SESSIONS & SCHEDULE

Day Zero

May, 11

10:00 — 18:00 Build up (exhibitors only!)
18:00 — 22:00 Badge Pick-Up Pre-Party

First Day

May, 12

09:00 — 10:00 Registration
10:00 — 13:00 Sessions
13:00 — 15:00 Lunch break
15:00 — 18:00 Sessions
15:00 — 18:00 Speed Game Dating
18:00 — 19:00 GamesJamKanobu Awards
20:00 — 00:00 Official After Party

Second Day

May, 13

09:00 — 10:00 Registration
10:00 — 13:00 Sessions
13:00 — 15:00 Lunch break
15:00 — 17:00 Sessions
17:00 — 18:00 Game Lynch
18:00 — 19:00 DevGAMM Awards
19:00 — 20:00 Bye-Bye Mingle

Keynote

alex+logo

Punch Club Postmortem

Alex Nichiporchik, CEO, tinyBuild

Alex Nichiporchik will present a Punch Club postmortem from the publisher’s perspective. He’ll tell how a series of unsuccessful showcases at various gaming events brought the game to a successful launch with the Twitch Plays Punch Club initiative and millions in earnings.

Alex Nichiporchik is now a director of tinyBuild GAMES, worked as Innovation Projects Leader at Spil Games for the previous 4 years. He spends his work and leisure time playing games. Since 2010, he’s been moderating and organizing the Game Lynch.

jon+logo

Twitch Talk: The Dos and Don’ts of Broadcasting

Jonathan Joyce, Live Programming Director, Twitch

Twitch is a very diverse platform and developers can use it to their advantage. Not only can they create and grow their development-oriented channels but also take it to the next level of entertainment. In this session Jon will explain how to do that.

Jonathan Joyce (aka Jon Carnage), Live Programming Director Twitch.
His role involves working closely with publishers and developers to determine content for Twitch’s stage presence at major conventions, such as E3 and PAX, while frequently being on-camera as a moderator for these streams. Jon also works closely with developers and publishers of all sizes to help them find their own unique voice on Twitch. He has been working in online digital broadcasting and traditional television media since 2000, including being an online producer at Destructoid for three years. Prior to joining Twitch in early 2012, Jon was co-creator of several successful Twitch channels.

Chris Remo Campo Santo Devgamm

Firewatch: Rethinking Story-Driven Games

Chris Remo, Designer, Composer, Campo Santo

How do you make a video game that is primarily about characters and story—without using combat, mechanical challenge, or traditional adventure puzzles? Chris Remo will explain how Campo Santo attempted to learn lessons from different video game genres in order to maintain player interactivity and carve out a unique space in the story game genre.

Chris Remo is a designer and composer at Campo Santo. His design and writing credits include games such as Firewatch and The Cave, and his original soundtracks include Firewatch, Gone Home, Thirty Flights of Loving, and Spacebase DF-9. He also co-runs the Idle Thumbs podcast network, and co-hosts its flagship gaming podcast.

weber

How The World of The Witcher 3 Was Created: Quest Design

Philipp Weber, Quest Designer, CD Projekt Red

This talk is all about how the quest team worked on combining narrative and exploration through non-linear storytelling. Philipp will explore how a quest progresses from a single idea to a finished story and how to create a believable, living, breathing world with meaningful content.

Philipp Weber is working as a Quest Designer for CD Projekt Red since almost 3 years and during this time he worked on “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”, and its expansion packs “Hearts of Stone” and “Blood and Wine”. Before that, He was studying archaeology in Germany (where he comes from). During that time, he won a modding contest for The Witcher 2, where he created his own level and storyline – this was his entry point to the whole industry.

Mike-Bithell-Bithell-Games-Designer Devgamm

10 things that seem to be working right now for indies

Mike Bithell, Designer, Bithell Games

Indie moves quick, any advice tends to have a short shelf life. This talk focuses on 10 lessons and approaches from recent games, including Mike’s own work. Mike will unpack these lessons, and find some solid advice for the audience.

Mike Bithell is the chap behind two reasonably liked British games, Thomas Was Alone and Volume. He is currently working on a VR expansion to Volume, and future, secret things. He’ll probably tell you about them on twitter (@mikebithell) or on his site,www.bithellgames.com

Rami-Ismail Vlambeer

Nuclear Throne Postmortem: from Early Access to Consoles Release

Rami Ismail, Business Development, Vlambeer

Rami will tell a story behind Nuclear Throne. He will unveil development challenges when dealing with different platforms. Also, he will touch upon ways of building a close knit and supportive community for indie games.

Rami Ismail is one half of Dutch independent studio Vlambeer. He’s best known for his work on games as Nuclear Throne, Ridiculous Fishing, LUFTRAUSERS and Super Crate Box. Besides games, Rami creates independent game creation tools such as presskit() and distribute(). Rami continuously travels the world, and has dedicated a large part of his efforts towards encouraging and supporting game development in emergent territories

Platforms

Neil-Leslie-Microsoft DevGAMM

Microsoft Platform for Game Developers

Neil Leslie, General Manager, Microsoft Developer Experience, Microsoft

This Microsoft track keynote session will give you the most important all-up overview and information on how you can develop games and be successful with Microsoft Platform. This complete overview will help you to make right choices on how to use Microsoft Platform for different types of games as well us guide you where you can get deeper information both online and at DevGAMM’s Microsoft track sessions after the keynote. If you need to understand the full picture – this is the right session to start.

Neil Leslie is currently a General Manager helping lead the Platform Evangelism and Partner teams who play a key role in leading Microsoft’s Developer Experience and Evangelism group. Neil and his team drive efforts to build a vibrant solutions ecosystem through evangelism, community engagement and deep relationships with Microsoft’s Global Partners.
Formerly, Neil Leslie was the Vice President of Microsoft Information Technology (MSIT) engineering organization at Microsoft. He was responsible for managing the company’s IT architecture, application and support operations that span Microsoft’s portfolio of IT internal and external systems worldwide. Day to day, the job responsibilities included the design, development, deployment and sustained operations of the IT systems Microsoft uses to run its business.

