your carefully considered thoughts feelings hopes dreams and taste your game will be so much more interesting than the next clone of something popular there's so many bland and flavorless games in the world let's not make any more of them thanks [Applause] one moment

next up is tenure [Applause] hi everyone I'm Tanya the captain of Kitfox Games a small studio in Montreal Canada and you need to know how to take care of yourself and meet your hard deadlines so everyone in this room thinks probably that their number one priority is to make a great game yes we all want to make a great game but it's actually your number three priority I'm afraid because your number one priority unfortunately is to not die and it's important that you survive making this hopefully a great game because your next game will be better okay get that through your head that you need to survive because you're going to keep making games goddammit and you're gonna make them better and better every time so who here has trouble with

deadlines oh wow really ma and do you have trouble taking care of yourself while you're meeting the deadlines alright so I'm gonna tell you a secret all right it's really hard it is really really hard and I'm not gonna lie it's a constant struggle and any time you succeed you should absolutely take a moment and appreciate what you've done because taking care of yourself is hard but you can do it I believe in you and you need to believe in yourself too because that is step one of my miracle cure for death I know that it's possible because Kip Fox doesn't crunch we do a couple weeks of overtime here and there as needed but we made both shattered planet and moon hunters without burnout and these other much superior games we're also made without burnout so it is possible alright so now everyone believes it's possible great what next so the next

thing is those of you who haven't set specific work hours cut it out because it's bad for you and you do less you will actually accomplish more if you stop working so much and you'll you'll thank me believe me if you're not prioritizing your tasks that's the next secret you know we're getting into deep secret tears at this point if you have a deadline coming up in a couple of weeks it's really important that what you're doing right now is actually important and not just urgent because if you start focusing too much on the emails in your inbox and the things happening tomorrow you'll never actually get into the steady workflow that makes your game good so reprioritize as often as you need and estimate your tasks some of you don't estimate your tasks did you know that like you don't actually think how long is this gonna take me and then when you're done with the task you don't think how long did that take me do that

and that that is secret number four okay if you're not estimating you should because it's a skill that takes time and if a deadline is coming up and you can tell it's more than two weeks away you're not gonna make it so okay you're your first thought is going to be let's work more it's three weeks at three months away but you know if I just work harder it'll be fine no you're gonna die okay because three weeks of 60 hours scientifically is less productive creatively industrially it doesn't matter what work you're doing you're doing it worse and your brain doesn't realize it because it feels awesome because you're you're putting in everything and you're bleeding all over it and it's great but too bad those of you who have the magical thinking problem of thinking that you are special and exceptional to this you are wrong they actually did a study on people who think they need less than seven hours of sleep they don't exist five out of a hundred

people who think that are correct so 95 wrong yeah the good news is that these secrets are actually just standard production and production is a skill like any other skill and it's a really boring one that nobody thinks is very exciting I guess because programming designing and art is much more exciting for my time at least but as long as you keep trying to get better than you will because that's how skills work and it's important that you don't give up because you're going to keep making games even if you realize I haven't taken as good care myself as I deserve that's alright forgive yourself be kind to yourself because we are primates primates need food and shelter and belonging primates need to be taken care of in a way that games don't burnout isn't really about working a certain number of hours everyone has different work habits a few long nights aren't going to kill you but

a few long months might especially when combined with death or disease or other problems that are real burnout is the feeling of becoming slowly dulled as layer after layer of exhaustion accumulates weighing down on you burnout is the void left behind where the rest of your career would have been burnout is the exhausted bitterness where your passion and your excitement used to be but you could choose differently you don't have to suffer to make great games the moment we are in right now will not come again we are here in Moscone Center of San Francisco USA planet Earth breathing this air and contemplating these great games because we're alive and everyone here watching this at home or in this room will die so even if we create a masterpiece beloved for a thousand years our existence here and now will be gone forever so it's up to

you to protect what time and love and joy you have left in you and not use it up making yourself feel more productive if it helps envision your dedication to self-care as a sword see the darkness of burnout gathering around you as a shadow stealing away your concentration and you're still beating heart be disciplined Warrior of Light and courage fight on take care of yourself and survive to make more games thank you Thank You Tonya all right please welcome

