9:00am-9:50am What to Write So People Buy: Selling Your Game Without Feeling Sleazy

Chris Zukowski (Founder, Return To Adventure Mountain)

Topic: Business & Marketing



You know how to write hours of character dialog, hundreds of pages of lore and world-building, but are coming up blank when it is time to write about your game on your Steam page. Why is it that everything you write comes off sounding like something a used car salesman would say? It is ok and totally understandable. In this talk, Chris Zukowski will teach you the basics of Copywriting in a way that doesn't feel sleazy.

9:50am

(microtalk) Failure Workshop: FutureGrind: How To Make A 6-Month Game In Only 4.5 Years

Owen Goss (Co-Founder, Milkbag Games)

Topic: Independent Games



Failure often teaches you so much more than success. This annual session of rare honesty and transparency is dedicated to developers willing to open up about failures in their work, giving space for you to celebrate and learn from both the ups and the downs of independent game development. In this segment of the Workshop, Owen Goss will look back on the development of FutureGrind and ask: 'How did a six-month project take four and a half years to make?'

10:00am-11:00am Stress-Free Game Development: Powering Up Your Studio With DevOps

Seth Coster (CEO & Game Programmer, Butterscotch Shenanigans, Inc)

Topic: Production & Team Management



Game development is hard. People crunch all the time, we launch games with tons of bugs, and it can even be nerve-wracking just to deploy updates! But does it really have to be like that? NO! In this talk, Seth Coster of Butterscotch Shenanigans walks through how his team learned to use DevOps to get more done while working less. In the past, they had trouble adding team members and maintaining their titles, and solved most problems through sheer force of will. But by employing the philosophies of DevOps, they were able to deploy weekly content patches in Early Access, expand their team, add nearly a dozen languages to their game, and line up six simultaneous launch platforms. By using the lessons outlined in this talk, you, too, can begin to transform your studio into a low-stress, high-output, clockwork machine!

11:00am-11:30am Baked in Accessibility: How Features Were Approached in 'Borderlands 3'

Andrew Bair (Lead UI Programmer, Gearbox Software)

Topic: Design



This postmortem will review how accessibility features were embedded into the design of Borderlands 3 from an early stage. Speaking about features like subtitles & closed captions, loot beams, and sound effects, this talk will review some of what worked well. It will also speak to what didn't make the cut, telling the stories behind some of the unsuccessful features. By reviewing these features and approaches, this talk will provide examples of specific pathways that devs can use to make their games more accessible (and more enjoyable) for everyone by working within their existing teams and structure to make accessibility a given instead of a burden.

12:00pm-1:00pm Matchmaking for Engagement: Lessons from 'Halo 5'

Josh Menke (Lead Engagement Designer, 343 Industries)

Topic: Design



What should matchmaking worry most about? Latency? Skill? Streaks? Wait time? There are several commonly held best practices on how to matchmake for engagement across the industry, some of which contradict each other, but little to no data-driven evidence to support them. The following will show how to effectively test matchmaking approaches and show real examples and data from a popular first-person shooter. The results show that not all practices are actually important, while others are critical.

1:00pm-1:30pm Forget CPI: Dynamic Mobile Marketing

Heather Gainer (Marketing Manager User Acquisition, Kongregate)

Topic: Free to Play



Cost per install (CPI) has traditionally been one of the most important metrics for mobile user acquisition. However, the industry is changing and if you are still focused on your CPI then you are already behind. In this talk we will discuss how the industry is changing the way we bid on users. We will cover why CPI is no longer as important and instead, what metrics we should be focusing on. Furthermore, we will discuss how we measure success. Finally, we will talk about how these new trends are impacting the marketplace and the challenges they present for performance-based marketing.

2:00pm-2:30pm Integrating Sound Healing Methodologies Into Your Workflow

Matt Levine (Uncle Vector's Audio Lab LLC)

Topic: Audio



Why does audio reach us on a visceral level in some games, but in others it does not? This talk explores that question through the lens of sound healing. Sound healing uses music, sound and vibration to inspire changes in a person's mind and body. It is a hot topic these days, and wellness is a rapidly expanding category for games and apps. This presentation demonstrates several time-honored sound healing principles and shows how they can be applied to the creative, business, and personal goals of a sound artist or composer. This talk provides tools to incorporate the powerful principles of Intention, Vibration, Binaural Beats, Cymatics, Entrainment, and Elemental Properties into an audio production workflow. These demonstrations provide a glimpse into a vast and underutilized treasure trove of knowledge that is opening up new creative and business opportunities in the game industry.

3:00pm-3:30pm From 0-1000: A Test Driven Approach to Tools Development

David Paris (Senior Engineer, Playground Games)

Topic: Programming



The talk describes Playground Games' journey from 0-1000 automated tools tests during the development of Forza Horizon 4 expansion packs. It focuses on how and why they created a testing culture, what they learned from the experience and how they plan to continue cultivating and improving their investment. The talk demonstrates how teams can improve their tool stability and developer confidence and still deliver new features by adding automated tests.

4:00pm-4:30pm Overcoming Creative Block on 'Super Crush KO'

Gabby DaRienzo (Senior Artist, Drinkbox Studios)

Topic: Independent Games



After dealing with a year-long burnout, Gabby DaRienzo was able to find resources and tools to help her overcome her creative block and start feeling inspired productive, and confident in making game art again. This resulted in her art directing the beautiful, colourful, anime-inspired game Super Crush KO. In this talk, Gabby will talk about where this block came from, how it affected her work on Super Crush KO, share what tools and practices worked for her in overcoming her burnout, and provide advice for other game developers who may deal with creative block in the future.