Ed Valiente, Nintendo of Europe, DevGAMM

Self-publishing on Nintendo eShop

Ed Valiente, Business Development Manager, Nintendo of Europe

Ed Valiente will talk about high level business policies and walk you through the process of releasing games on Nintendo eShop on the Wii U console and Nintendo 3DS portable system step-by-step from applying to be a developer through to certification, marketing and PR support opportunity and post-launch support.

Ed Valiente joined Nintendo’s European Publisher Business department in 2010 initially working with traditional retail publishers. Since the launch of Wii U in 2012, his remit expanded to cover indie developers. Ed has been in the games industry since 1997 and has previously worked at Sony, Microsoft, Square Enix, Bandai Namco and Rovio. He holds a Masters Degree in Social and Political Science from the University of Cambridge.

Garnett Lee Games Evangelist Amazon DevGamm

Developing More Opportunities for Your Game Today and Tomorrow with Twitch

Garnett Lee, Games Evangelist, Amazon

Every game holds the ability to build the audience to create more opportunities for streamers to earn and developers to sell. Garnett Lee will show you steps to move toward that goal and set a foundation for developing, launching, and sustaining your game with Twitch. He’ll also look at how this may influence game design in the future.

Garnett Lee cultivates enthusiasm for developing and playing games with Amazon. He draws on his media and creative background to build both sides of the community, primarily through Twitch. Previously he served as Director of Publishing for mobile games and Editorial Director at GameFly after becoming a highly regarded voice in the games industry for his editorial work at Ziff Davis. Garnett is also well-known for his on-camera work and creation of successful podcasts including 1UP Yours and Weekend Confirmed.

Romuald Zdebskiy, Gaming Lead CEE, Microsoft Devgamm

Millions of Dollars from Windows Store – how to make it?

Romuald Zdebskiy, Gaming Lead CEE, Microsoft

270mln active devices already have Windows 10 Store. Win 10 growth is outpacing Windows 7 in the same timeframe by 145%. Store monetization is 4 times bigger than on Win 8. How to make millions of $ from this growing market like some developers we are going to talk about. At this session we will look into details on what you need to do and how to maximize your revenue and success in Windows Store and how to earn even more in future.

Romuald Zdebskiy. Responsible for working with leading game developers in Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to that, coordinated the work of technical experts in software development and management of IT infrastructure at Microsoft in terms of the key technology priorities of the Microsoft platform.

In recent years, he was responsible for the work with a number of key partners of Microsoft on the development of the region and was engaged in the release of the most popular games and applications.

Agostino-Simonetta Devgamm

ID@Xbox – your games on Xbox One and Windows 10

Agostino Simonetta, ID@XBOX Regional Lead – EMEA,Microsoft

In this session Agostino would cover Microsoft games ecosystem including PC, Console and mobile platforms. He would also describe ID@Xbox program and what happens when Indie games meets Xbox platform

A veteran of the videogame industry, Agostino has spent the last 10 years of his career working with the independent development community. In his current role, he is supporting European developers publishing their games on Xbox and the Windows ecosystem.

Mike Bithell Bithell Games Designer

How to be Successful on Google Play

Dmitri Martynov, Head of Google Play Apps & Games, Russia & CEE, Google

With over 78% of smartphones and 62% of tablets running on Android, and $7B paid out to developers, Google Play is experiencing incredible momentum. This session will cover how successful apps are using Play along with steps you need to take to improve your store listing and optimize your game successfully in the Google Play store.

Dmitri Martynov is the Head of Google Play Apps & Games, Russia & CEE at Google. In his role, he helps apps & games businesses from Russia & CEE to find success on Android and Google Play. Prior to joining the Google Play team, Dima was a Regional Developers Relations Program Manager at Google Russia. Pre-Google, Dmitri spent almost 10 years at Microsoft, in various roles, focusing on Cloud Computing and Microsoft’s Azure platform. Dmitri has a BA in Computer Science from Moscow State University of Instrument Making and Information Science.

Maxim-Babichev-Developer-advocate-VK Devgamm

Pieces of advice: plod to prosperity with VK gaming platform

Maxim Babichev, Developer advocate, VK.com

Everybody likes success stories. But what hides behind them? A lot of work. Now VK can try to slightly open a window to the world of techniques which work great in VK*.
*Based on alive examples.

Maxim Babichev is a graduate from Saint Petersburg State University of Economics where was taught computer science and business informatics. Joined VK team in 2007, the developer advocate since 2014. Working with gaming partners from the first acquaintance to a project launch as well as passionately evangelize and advocate developers’ needs withing VK platform.

Stephan-Lee-6waves DevGamm

Mobile publishing and platforms landscape in Asia

Stephen Lee, Head of Publishing, 6waves

Have you ever thought about launching your game in Asia, but don’t know where or how to begin? Which countries are most attractive, and which platforms should you consider launching on? What’s the best way to localize my game? Should I work with a publisher, or go it alone?
This session will arm you with all the key intel you need to succeed in the world’s largest mobile gaming market.

Stephen Lee is Executive Director and Head of Publishing at 6waves, a pioneer of free-to-play games publishing, focused on promoting mobile games to top chart positions in Asia. Stephen leads all business development-related matters, including publishing deals, developer outreach, strategic partnerships and new initiatives.
Prior to joining 6waves, Stephen gained over 10 years of experience in consulting and strategy roles with leading technology companies in both the US and Asia.

iOS-Workshop DevGAMM

iOS Workshop

If you are developing games for iOS, watchOS, or tvOS, don’t miss this workshop. International speakers will highlight the essentials and hidden gems for building amazing and memorable user experience across the platform. This session is aimed for development leads and product leads. Due to interactive nature of the session attendance will be limited to 30 people, and will be invite only. Please make sure you register in advance.