Jared [Applause] all right heiio i'm jared Huntley I am a instructor game programmer from Cleveland Ohio I'm working on a game called art club challenge co-authoring a book I help manage the local community in Cleveland and today I come to you with my background as an indie musician I've probably played a couple hundred shows right now I play bass and my brothers band Jule big green and at some point I was hit with this idea my brother's an indie musician he travels around for self-promotion he's self-funded and he's pursuing a creative endeavor I'm an indie game dev I travel around for self promotion I'm self funded and I'm pursuing your creative endeavor so all indie game devs are indie musicians so if anybody asked you what you do just tell them I'm a rock star and you can point them to me so after my

discovery I was doing some research into the subject to see what else is different what else is the same what we can learn from each other so quick point I'm specifically talking about the genres of indie rock and metal because Cleveland is the metal capital of the USA anyways what can we learn from indie musicians so first how do you get started in game development how do you get started in music the way to get started in music is just to pick up the instrument there's nothing that compares to picking up the instrument playing out of tune making mistake making mistakes learning how to function with it it's the same with game development there's nothing like making mistakes and just doing it it might be you get a music instructor you might find lessons on YouTube but there's nothing that compares to actually playing with the instrument next this is an argument I've heard you know maybe a hundred times but

the title of indie game developer I've heard people say well you need to have sold a commercial game you need to have studied it in school you need to have this with that this is my take on it you make games your game dev with music you pick up an instrument you're a musician you're not a great musician you have a lot to learn you have a lot to go from there but there's no such thing as a hobby musician I don't see why game development should be any different and especially in today's world I don't like titles that exclude people and make people feel like they don't belong also on that point just because you make games doesn't mean you're immediately qualified to run a profitable small company that's a completely different topic we'll visit that later and lastly is inspiration I typically hear games described as X game + y game or X game + y game - Z game what about games inspired by your favorite place your

favorite dish the sound of your grandmother's voice it's fairly common to have songs inspired by a hard breakup an awesome trip or friendship I think great games that are doing things like this or Sybil imagine emily is away I'd love to see more games explore just these common human experiences so now that we've learned some things from how were similar to game how we're similar to any musicians what are some things that we can do to work together first is hire indie musicians I see this fairly often just hiring a band to do music for your game but one of the things that I'd like to add on to it is don't overlook your local bands and your local music scene on top of having a custom-tailored soundtrack to your game as part of your identity as a city in your state in your country next is creating an art manifesto I know there's gamed collectives and game manifestos but if you look at classical manifestos they

often included people from different disciplines it was about artists supporting movements with their chosen mediums so what would a art collective with a potter and indie game and indie musician and a dance to produce those are the weird questions I'd like to see answer lastly go on tour the band so think about this scenario where you have an indie band that does the soundtrack for your game and then when they go on tour you go on tour with them as they're up there playing on the stage and they have their merch booth you're selling your game in the back it's a built-in fan base it could be an alternative business model so in closing there's a lot of other fields that we can learn from there's a lot of other cousins out there I could have easily given a similar talk on the aggressive inline skating scene there's a lot of different we're not all gone there's a few of us seriously but there's a lot of other cousins out there that we can learn from I know that the game industry is different and things are different but we're not as

different as we think sometimes also as I mentioned Cleveland some musical city so it's no coincidence I'm up here talking about music so diversity in the industry means supporting different people from different places as we support more diverse people we'll get newer and more rad ideas and lastly I'll leave you with one indie music tradition this one says oldest time if you're ever on tour passing through Cleveland hit me up let me know we have a place for you to stay we'll hang out you all rock and thank you Thank You Jared all right please welcome Sonya [Applause]

