NZGDA CONFERENCE PROGRAMME 10AM SATURDAY 19 MAY 2012 LEVEL 16, MEDIA DESIGN SCHOOL 92 ALBERT STREET, AUCKLAND This programme may change and was last updated on 2 May LEVEL 16 LEVEL 14 LEVEL 17 9.00am REGISTRATION - Media Design School Foyer 10.00am Welcome – Mario Wynands Living The Dream and Enduring 10.20am The Nightmare (It’s Tough Being Indie) – Alex Amstel 11.00am Making More Awesomeness 15 years/9 lessons – Ninja Kiwi Panel Autodesk Character Animation – Mario Wynands Made Easy 11.30am Interactive Narrative – Edwin Mcrae 12.00pm Touch Happy HTML5 Games <3 Getting your First Investor Making Games with Gamefroot Windows 8 – Nigel Parker – Mitch Olson – Dan Milward 12.30pm LUNCH BREAK - Lunch not supplied Servers for Indie Game Devs Making a BAFTA winning iPad 2.00pm Staying Agile – Gustav Seymore – Thomas Middeldorp game – Druhin Mukherjee 2.30pm Designing for High Impact Build a Business Not an App Sometimes it’s Fun to Hit Things – Jonathan Rogers – Tuyen Nguyen & Victoria Mackinlay With a Stick – Eric Oloffson 3.00pm Metrics That Keep You Up At Night Inside Sparx – Serious Games Decision Structures in Tech/Skill – Nick Willis – Maru Nihoniho Trees – Carl De Visser 3.30pm Better Living Through Games Artists and Programmers: The Building Believable Characters – Tim Nixon Missing Link – Antonio Lattanzio – Mike Porter 4.00pm Powering Games with Amazon Advergaming and Licensing WebGL for Fun and Profi t Web Services – Adrian White – Ben Dellaca – Danu Abeysuriya 4.30pm Amazon Startup Pitch Session AFTERNOON TEA 5.00pm How to Make Your Robot Unicorn Attack – Jeff Olsen 5.30pm NZGDA – Stephen Knightly 5.45pm Prizes and Announcements – Frances Valintine 6.00pm DRINKS & NETWORKING - The Corporate Box, Ground Floor Proudly sponsored by: SPEAKERS ALEX AMSEL JEFF OLSON – KEYNOTE SPEAKER – KEYNOTE SPEAKER Tuna Adult Swim Games Alex Amsel is an award nominated video games Jeff Olsen is the Vice President of Adult Swim Digital developer, digital and social media consultant, and and spearheaded the creation of Adult Swim Games. BAFTA member. An industry veteran of over a decade, The last time he checked, Adult Swim Games had he has worked across many interactive platforms, published more Top 100 Paid Apps than any major media company. utilising both internationally renowned brands and innovative concepts. How to Teach Your Robot Unicorn to Attack – Growing Small Games Into Multi-Platform Hits Alex has worked with brands and titles as varied as Family Guy, Eufl oria, Alien Hominid, Puzzler, and Adult Swim has published a string of hit casual even the classic Asteroids. As well as producing over games by pursuing an unusual strategy — ignoring 70 video game projects, he’s also worked with TV the valuable IP created by its TV network, and broadcasters and production companies in fi elds nurturing off-the-wall concepts from small, as varied as Twitter strategy (Big Brother/Channel independent developers. Find out how they develop 4 UK) to innovative real-time animation (CBBC’s innovative game concepts like Robot Unicorn Attack, forthcoming Strange Hill High/Yoshimi & Katoi). Amateur Surgeon, Monsters Ate My Condo, and Five Minutes to Kill (Yourself), and build them into Living The Dream and Enduring The Nightmare (It’s profi table multi-platform franchises. Tough Being Indie) The dream for many video game developers is to make a living producing their own games. This talk DANUSHKA ABEYSURIYA compares and contrasts the stories of indie projects Eufl oria and Cletus Clay, both games having input Rush Digital from Alex himself and New Zealand developer Danushka Abeysuriya is Founder and Lead Engineer Anthony Flack. Although both games were nominated at Rush Digital Interactive Limited, which he for IGF Awards in 2009 while still in development, established in early 2009 with the goal of creating their individual tales are very different. game engine technology for smart phones. Danu is Alex will discuss highs and lows of both projects, both a graduate of the University of Auckland’s School of of which are still active in their own way. At the end Engineering and has a passion for computer graphics, of the talk, Alex will also reveal some Eufl oria HD iPad automobiles, and all things “game engine.” statistics. WebGL for fun and profi t Key Points: A light introduction to WebGL, and some discussion • Developing your own game is 3.141... times as hard about the future of browser based gaming. as you think. Key Points: • Finishing your game is only 0.785... times the battle. • How to go about your fi rst WebGL project • Stay healthy! • How WebGL fi ts into the future of browser gaming • Challenges in porting to WebGL DAVID ZWIERZCHACZEWSKI ANTONIO LATTANZIO Autodesk GameLoft David Zwierzchaczewski