Game Postmortems

Ted-Ursu,-Alexey-Davydov Devgamm

Bob the Robber: road from flash to mobile release

Ted Ursu, Business Development, Funtomic

Alexey Davydov, Founder, Flazm

Ted and Alexey are going to talk about pipeline of multi-platform development for mobile platforms and flash/HTML5 using Flambe framework. About planning of gameplay, controls and monetisation.

Ted Ursu. Business development manager for Funtomic with over 4 years of experience in helping developers reach their audiences on web and mobile.

Alexey Davydov. Producer, game-designer and a podcaster. Founder of Flazm Interactive Entertainment studio, developing Web and Steam games.

Dan-Da-Rocha

Turning Your Indie Game Into An Indie Franchise

Dan Da Rocha, Managing Director, Toxic Games

When starting out, many indies only think about the first game and don’t plan for what will come after, whether their level of success is boom or doom. Da Rocha will talk about the creation of Q.U.B.E. and how its success led the team to create an enhanced version of the game for consoles before diving into development on its sequel, Q.U.B.E. 2.

Dan Da Rocha is the Director at Fiddlesticks and Toxic Games. Creating award-winning indie game Q.U.B.E. straight out of University and securing investment from Indie Fund, he was able to set up a full-time indie game studio. Since then he has produced more games including the multi-million downloaded title, Mortar Melon, multi-award-winning Hue and the upcoming sequel to his first game, Q.U.B.E. 2. Dan regularly attends and speaks at events around the globe and thrives on sharing knowledge, expertise and learning of new ways to do business in the ever changing games industry.

Evgeniy-Romin,-Brainy-Studio DevGamm

TurnOn: Developing first Russian game for ID@Xbox

Evgeniy Romin, CEO, Brainy Studio

In this report, the Brainy Studio team will share their experience: How to be released on consoles on their own and without a publisher? How to prepare the game cross-platform release on Xbox, Windows Store, Steam? How to calculate everything and to have an idea what to expect? What you need to know about the foreign system of age ratings?

Evgeniy Romin. Brainy Studio is a Russian indie studio that develops video games for consoles and personal computers. The studio consists of 4 people, who are also the founders: Evgeniy Romin, Ilya Antonov, Anton Baranov and Dmitry Ogorodnikov. The company is known for the TurnOn game, the prototype of which won in 2014 an international technology competition Imagine Cup, held with the support of Microsoft and other high-tech companies. The full version of the current TurnOn project will be released in spring 2016 on Xbox One and Steam.

IzHard-OVIVO DevGAMM

OVIVO: From Hackathon project to winning Microsoft Imagine Cup

Alex Vilasak, IzHard,

Daria Chernova, IzHard,

Daria Kruzhinskaya, IzHard

In this report, the IzHard team will tell how they have progressed from their first project at GamesJam to the victory at the international final of Microsoft Imagine Cup and winning a grant of $50,000, as well as finding a publisher who will bring their project to life.

IzHard consists of just three people: Darya Chernova, Alexander Vilasak and Darya Kruzhinskaya.
Until recently, they could not imagine that they would win the Russian final of Imagine Cup, and then the world final as well. The IzHard OVIVO project is an unusual computer game where the hero travels the abstract black-and-white world. Its main feature is the ability to change gravity and add your own levels. You can draw any character on paper and move it to the game using the smartphone camera. According to the IzHard team, this will allow the players to not just enjoy the adventures of the main character, but also create their own unique game worlds.

Miscellaneous

Nelson Rodriguez , Akamai, DevGAMM

Preorders Are Your Problem

Nelson Rodriguez , Senior Manager, Akamai

You probably think game preorders don’t impact you, because you’re a digital publisher with no retail partners. You’re wrong. Preorders are changing in three major ways, and the shift is going to affect every corner of the game industry. With insights from major publishers, we discuss the past and future of pre-orders, and how you can prepare.

Nelson Rodriguez has helped launch dozens of games across every platform, including blockbusters like Halo 3, Tekken 5, and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and indie titles like Tweet Defense and A Kingdom for Keflings. After two years on the Xbox marketing team, developing social and community strategy, Nelson spent six years creating award-winning digital marketing campaigns for clients like Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony and Hasbro. Nelson currently heads up Akamai Technologies’ games industry marketing strategy.

Philipp-Gladkov-CEO-Pixonic Devgamm

Problems and solutions when developing synchronized PvP MMO games

Philipp Gladkov, CEO, Pixonic

In this session Philipp will explain what main problems Pixonic has come across, when started to develop a synchronized PvP, MMO game and will also explain what were the main solutions in order for the game to function properly.

Philipp Gladkov. Started career in IT-industry by founding a game portal Playit.ru in 2005. Joined Pixonic in 2010 as Strategic Partnership Manager. In late 2013 became CEO of Pixonic and turned the company in a completely new direction from developing and publishing casual games, to working on it’s most successful mid-core title “Walking War Robots”.

Leonid-Sirotin Devgamm

Are you really a producer?

Leonid Sirotin, Independent Expert

Artist draws. Programmer writes code. Game designer as we all know doesn’t exist, but helps everyone creating a game. Where is a producer in all of this? And who produces a producer?

Leonid Sirotin, 16 years dedicated to gaming.
He worked as an advisor to the president and as producer at Astrum. He was a general producer at GameInsight, and was directly involved in making of such hits as Mystery Manor, Mirrors of Albion, Tribez and over a hundred of various titles – social, mobile, desktop ones.
Presently, Leonid is working on his own projects. At DevGAMM, he takes part as an independent gaming industry expert.