[Applause] good evening everyone my name is Nadia Bashir and i'm the founder of pixel art games academy which is the first and only game development academy in Pakistan during my professional development there were no place to learn and experiment new ideas in Pakistan and I could feel the pain of learning everything on your own so I started this Academy where people can actually learn and experiment new ideas actually make new in explore some amazing video games so today I'm going to talk about few things that my topic is three things that can save in this from a pitfall and especially if you are in emerging industries like Pakistan in most emerging industries you don't really have much of professional veterans and you can't really learn anything from from professionals maybe but most of the things you learn is from your own mistakes

so I'm going to talk about few things that I learned from my own mistakes and also from the my seven year experience in professional industry and my research thesis of contemporary practices of video game development in industry often we think a great great game idea is something that makes our game successful and we believe in that creative vision that this is going to sell our game but a process is something that makes a complete product I've seen many studios and many projects fail just because they could not actually utilize their resources properly in their process and distraught me diskette to me the bottom and so on this drove me to get to the bottom of production processes and learn what can make a product stressful and what can actually sink the ship so I'm going to talk about three things and the first thing that I would like to talk about is concept lies at an early stage

often we start our games from an idea from a team member and we immediately try to prototype it and implement in the form of prototype and we and here we miss an important step which is a concept conceptualization chances are you have a great idea and create vision behind your idea but creating your idea into a complete framework and a balanced game design is something it's imperative so here is a few things that can help you to actually conceptualize your idea and at an early stage define your goals clearly from the player's perspective you should know that for think and make your what would be that one thing which actually help your player - which makes your game fun for a player as well define the similarity of your game with other games it's perfectly okay to draw inspiration from other games but do not try to copy the entire idea on create a

game product progression level of difficulty and level of achievement in your game and keep checking if your game is still fun second most important thing is the freezing your the requirement of your games we also most of the time we keep adding new ideas and new features in our game even until the end of very very end of our production processes and we ended up with the feature creep in our products it's very important to freeze the requirement and scope of your game at certain point of in your production processes to avoid feature create third and most important thing is about quality of a product and a quality of a process most most of the products a quality of a product is very much dependent on the quality of a process most of the game developers do not really think about formalizing their development processes which i think is

the most important thing to do even before starting up your game most in my research most of the Indies shows that they use ad hoc in a child game development processes for their gains a child development process is actually used much more iteration in design and testing phase and you have to go back to the requirement and design phase for each iteration the most common problem with a child oven processes are unlimited attrition which often lead you to an tracks changes on unclear planning future creep and extension of development processes which may actually lead to the on an increased development cost which by the way is a bad news if you are an indie developer so I would recommend you to use a hybrid game development processes which is the mix of agile processes and a traditional development lifecycle processes which is traditional software development life cycles so in hybrid process we aim to minimize the operation between phases so

you can actually minimize the cost of creating again there are many there are many ways to create a complete game that will not actually currently the success of your game but it will guarantee that it will reduce the cost of your game and will help you to optimize the use of your resources you may fail in the end but I hope it will not be a disaster thank you [Applause] [Applause] please welcome Marvin [Applause]

holy nearly that's a lot of people get everyone my name is Marvin expose Ito I'm a game designer from Brisbane Australia and I'm here to talk about subverting expectations and sharing with your dad so I've been making games now for about two years I mostly make games based on terrible ideas assets games based on incredible mundane boring things like cats again into trouble or maybe games are slightly weirder like giant muscly ducks getting into trouble or games especially about things that are both weird and a little bit mundane and sometimes people send these suggestions to me on Twitter that's my tutor up there at Burning Man underscore Inc and here's an example of one of those games this is an office fart simulator where people we need to fart in the office without you know we'll avoid avoiding detection I made as you can see your

co-workers don't quite like it when you drop your guts as we say Down Under and this is a game about being an adult and paying your bills this is basically what happens to me whenever there's a Steam sale on as well the reason I bring these games up is these games are fake games they don't exist in the real world as a real playable game that you can download or buy or whatever they exist solely to deliver a punch line which is exactly how shall with your dad seem later 2015 do you still share with your dad that's the full title started out it started out simply as this gif it was a joke on Twitter that went too far and it ended up being my very first ever commercially released game thank you and

for my first ever commercially released title I was pretty happy with how well it's done so far to date it's sold over three hundred twenty-five thousand copies it's got a 95% positive rating on Steam from over 6,000 reviews and I attribute a lot of the games success to the way that the game used subversion now what I'm talking about subversion I'm not talking about whatever done this thing which you might be familiar with if you're a programmer or have worked with programmers I'm talking about the definition here which is where you establish a set of rules or a pattern and then you undermine it or you turn it on its head and this is something that happened through both the marketing of the game albeit accidentally and intentionally through the gameplay with positive results so this is what the steam greenlight campaign looked a little bit like when it first came out so when the game was first announced it had this incredibly gimmicky trailer and