is one of the newest My name is Antonio Lattanzio and I started to addition to Autodesk, he comes from over 12 years of produce videogames at the age of 10 on Commodore experience in the Film, TV and games industry’s. Some 64. At the age of 14 I had the fi rst game completed of the most recent games David has worked on are for AtariST and Amiga (unpublished) and was Dark Siders II, Civilization V, Saints Row the Third, and presented to different publishers. So I have made L.A. Noire. He has also run a company called 5th World other prototypes of different arcade games until I Media who specialized in mobile and casual games. signed a contract with a publisher to develop a game David’s history is in animation and he brings many on PC when I was 18. The fi rst game was completed years of experience as a character animator, working and published in 1997 for PC/MS-DOS and after with key frame animation and motion capture. that I started to work as a professional developer. I worked in different companies in Italy, and then I Character Animation Made Easy moved to Australia working for several years in Auran I will run through setting up a character in 3DS Max, Games and Krome Studios. Because I had an ‘old in MAYA and show the interoperability between all school’ experience I had the opportunity in Krome to of Autodesks animation tools. I will also talk about work on the emulation code of some classic Konami the middle ware products Autodesk offers games like Gyruss, Jackal, Ye ar Kung Fu for the (now called Gameware) and how these can stream Microsoft project Game Room on XBLA. Then after the line your work fl ow. company went down I had to move back in Europe where I joined Avalanche Studios as Engine / Tools programmer. Now I moved here in Gameloft NZ to CARL DE VISSER work on mobile games as I believe that the market is growing on the mobile games development and Grinding Gear Games that sadly the console market will continue to shrink. Carl de Visser plays and designs games. The is the There’s a big change in progress and we have to be co-designer of the boardgame Endeavor (awarded ready for the future of the game development. Tric-Trac d’Argent, Spiel des Jahres Recommended). Artists and Programmers: The Missing Link Currently he works for Grinding Gear Games doing game design and balance on the Action RPG Path of Yes, we need to learn from mistakes and bad Exile. development decisions. The most important thing in a company are the resources so it’s the people itself. Decision Structures in Tech/Skill Trees It doesn’t matter if we have Juniors or Seniors or if When Hiro returns to the village, it has been we hire the most expensive programmers, designers destroyed. His dying grandfather gives him a sword and artists of the world. I will tell you why you will fail and a skill tree. This talk looks at the structure and anyway so please listen and get ready to fail. design of skill (and technology) trees through one Key Points: example. • Take time to talk with designers, artists and other Key Points: programmers. Use their software and tools! • The forms of technology and skill trees that appear • Why is this taking too long to get it running on the in various games device? Let’s check how to speed up the process! • How to structure a tree to present real and • Timeout: EPIC FAIL! (oops, you did it again!) meaningful choices THOMAS MIDDELDORP DRUHIN MUKHERJEE Grinding Gear Games Media Design School – Game Programming Lecturer Thomas has a Bachelor of Science (Computer Druhin is a very recent arrival to New Zealand. Over Science and Biological Science) from the University the years he has worked with companies including of Auckland, and has been pulling apart computers BBC, Tag Games, Dynamo Games, ARc Interactive, and putting linux on them for about 12 years. Prior Rockstar North and LFG .He was the given the to working for Grinding Gear Games, Thomas Microsoft Developer award as a programmer. Recently worked as a systems administrator for a mobile he was awarded a BAFTA award for the game Sculpty communications company, and as a back end along with his team-mates at Team Tickle. developer for a digital advertising company The BAFTA dream specializing in display networks. He currently works as GGG’s systems administrator, managing both their 5 students decided to make a game when the Ipad local development servers and the live game servers was just released . They entered a competition with they host around the world. their idea and 2 years later , they were rewarded with the BAFTA .This talk takes you through the process of Getting Started With Game Servers making Sculpty with no fi nance, no industry backing, Almost all modern games require servers, not just and minimal mentoring.