1

Crowdsourcing: Tips for Game Developers and Publishers

Ksenia Mezhenina, Senior Editor, All Correct Group Senior

Ksenia will tell you about All Correct experience in crowdsourcing and give you some tips on how to organize this process in the most efficient way. Their knowledge is based on Russian localization of the game Romans in My Carpet they provided last year. The most significant part of the talk is describing ways of team building in crowdsourcing.

Ksenia Mezhenina is a Senior Editor at All Correct Games. She has been working in game localization for three years and edits translations for such companies as EA, Ubisoft, Gaijin Entertainment and etc.

Slava-Lukyanenka-WArgaming DevGamm

Playtests: from AAA to III

Slava Lukyanenka, PM, Wargaming.net

In this session we will talk about the playtest practices: what makes sense to use, when you develop an III or AAA project. How these practices are related to production stage and, most importantly, how to collect and interpret results.
This session will help you to succeed in playtest: one of the most important feedback tools.

Slava Lukyanenka is Project Manager at Competitive Gaming Department, Wargaming.net.
Has been working in gamedev industry since 2011. Co-organizer of several gamedev events held in Minsk. Inspired by Blizzard and Supergiant Games.

Jaime-Rodrigues Microsoft DevGAMM

Boosting Engagement in UWP apps

Jaime Rodriguez, Principal Software Development Engineer, Microsoft

To have a financially successful game, great gameplay is only half the work; you still need to decide how you will monetize your users, how you will acquire them, keep them engaged, etc. Join these sessions to learn about all the options the Universal Windows Platform has for engaging and monetizing users; you will learn about some obvious, proven features like live tiles, and notifications, and you will also learn about the upcoming features in the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary release.

Jaime Rodriguez leads Microsoft’s mobile games evangelism team; he works with the top games publishers porting games to the Universal Windows Platform to ensure the titles do great on Windows, both from a technical implementation stand-point, as well as the most native integration to boost engagement and monetization.

Kirill-Buyanin-Game-Designer-King DevGamm

Resume and interviews. How to apply for a job in an international company

Kirill Buyanin, Game Designer, King.com

Many people are eager to find an interesting job, not only in the CIS countries, but also abroad. That’s where the language barrier and the uncertainty stop you from sending a resume to a dream company. In fact, the recruitment process in any company is very simple, though requires certain diligence. This report will focus on resume writing and the subtleties of behavior during online interviews.

Kirill Buyanin. Got a job as a game designer at King.com and moved to Singapore a year ago. Prior to that, he worked in various companies in Moscow, and was an active member of indie development. Spent eighteen months in search of interesting work abroad, sent hundreds of resumes and took part in dozens of online interviews. He intends to share his experience, so that more classy specialists would find their dream job.

Big and small development: key differences

Alexander Myasishchev, Executive Director, Nival

How to meet the deadline, save the company money, nerves of employees during the development of the project of any complexity.

Alexander Myasishchev devoted 5 years to game journalism and 6 years to game development. In total he spent 10 year on lead positions. Main career in gamedev included Nival, where he has grown from personal assistant to executive director. I love accumulating, test and share tools for improving the development project structure. Enlightening the masses with professionalism.

Game Design

Vladimir-Piskunov-Bitbox DevGamm

Multiplayer sandbox. Game design and mechanics

Vladimir Piskunov , CEO / CTO, Bitbox Ltd.

Sharing our experience and vision about game design of multiplayer sandbox games basing on our project “Life is Feudal: Your Own”. Explaining some common and uncommon sandbox mechanics in games. Revealing our set of tools and concepts we’ve used during our design processes.

Vladimir Piskunov, Ph.D., CEO and technical director of the studio “Bitbox” with more than 10 years of experience in managing complex IT and game projects, including the popular Steam’s domestic online game Life is Feudal: Your Own. By organizing from scratch enthusiastic team to implement an ambitious sandbox MMORPG project “Life is Feudal” in 2014, he brought the project to a global release, which allowed to pay back 3 years of fulltime development in 49 hours of sales (currently the game has earned more than $ 8 million.). During the period of development he has accumulated extensive experience in solving complex technical problems, coupled with the experience of a global promotion on Steam projects. Hardcore and competitive player with more than 20-years of experience.

Vladimir-Kovtun-AlternativaPlatform DevGamm

Games: from obligation to aesthetic enjoyment

Vladimir Kovtun, Lead Game Designer, PM, AlternativaPlatform

Look at all these successful games and think: Do they bring pleasure? And what can be said about the games, which collect > 95% of positive user feedback? They often do not sell millions of copies, and are non-canonical in terms of game design. You come back to the former with a sense of guilt, and the latter will not let you, even when you sleep.
Let’s talk about the two poles of the modern game design!

Vladimir Kovtun. Lead Game Designer, Product Manager, AlternativaPlatform. Now he also joined indie ranks. Former school teacher and role player. Loves playing and making games.

Nikita-Kulaga-Lazy-Bear-Games DevGamm

Game design mistakes in Punch Club

Nikita Kulaga, Developer, Lazy Bear Games

Why agility became imbalanced how to make players angry with stat reset, grind-fest, and other errors that were made in Punch Club game design.

Nikita Kulaga is the former chief engineer of the project in “Gazprom”, in the last few years he’s an indie game developer in Lazy Bear Games team.

Konstantin-Sakhnov-RJ-Games

Game design analytics: expressive reports

Konstantin Sakhnov, Head of Game Design, Rocket Jump

The session is about the reports that need to be analyzed by the producers and game designers to understand the game’s economy, balance and predict the dynamics of the project. The session is based on the game logic and analytics, and does not contain the technical information on the collection of metrics for making reports.

Konstantin Sakhnov. Head of Game Desing in Rocket Jump. Scientific director of educational programs and lector in HSBI HSE. Mentor and expert of Skolkovo investment fund. As game designer developed mobile game Evolution: Heroes of Utopia, MMO Action Panzar and many browser based games.