this very low quality uhsorry incredibly incredibly gimmicky title and this incredibly low quality trailer as I was recording this trailer people were actually sending me messages on Steam and so you could hear the little group notification noise as a part of the trailer itself so people had built up this image in their in their minds that this was gonna be this garbage low level quality and but the main thing it did was it got critics and the press talking about the game so you can see there normally when you see a game on Steam greenlight you'll see that most views when it's first announced in their car tails off over time but because of the coverage you've got he actually got a second bump almost as big as the initial sort of press it got and so people were talking about the game and at that point this high quality trailer which was a parody of Kanye West's power except shower was the thing was released and the video was done by a guy called ever

dread who's currently working on the Tingler as well with Zoe Quinn and also did the trailer for undertale but this incredible high quality trailer came out a few days later and you can see that well it didn't get as many views because of this high quality trailer it actually got more yes votes compared to number of views it was a higher quality of view to the steam greenlight page then the initial low quality trailer so I was able to maximize the audience of who saw or who heard about the game so by building up this facade and then subvert it I was able to make the marketing of the game a little bit more memorable and this is something that happens throughout the core game itself so if you're not familiar with the game it's a fast-paced Dada matching game we have to guide your child to its dad and there's a powerup there you can see it's shaved the dad's that's the entirety of the powerup but that's the core gameplay Luke this is something that just happens as the game goes on but then eventually the

next thing you know you're in a point-and-click adventure game where you are pantsless cop dad and the idea is that you need to get the shower up and running again because the hot water system isn't working you know very much inspired by frog fractions and the reason why these sort of moments are memorable to people is because as it turns out people really love surprises so this is the results of a scientific study I forgot which University was but there's a link down the bottom left there if you want to look up more about it what they did was they got these test subjects all these people hooked him up to MRI machines and then at regular intervals squirted liquid into their mouth it was either juice or water and everyone had a preference for either juice or water but what they found was that if you squirted liquid at a unpredictable rate that actually drove in German way more than if you've got a preference for juice or water at a predictable rate so people just loved the surprise aspect of it a lot more but the subversion is just one aspect of the

game obviously the incredibly long ridiculous title acts as a hook it's got a very accessible price point which encourages gifting and the core gameplay loop I reckon anyway is interesting enough on its own but hopefully that inspires you to add a little bit more surprise and subversions in your game thank you Thank You Marvin all right please welcome Gemma hi my name's Gemma and I'm an indie

developer and ordinarily in a venue like this one that might sound like a weird sort of confession or even an attempt at humor drawing upon the shared background level discomfort many of us might feel about this career path and medium we've chosen some sort of gallows humor I guess but for me this is a genuine statement which I actually find myself having to reinforce time after time to others as much as to myself for example a little while ago as our the gathering of calm entities when I've attended for a couple of years now since that's the city where I live chatting in a way in a 400 year old beer cellar about this medium we all love when the developer I'm talking to starts in surprise you're an indie developer he says I thought you were just a student or something it's an assessment which is not negative per se but is also not at all rare for me in correcting him I had to explain how I've been in industry for six years how instead I lecture students at universities and how at the time I was working to found what is now a studio called kaleidoscope despite having

worked in around a dozen indie scale projects people still get surprised when I tell them that apparently despite appearances I am in ND and I suspect I'm not the only one for whom this is the case it's a problem which at first felt like one agenda bias given that I do identify and present myself as female then I began to wonder well somehow broadcasting my own impostor syndrome telepathically infecting the outside world the taints upon my own confidence but when I what to get over that particular kind of nonsense I began to wonder if it's perhaps because of something else what did the reason some of us don't pass for indie is because our community and culture is still being misrepresented whilst we can all sit here and know that from practical experience and at least to some degree the energy sphere is a diverse one the outside world and therefore the stereotypical view of an indie developer arguably still see what we do as something like this namely white men either crunching away in bedrooms and small offices surrounded by