Art & Animation

Alexey-Strahov-VGTRK DevGamm

Animated art adaptation for games and publishing kids’ franchise

Alexey Iliyn, Producer, VGTRK

Alexey Strahov, Art Director, VGTRK

During this session Alexey Iliyn and Alexey Strahov show how to adapt the animated children’s art in the mobile game and explain how to use TV channels to promote it.

Alexey Iliyn – Project Manager of Interactive Mult.

Alexey Strahov – art director, artist. He’s responsible for art in two full-length animated films, a variety of games on consoles, PC and mobile.

Vera-Velichko-OWL-Studio DevGamm

Crank art out: how to use your art team at maximum capacity

Vera Velichko, CEO, Art-director, OWL-Studio

Every artist has their own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. And you can use the strengths of each artist, offsetting weak, by building the correct pipeline with art production team. Being properly adjusted, pipeline principle significantly raises the overall quality of the art, reduces development time and facilitates the adaptation of new artists on the team.
In this session Vera will tell about the experience of the construction of such pipelines, where to start and what pitfalls to avoid.

Vera Velichko. She used a pencil 20 years ago for the first time. In total she studied for 18 years in different art institutions. She has 10 years of experience in the game industry, starting as a junior freelance background painter, she then switched to big projects and eventually found herself in WebGames company, where she went all the way from in-house artist to art director. Last year co-founded own game development studio Owl Studio.

Nudha-Yurii-Lead-Artist-Playrix Devgamm

Game art integrity or how to defeat chaos

Yurii Nudha, Lead Artist, Playrix

The visual style of the game is basically its calling card. It is important to not only find it, but also to be able to sustain it throughout the development. Yurii will share the experience on how to maintain the integrity of the visuals in a large team of artists.

Yurii Nudha works in the industry as an artist since 2009. Engaged in the development of casual, social, browser and mobile games as an artist, animator, lead artist and art director.

Technology & Development

Jaime-Rodrigues Microsoft DevGAMM

Windows 10 UWP Development Overview

Jaime Rodriguez, Principal Software Development Engineer, Microsoft

With Windows 10 devices reaching nearly 300 million, this platform is becoming a very relevant platform for game publishers to target. Join this session to get a great overview of the Universal platform. We will cover the differences & similarities to desktop games development, the Windows store, and state of all the middleware engines and other Microsoft technologies you can use to easily port your game from other platforms (or desktop) to Universal.

Jaime Rodriguez leads Microsoft’s mobile games evangelism team; he works with the top games publishers porting games to the Universal Windows Platform to ensure the titles do great on Windows, both from a technical implementation stand-point, as well as the most native integration to boost engagement and monetization.

Victor-Kiselev Vicrosoft DevGamm

Windows 10 Store Impovements & Tricks for Game Developers

Victor Kiselev, Business Development Manager, Microsoft

Windows app store develops rapidly from the point of view of the audience, but also in terms of functionality for developers and publishers. This report will focus on what’s new in store for developers.

Victor Kiselev has been working at Microsoft since 2006 doing various fun stuff as a developer, consultant, architect, a number of positions in sales. At the moment, he is helping in the development of their partner companies and start-ups in the department of strategic technologies.

Belotserkovsky-Alex Microsoft DevGamm

Microsoft Azure for Gaming – Ultimate Backend

Alexander Belotserkovskiy, Tech Evangelist, Microsoft

The moment when the project goes to the wide audience is beautiful. We have done everything to make our game played by millions of users. But have we taken everything into account? Have we considered the scalability of our solutions? There is nothing worse for a new project than to drop soon after the announcement. Have we taken into account all the bottlenecks in our architecture? With one thousand of players our game is good, but will it behave just as well with a million? The report will focus on the useful cloud services that will help you to analyze the architecture of your project, to study how it behaves under heavy load and survive peak loads. Technologically and actual experience-based.

Alexander Belotserkovskiy. The main directions for Alexander include Internet of Things, Cloud and Cloud Gaming and Open Source. He helps partners and customers to build high-quality, scalable solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft received the Microsoft Azure Most Valuable Specialist Russia award and engaged in consultations of the Microsoft Azure customers in Russia and the CIS countries – from start-ups and developers to enterprise users. Standing contributor on the Russian and international events.

Dmitry-Andreev Microsoft Devgamm

Deep Dive into DirectX 12

Dmitry Andreev, Tech Evangelist, Microsoft

DirectX 12 technology has changed the level of interaction between applications and equipment. Getting closer to the “hardware”, developers can achieve unprecedented levels of performance, and the artists can rely on a completely new approach to enhance the expressive possibilities of your game. In the report you will learn how to work with DirectX 12 API and create universal Windows Store applications using this technology.

Dmitry Andreev. Works with Microsoft since 2004. The list of basic technological interests includes the organization of the software development process, the architecture of information systems and management of IT projects, the development of graphically intensive games and applications.

Evgeniy-Shklyar Microsoft DevGAMM

UI & UX hints for UWP on Windows 10

Evgeniy Shkliar, Tech Evangelist, Microsoft

DirectX 12 technology has changed the level of interaction between applications and equipment. Getting closer to the “hardware”, developers can achieve unprecedented levels of performance, and the artists can rely on a completely new approach to enhance the expressive possibilities of your game. In the report you will learn how to work with DirectX 12 API and create universal Windows Store applications using this technology.

Evgeniy Shkliar is an expert on Microsoft strategic technologies in game direction since 2014. Develops games since 2005, interested in artificial intelligence, neural networks, cryptography, social engineering and information security.

Andrew Touch Tech Evangelist Unity Technologies DevGamm

An Introduction to Writing Custom Unity Shaders!