toys or cafes in trendy co-working spaces surround the instead by modern art that said part of our development process does take place in a London cafe so if a kaleidoscope at least there is a small element of truth in Jonathan blows muffin there my point being that whilst these are not bad things in and of themselves there are a slew of cultural trappings wrapped up and particularly the formal interpretation of what India is which are best misrepresent most of us and how we work and at worst glamorized some rather horrifying working practices though amusing at first images articles and ideas like that at the ramens coughing bed set dweller still saturates search terms relating to our own career niche nothing about this should really be aspirational and yet for some this notion of caffeine addicted stay at home in these who have to be reminded to put clothes on and go outside in an embarrassing number of articles is somehow the Loadstar which we and they are navigating towards insofar as we have any label I'd rather espouse and

aspire to the positive aspects of it thank you very much but why are these the ideas of India's label and how Indy we are even important I offer two main reasons one of which is personal indie game development in the communities within it are part of my identity and when somebody I'm meeting for the first time cuts through pointless small talk to ask a good question like what do you choose to do with your limited time upon this earth I like being able to say that I enjoy interactive and accessible experiences for people to enjoy but to learn from escape2 or whatever it is that they and I fancy doing at that time another reason is bored of reaching than that and to bluntly summarise I don't think that something as inspiring as what we should do should be seen again stereotypically solely is the domain of privileged individuals who can afford financially or physically to spend months on voluntary Krunch working out of a backpack in generally letting standards of living slip for oneself and for one's collaborators just to get the

game done doesn't work for everybody nor do I think anybody should feel pressured into that kind of lifestyle or be judged for having priorities elsewhere and therefore not being able to match up to that ideal do we really want indeed to be seen as a single homogenous strand game creation or can we perhaps shift the focus ourselves a five minutes so box is a tough space in which to try enough for solutions but insofar as people do listen to us as indie creators I think it's our duty to talk more about just what it is that we do privileges hardships and all so as to dispel the illusion that we're still all living an indie game the movie lifestyle I'm afforded some social privileges myself my place is that of one who can occasionally travel to game jams and conferences and convert a portion of her life to passion projects and to advocacy work but in other ways I am an atypical indie as I suspect the vast majority of us actually are so for venues beyond this one let's see if we can shift the

conversation a little bit move the idea of in dienes away from something which is literally all-consuming to one which is more realistic and frankly more respectful because I've chosen places that of Indies and this space is what we make about thank you [Applause] thank you so much Jenna it was great all right oh wait wait for it dary it's it it's gonna happen - he's hanging there alright please welcome Jerry

I don't think that bit ever gets old I'm Jerry bellick I'm a professor of game design at Miami University I'm also working on my MFA in experience design and at Miami I'm part of the Interactive Media Studies department we're hoping this fall that we will officially have our game design degree in place I'm also an independent game designer being a teacher does not eliminate that part of my identity I primarily do work in the medium of alternative controllers hardware electronics but what I want to talk about is why we need to vend harder in the industries of games and academia because they are not crossing over nearly as much as I think that they ought so I think one of the biggest problems is we are lacking enough synthesis of all of the incredibly

unique experiences that all of you have it's starting to happen and universities are starting to get interested and they're starting to figure this stuff out but we are going to lose a lot of incredible stuff considering the huge percentage of people that have come into the game industry whether independent or in studios through incredibly unique paths and different kinds of experiences so schools are taking it more seriously but we still got a really long way to go there are opportunities however for all of you to be involved without giving up your professional careers and your industry work academia wants you to stay involved in the industry it's important that you do because that is where you're going to continue getting the kinds of experiences and unique perspectives that are going to benefit the students and the game designers of tomorrow and you might accidentally like it it's it's not bad educators can keep this up on their own a lot of them don't have the

experience in the first place and we need a constant cycling and influx if we're going to keep that fresh the disparity right now can feel a little bit awkward so at Miami I teach game design development pipeline production but as I said alternative controllers are kind of my jam and I started a class this semester teaching alternative controllers as a form of design and it is the most interesting work that I have seen so far of any of my game design students there's some practical reasons for that but I also think that it has something to do with alternative controllers being the lens in which I view game design it is how I've explored game design intimately where I am most passionate and I think students are really responsive to that you don't know what it is you know until you teach it and I think often you get really surprised by what it is that you do know there is so much fresh territory and all of you have dug in such interesting places and we need you to take your personal lens and let students look through that for