Andrew Touch, Tech Evangelist, Unity Technologies

Shader programming has always been seen as a scary and intimidating dark magic; learning it can feel like tumbling down a never-ending rabbit hole. Fear not! As Andy will give a hand’s-on, in-Editor, crash-course guide on how to write your own custom shaders in the Unity Game Engine, to achieve interesting effects, unique visuals and show how powerful, flexible and easy they can be to create!

Andrew Touch. Ever since he downloaded Unity, added 3D physics to 100 cubes and watched them bounce around, Andy Touch has been addicted to experimenting with gaming technology. Having previously taught game development to University students, he is now part of Unity Technologies‘ Evangelism team helping to spread the word of the game engine and to show off what it can do! When he isn’t talking about Unity he can probably be found marathoning TV shows or playing Dark Souls.

Andy-Hess-Epic-Games devGamm

Workshop: Introduction to Unreal

Andy Hess, Evangelist, Epic Games

Epic Evangelist Andy Hess will start the day by going over basics of Unreal Engine including UI, terminology, conventions, content management, and learning resources. Additional topic include an introduction to materials & lighting, Blueprints, the Unreal Game Framework.

Andy Hess. As Evangelist at Epic Games, Andy’s role is to help independent game developers build great games with Unreal Engine 4. Andy’s previous experience includes Apple, Ageia, and NVIDIA– a 20 year career working with game developers to build amazing gaming experiences.

Alex Feer Tech Lead Zillion Whales DevGamm

Rendering and synchronization of 4000 units in Mushroom Wars 2 using Unity

Alex Feer, CTO, Zillion Whales

Alex will speak about the technologies used to deal with challenging tasks of developing real-time strategy game Mushroom Wars 2.

Alex Feer. Unity game developer with 7 years experience. Alex has headed development of several mobile gaming projects, participated in Blitzkrieg 3 as an external expert. Today Alex is technical lead on the Mushroom Wars 2 for Steam project.

Sergey-Lerg-Corona-Labs DevGamm

Stop whining and make a cross-platform game already!

Sergey Lerg, Corona Engineer, Corona Labs

Have you been dreaming of making games for a long time? Sergey will show you how you can make from a ground up a simple, but beautiful fast-paced game, that can run on mobile devices and desktops! And no, that isn’t HTML5, it’s real OpenGL.

Sergey Lerg develops mobile games and application for 5 years. After a web-developer career he started fresh as a humble freelancer, now he works at Corona Labs developing new features for Corona SDK.

Evgeny Muralev Software Engineer Sperasoft DevGamm

Code and memory optimization tricks

Evgeny Muralev, Software Engineer, Sperasoft

Understanding hardware you are developing your game for is very important when writing performance critical code. Session presents approaches to optimize your code relying on understanding of modern CPU architectures.

Evgeny Muralev. Currently, Evgeny is working as software engineer at Sperasoft. He is passionate about game development and software engineering in general. He was lucky to work on big diversity of projects: video games, low-level libraries, web-services and other.

Nikolai-Shalimov-EPAM-Systems DevGamm

Voxel rendering on mobile devices

Nikolai Shalimov, Lead Software Engineer, EPAM Systems

Using 3D textures on platforms that don’t support 3D textures. Efficient rendering of huge amount of data on “weak” hardware. Tricks and shader’s magic.

Nikolai Shalimov. I’m lead software engineer with 7 years’ experience in game development industry. I’ve worked with a variety of technologies and platforms. Now I’m using Unity 3D as the main development environment.

Grzegorz Mazur Vile Monarch Co-Boss Programmer DevGamm

Artificial Intelligence in games

Grzegorz Mazur, Co-Boss / Programmer, Vile Monarch

How to make your 3d models or pixels alive. Make them think and interact with player in your game. Overview of current most popular AI techniques and concepts, full of examples from games like Crush Your Enemies or This War of Mine.

Gregorz Mazur. Programmer. Information Technology graduate at Warsaw University of Technology. Currently Co-Boss and Technical Director at Vile Monarch. Previously worked for 11 bit studios where he was Lead Programmer of This War of Mine and Sleepwalker`s Journey. Specialized in gameplay and AI programming. Teacher at Warsaw Film School and Academy of Games and Post-Production. Amateur musician and board games enthusiast.

Pavel-Shtangeev Zgames Devgamm

Custom location editor for a Unity project: how to do and why to bother

Pavel Shtangeev, Lead Game Designer, zGames

Unity provides a wide range of tools to build game worlds in the Scene editor right from the box. So why to fix what’s not broken?
In this session I’ll talk about level design cases that require custom features for the editor and what to do to improve its effectiveness a lot.

Pavel Shtangeev. Five years of experience in the game industry with six years more of mod making and working with indie teams. Participated in development of hardcore and casual games for a wide range of platforms. Designed several games that won international contest awards (including DevGAMM Minsk 2014 Grand Prize).

VR

Roberto-Lopez-Mendez-ARM Devgamm

Optimized Rendering Techniques for Mobile VR

Roberto Lopez Mendez, Senior Software Engineer, ARM

VR rendering pushes the hardware to the limits and rendering shadows and reflections in VR is challenging. The talk presents highly optimized rendering techniques for shadows and reflections in mobile VR and considers the importance of rendering stereo reflections in VR. The speaker demonstrates how to implement stereo reflections in Unity.

Roberto Lopez Mendez is an ARM Software Graphics Engineer. He studied Nuclear Physics but after a decade working in Physics he discovered his real passion and has been working in 3D graphics for various companies since 1995. In 2012, Roberto joined the ARM Demo Team. Since then he has been working on developing optimized rendering techniques for mobile devices. He also regularly delivers workshops at different universities and talks at game and development related events.

Valentin-Siminov Unity DevGamm

Unity 5.3 for Virtual Reality and HoloLens

Valentin Simonov, Field Engineer, Unity Technologies

In this report, Valentin will tell how Unity helps in the development of games and applications for virtual reality, and mention the topic of development for Microsoft HoloLens with a special version of the engine – Unity Technical Preview for HoloLens.

Valentin Simonov. Valentin is the one who finds technical solutions for major clients and, in his spare time, he travels over Europe sharing knowledge about the different technical aspects of Unity at various conferences. Before Unity, Valentin worked at Interactive Lab creating intera?tive installations for expos and other events; at Mail.Ru and its branches he worked on social games; delivered lectures at the British Higher School of Design and Mail.Ru Technical Park at Bauman Moscow State Technical University. Valentin translated Unity’s book about shading into Russian and is supporting the open-source projects. He is a graduate of Novosibirsk State University.

Antony-Douglas-Unity DevGamm

Unity & VR: What we are working on and how to design & develop VR Experiences

Antony Douglas, VP EMEA, Unity Technologies

Virtual Reality is going to change the digital experience forever. At Unity we are building tools that will enable developers and to publish next-gen content today.
In this talk, Antony Douglas and Andy Touch will highlight the evolution of the Unity engine and its support for VR. We will demonstrate in-editor design principles that will help you to create amazing VR projects and get the most from this exciting new technology.

Antony Douglas. As part of Unity’s executive management team, Antony heads Unity’s commercial licensing and services division in Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2013 having developed award-winning titles built on the engine provider’s market leading software he decided to join the Unity family. Antony has spent 13 years working on all sides of videogame development & publishing holding senior positions with Korean Java pioneers Com2uS, Telefonica O2 UK ltd and Square Enix Europe.

Alexander-Lukichev-Egor-Tomskiy-ARena_

Total immersion VR. A new word in the entertainment industry

Alexander Lukichev, Content&Platform Director, ARena,

Egor Tomskiy, R&D Director, ARena

New computer platform appeared. VR / AR technologies will change the digital world as dramatically as did the personal computer, the Internet, of web2.0, and smartphone.We will talk about the future of computer gaming, how it will change. We also will discuss which technologies will make possible to get in the game, step inside and feel the physical presence in it, interact with each other, the environment and the virtual characters and play with unparalleled realism.

Alexander Lukichev is the Content&Platform Director of ARena team. He is currently working on next level feelings in VR with Mocap system. Previously he worked at FIBRUM team as the Affiliate-Business Development Director. Alexander has been in the games industry since 2003 and has previously worked at “Metro 2033”, “Night Watch”(Dozory), Magic etc.

Andrey-Ivashentsev Game Insight DevGAMM 2016

Different Realities – VR, AR and Holograms

Andrey Ivashentsev, Сhief Innovation Officer, Game Insight

This report will focus on current trends in the field of augmented and virtual reality, sort out the peculiarities and differences of these concepts, as well as discuss Microsoft Holographic.
Another issue is the capabilities of different hardware and software platforms, both already brought to the general public, and recently presented to the market.

Andrey Ivashentsev. Chief Innovation Officer at Game Insight. Responsible for business development and strategic partnerships with key ecosystems and platforms in terms of landing innovative technologies and approaches.

Narrative

Narrative VS MMO

Alexey Kolesnikov, World & Story designer, Mail.Ru Group

What is the complexity of the plot development for MMO? For how long you can plan the plot, and where all the plans turn to ashes? How does the work of a writer on large projects such as “Allods Online” happen, and why do we need a script in MMORPGs? These and other questions will be answered by head writer of “Allods Online” – Alexey Kolesnikov. First-Hand narrative design of well-known domestic MMO.

Alexey Kolesnikov. His game writer career began in 2007 in Voronezh studio Burut CT. In 2010 he joined Mail.Ru, and has since been working on “Allods Online”.

Alexander Zorich scenarist Zorichbooks DevGamm

Gamedev writer: from game to the book and back

Alexander Zorich, Gamewriter, Zorichbooks

It will be a highly colored story about ups and downs of Russian writers in game industry. Why are the most of the products which based on real books… that strange? Who is guilty of it? What to do with it? Learn the answers.

Alexander Zorich is one of the most popular Russian writers of SF and Fantasy, author of 45 books and a scenarist of more than 15 scenarios of classic computer games. This is a pseudonym of a duet of Yana Botsman and Dmitry Gordevsky.

Arkhipov-Dentons-Of-Counsel Devgamm

Rights to Characters and Nuances of Easter Eggs: Facets of Intellectual Property

Vladislav Arkhipov, Of Counsel, Dentons

This session will be focused on the legal side of narrative design and will answer questions: what a narrative designer should do to minimize risks of individual legal claims and/or risks of putting his/her company into a compromising situation, especially when characters themselves are Easter eggs, where a thin line exists between a parody and infringement.

Vladislav Arkhipov is a lawyer, of counsel in Dentons’ Russian IP/ IT/ Telecommunications practice and an associate professor of the St. Petersburg State University. Due to his gaming experience and interest in game industry Vladislav provides legal support of computer game industry on the Russian market. He always finds a way to share his experience and knowledge both with indie developers and big studios in different articles on or his blog and gives presentations with valuable insights at industry events. Recent practical experience of Vladislav related to game aspects includes consulting one of the overseas age rating authorities and a number of indie developers. Besides, he has worked with international game developers and publishers on IP and data privacy matters, and successfully represented a few big Internet clients in local courts.

4

Game humor: serious talk on not so serious business

Igor Nesmelov, Game Designer, Saber Interactive

Humor, no doubt, adds fun to any game. Humor in the Witcher, GTA, Borderlands is widely used for opening game universes and characters, while in The Stanley Parable and Jazzpunk it’s a driving force behind the game mechanics and narrative. But how to use this powerful tool? Why something seems funny? What is the gag, refrain, punchline? And what are the new forms of funny that gamedev can give us in the near future?