themselves there are so many insights that you may have that you think are trivial that would be profound in the hands of the right minds brain hands I am sick of this argument when it comes to game design degrees it drives me absolutely insane we're trying to get them jobs we're trying to teach them unity know they gotta make games it's so I don't believe game design is a technical vocation it is art it is designed it is craft tools are great their design work should motivate their exploration into the technical so what does the game designer I don't know but we can't forget to teach the design part of game design design exists for people to evoke to provoke to help to heal to create meaning so how can we complain about derivative boring cookie cutter work copies of copies if students are handed powerful tools but never taught how to think deeply about their work and about themselves I believe they do have the life experience undergrads are young

but they have still seen a lot they've done a lot but they need our help to understand it and to parse all of that information that swirls around their weird little souls so we're still trying to figure it out and I don't know that I have the answers I have ideas about what the answers might look like but I can't do it alone either we need collaboration especially between industry and academia and lots more crossover between them getting more professionals involved in education is not just for the students it is also for the faculty triple-a independ game designer developer artist journalist producer whatever your role is it doesn't matter the variety of pack is ideal so what can you do well there's adjunct teaching you can teach little courses over a semester and you get a few grand and you get to meet lots of students and lots of teachers and lots of people and it's great universities are usually deeply understaffed we really need that do more than one class a semester just make a package deal short term residency's I did a semester

long residency at Eastern Kentucky University got a full teacher salary for the semester got lots of benefits and workshops - all sorts of fun things it was brilliant and I got to be in a new place for a whole semester my talented friend Lisa brown did that at Harrisburg University for a whole year and you know does she want to be a teacher her whole life no but it was great and the students are better for it you get benefits funding all that good stuff collaboration with faculty video call sessions with classes right now we are working on a game capstone which is really really hard to do trying to emulate the trials and tribulations of small teams or studios working to create professionally viable game experiences and young horses is doing that it's taking only a few hours of their time but they're allowing us a way to examine what it is they want what are their values what it is that they care about and how do we like create something or pitch something that actually like makes that happen teaching may sound SuperDuper scary you may feel unqualified and eloquent and there's a

bunch of strange people staring at you impostor syndrome all that good stuff so here are some tips you know who else is scared undergrads they're super scared way more scared of you than you are of them you only need to be a step ahead of them in most things the real stuff is your experience your wisdom your lessons learned through blood sweat tears and time so let's go back to our van really quick what we are missing well we are missing to push the current and future students to open up to express themselves and to make games even harder to define is all of you to help build a bridge overlap the space and share your unique experiences in perspective the future of games is counting on you so join us take a little break from the hustle and bustle before you know someone destroys education thank you and get in touch with me if you need more Thank You Jerry

all right please welcome breathe Oh God okay hi my name is Bree code and I wanted to share with you everything I've learned about public speaking because somehow I've managed to travel full time for the past year and a bit speaking at conferences but I have absolutely no talent for this the first time my boss asked me to speak on camera I forgot my own name I did 15 minutes before the second talk I ever gave a man asked me if the seat next to me was taken and I was so nervous I couldn't understand his question and I couldn't answer and I just stared at him until he walked away but with each mistake like this I've changed the way I do things and I have like a really strict process

so a week before the first good talk I ever gave I met with my friend Jason to get feedback and he patiently listened to me talk about how great my slides were and how great I was for finishing them a week early and then when I was done he told me that out of my 60 slides only one was interesting he told me that I had to rewrite the whole talk and he was right because that's one was the only slide that was honest I learned from Jason most things I know about how to write a talk but especially I learned to start by thinking about what I care about and to work from there every talk I've given that fell flat was one where I was trying to say what I thought people wanted or needed to hear and now I just talk about what I care about and it gets much better I also decide who my audience is I discovered that my talks are less clear and less effective when I try to speak to everyone so now I just speak to inspire underrepresented people and not to try to convince any dudes who are stuck in their bad ways that they're wrong because like our sworn enemy said there's a lot of bad dudes out there

once I know why I care about a topic and who I want to talk to I make an outline the outline is simple but I follow a very specific order first why do I care about this talk what am I trying to accomplish why do I care about that second what is this thing that I care about what are the details what is my argument third what does this mean for you all and for myself what are the practical applications of this information what are the next steps and I'm a typical programmer I'm methodical and I'm detail-oriented and I'm boring and what I write the first draft is really boring but I found a management study of techniques that turn boring leaders into interesting leaders if you google Ken charisma be taught you can find it and I methodically go over each point in my outline and I apply these techniques I turn my ideas into stories or lists or questions or metaphors or contrasting points and then people seem to like them better and then once my

outline is ready and it's more interesting I just take each point in my outline and put them on a slide and it generally works out to about one to two slides per minute and then I go through and replace each idea with a picture I get rid of as much text as possible and I do that because I accidentally spent one talk just reading my slides to the audience and not staying what I'd planned to say that was really terrible and then in a talk this fall halfway through I lost access to the notes on my screen because there's always technical difficulties at conferences and then I was horribly stuck without my notes so now I know that the pictures not only need to be guides for the audience but also for myself and then when my slides are done I practice like a lot and get feedback and I discovered important things when I practice not just with the writing but with myself the first time I wrote a one-hour talk whenever I practice they kept panicking halfway through in my own apartment by myself and I couldn't figure out why because I'm very comfortable in my apartment and by practicing enough times they noticed

that I was always panicking exactly at the 20-minute mark and I realized that I was just never actually stopping to take a breath in and I thought I was panicking I was just out of breath and then that made me panic so now I remember to breathe it's amazing which brings me to my final point I will always be nervous before my talks emotions exist for a reason and we get nerves before we talk because that energy helps us to deliver at least a slightly more energetic talk so now when I feel nervous instead of thinking oh god I'm so nervous what I faint in the middle of this is gonna be terrible I think oh god I'm really nervous because I'm doing a talk and I need the energy and then I'll feel better when it's done and this helps me deal with that overwhelming anxiety that made me forget my own name on camera that first time and I'm still really uncomfortable on stage I forget to stand up straight which I probably did and I forgot again and sometimes I forget to talk into the

microphone I've done that like more times than it's it's really embarrassing but I'm working on this and I welcome your advice and you can contact me on Twitter anytime if you have questions or advice or if you need encouragement for your own talks thank you Thank You Bree please welcome Korn [Applause] hi everyone my name is column Larkin and I'm the founder of Gambrinus a indie studio from Dublin Ireland so I'm going to tell you a little story today by sharing your work sharing your games and why that's important why that helped me

I made a game called guild of dungeoneering came out in 2015 it was with a very very small team we had no budget and against the odds I guess we were quite successful and for me my favorite parts of that success were appearing in print magazines and when we released our mob while being on the front page of the App Store that was amazing to me and as I think back about why I was successful I believe it was because I was sharing my work when I started making guilded engineering I decided to develop in the open and I started a thread on TIG source which is a game development forum and started just sharing playable versions of the game and asked him for feedback from day one and that was great and I was basically following in the footsteps of people I admire and games I admire like Fez and minecraft and papers please and

not only that but I'm cher the idea for guild of dungeoneering before I ever started working on it to get feedback on that and for me sharing let me stop wasting my life not making games and actually finished some games and well before gilded engineering and let me become confident and then when I did make a commercial game it I believe made it much more successful and so I just want to take a little time and talk to you about three things about sharing that I think are very important so the first one is that your idea is not that special so it's pretty common to have this romantic notion that you need an incredible idea to make a successful game or that the idea is the only thing that matters and I don't think that's true at all I think execution is key iterating on your idea with feedback as sharing early I think helps you shape

the vision of your idea into something interesting I don't think an idea is actually all that important and the second thing that I think is important about sharing is that no one is going to steal your idea so this is a very common fear I think even maybe an excuse we make to ourselves so we don't have to share things um that you know someone is going to see your idea and make a better game and I don't think that's true I mean even if you share your idea and someone goes and makes an a game based on that idea your two games are gonna be completely different by the time they come out and if you know the worst happens and someone just wholesale copies your your game and your idea and everything you've you know been sharing well I've got some good news for you because you basically have the moral high ground there and you have this public record of you know what you've been making and you get to go get some free PR and tell your story to the press and that's cool and the final point I

want to make is basically to share your work embarrassingly early and I think embarrassing is a very important word there and if you start sharing things you're proud of you think are great you've you've made a mistake you're sharing too late and it's very important to start sharing when you're really embarrassed about what it is you're showing and there's a few reasons for that so if you start sharing really early there's a few great things that happen so you'll save yourself time you won't end up going down some kind of rabbit holes of development thinking this will be good because you're getting feedback immediately on whether that sounds interesting and you'll get more basic feedback on basic parts of your game so like the idea itself the concept the setting the very bare mechanics well before get looking for feedback on more late stage stuff like polish and graphics quality and this part is very hard and practice

makes perfect and start doing this and it will get easier and the reason I think it's so hard is that you are basically sharing your rough work you're really bad work and you're kind of comparing and mentally to the best finished work of people you admire and that is very difficult and I suggest just trying it and and forcing yourself to do it because it gets easier and more than that it really helps so I believe sharing and doing this has made me a better game developer has made the games I'm making better too so I hope you try it thank you [Applause] Thank You Coulomb all right

please welcome our final speaker Jane hello everybody my name is Jamie and I do 3d art at Campo Santo we shipped Firewatch last year and I usually talk about environment art stuff but today I'm going to talk about something very different I'm going to talk about this this is the real candy bar if it's not clear what's going on there the tongue part is the candy so do you think it matters if that candy is any good at all no right because very few people will want to try to eat that right this is a terrible product and this is what I really want to talk about today product and why it shouldn't be a dirty word for Indies now a while ago I saw this tweet and I forgot who it was from it doesn't matter I'm sure most of you

have heard or seen something like this in your own circle there is in my opinion a general aversion to talking about our games as items of commerce but we really should just stop feeling weird about it in fact if you sell your game in any way shape or form on any platform and you need to pay your bills and I suspect a lot of us in this room do or want to then we need to talk about it why because this is the age of let's play videos and refunds a lot of people even people who love your game don't have to buy anymore to check it out or experience it now as Indies I've always been very grateful how supportive we are to each other and you know you always can get help with your game idea or you need feedback on a prototype you know there's always help but I rarely see anyone ask hey what do you think of my copywriting or even would you pay money for this if you saw this on Steam I know

it's a very uncomfortable thing to ask or even to think about it because it is very uncomfortable to acknowledge that a great game experience is not the same thing as a good entertainment product that people might want to buy now in our ideals we think that great games should be rewarded that we think people should buy great games and we want it to be true so much that we sometimes forget that this is not in fact a causal relationship in game design we are often urged to make decisions in the interest of the player and that's great the Naumann thing here is that we spend a little time considering our game outside of the game experience itself from the perspective of your potential player someone who is not even played your game now how would you game look to this potential player is it attractive I strongly believe that you can have a game that people want to own that is also a hundred percent yours evaluating

your game honestly from the perspective of a consumer is not compromising the creative integrity of your game at all and this is not just a business thing so don't fret about how all but I don't have a business person in fact I think a lot of this is really more of a design problem and don't forget that product design is a thick field outside of games and a lot of the lessons do apply to video games the good news is most game developers are very well equipped to tackle multidisciplinary design problems and a lot of aspects of making a good product I can involve your whole team and it can be really fun and there's no one right way to make a good product the amazing thing about being indie is that you can do it however way you want with your values and now some key points about some aspects of great products actually this is where you pick up a topic so I'm not gonna talk about it and I'm also not an expert and while we can

probably agree on what is terrible what is great is relative and it depends on your audience the key thing is to not neglect it do spend some time thinking about what makes a great entertainment product for you for me personally every time I see a game that I want to throw money at then I feel like that developer is doing something right and I do try to spend a little time thinking about why I feel that way and try to learn for a minute so a good product is octave a good product makes people want it on their physical or digital shelf and you need to consider your whole package and it needs to be attractive to people you think would like the game inside the packaging so in short just make sure your great game isn't a jar jar binks candy tag you [Applause]