Igor Nesmelov is a game designer at Saber Interactive. He joined the industry around 4 years ago. For a long time he worked as lead GD \ producer in Signus Labs (now part of EPAM Systems). Developed game design \ narrative components of 6 casual mobile projects. Currently he is working as game designer for not yet announced multiplayer shooter. For 10 years, he wrote jokes for TV projects, KVN, the stand-up. He is fond of history and theory of humor.

Evgenii-Danilov-Devgamm

Game script writer Zen: plot, text and characters in casual game

Evgeniy Danilov, Independent Expert

We achieve enlightenment on the following questions: what the writer needs to know in the first place? How to bring the script from idea to implementation in the game? How to interest players with text and characters?
The finale will feature spirits materialization and tips on tools.

Evgeniy Danilov. Game designer and screenwriter. Experience in the industry: 3 years. 5 released projects, 2 projects on the way to release. Writers experience: commercial fiction publishing, Encouragement Award-2013 from the European Science Fiction Society for the debut novel.

Anton Lande Art Director Academy of Acting Arts Lande Project DevGamm

Psychological factor of player influence

Anton Lande, Art Director, Academy of Acting Arts Lande Project

Games evoke the emotions of players. We put a lot of effort into it, to control exactly which emotions, positive are certainly better than negative. We try to involve the player in what is happening in the game, create a link between the player and the characters in the game. Theater and film actors are able to channel emotions of the viewer and their own emotions while acting. Actor’s school teacher Anton Lande will hold an exclusive master class on the use of acting techniques in the development of computer games.

Anton Lande. Founder and artistic director of the studio Lande Project actor. Actor, acting coach, director of mall-play “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich.” He graduated from Shchepkin Higher Theater School and the Academy of Piccolo Teatro di Milano (Italy). It knows international methods of acting existence of Ivana Chubbuck, Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, Jerzy Grotowski, Uta Hagen, Anne Bogart, Bertolt Brecht, commedia dell’arte and others. He’s an author of unique techniques of acting existence. He prepares actors for auditions, students for admission to the leading theater schools of Russia and the world, creates bright acting performances in Lande Project actor workshop.

Narratorika DevGAMM

Narrative Challenge

What are you worth? What are your writers worth? The time has come to hold a “Hamburg score” and find out who is really a master of fantasy and drama!

Test your skills. Challenge your colleagues. Leave your mark.

What are the rules of the competition? We will not tell you! Its uber-complexity and uber-honesty lies in the fact that participants won’t know in advance what to prepare to.

So be ready for whatever comes next!

Discussion Panels

International Indie Survival Guide

Host: Alex Nichiporchik, tinyBuild

Successful indie developers from around the world will not only share their tips on “survival”,
but will also discuss burning issues of the development and promotion in indie games world.

Chris Remo Campo Santo Devgamm

Chris Remo,
Campo Santo

Mike-Bithell-Bithell-Games-Designer Devgamm

Mike Bithell,
Bithell Games

Rami-Ismail Vlambeer

Rami Ismail,
Vlambeer

Adriel-Wallik-TrainJam DevGamm

Adriel Wallick,
TrainJam

Dan-Da-Rocha

Dan Da Rocha,
Toxic Games

Grzegorz Mazur Vile Monarch Co-Boss Programmer DevGamm

Grzegorz Mazur,
Vile Monarch

Streamers & Video Bloggers: user’s manual

Host-Roman-Goroshkin-PR-in-GameDev

Host: Roman Goroshkin, PR in GameDev

Youtube and Twitch are gradually replacing traditional media in terms of influence on the player and the formation of interest for the games.

But it’s not always easy to find a way to connect with the stars of these platforms.

We invited popular video-bloggers and streamers, which channels are very attractive for developers and their projects, to tell how to collaborate with them in a right way.

Artavazd-Muradyan-Igromania DevGAMM

Artavazd Muradyan,
Igromania

Denis “WELOVEGAMES” Korobkov

Richard-Useless-Mouth-Chirkin Devgamm

Richard “TheUselessMouth” Chirkin

Nikolay-Pixel-Devil-Gubanov Devgamm

Nikolay “Pixel_Devil” Gubanov

Yulia-Vakhrusheva-tinyBuild Devgamm

Yulia Vakhrusheva, tinyBuild

Kirill-Kalashnikov-General-Producer-DavayLayma Devgamm

Kirill Kalashnikov, DavayLayma

I’ve got my VR, now where’s the money?

Sergey-Galyonkin-Epic-Games DevGAMM

Host: Sergey Galyonkin, Epic Games

Oleg-Chumakov-Nival-Product-Manager DevGAMM

Host: Oleg Chumakov, Nival

Virtual Reality has been one of the hottest topics in tech and game worlds in the past couple of years. More devices are being developed that promise a huge breakthrough in the mass market. This discussion panel will gather experts in VR who are going to touch upon the future а VR market.

Antony-Douglas-Unity DevGamm

Antony Douglas,
Unity

Kirill-Udintsev-Gaijin Devgamm

Kirill Udintsev,
Gaijin

Andy-Hess-Epic-Games devGamm

Andy Hess,
Epic Games

Alexander-Lukichev-ARena DevGAMM

Alexander Lukichev, ARena

Yaroslav-Sivokhin-Fibrum DevGamm

Yaroslav Sivokhin, Fibrum

Alex-Zinchenko-Cerevrum-Inc DevGAMM

Alex Zinchenko,
Cerevrum Inc.

How much does narrative cost or how to count game story profit?

Whether there is going to be a story in your game or not the decision is up to you. Story, as well as any feature requires resources.

And often you are faced the question whether these resources are worth to invest. Will there be a return?

Will the time and effort spent on the production and implementation of the history of the game pay off?

Is it possible to predict financial results of the game, with the story or without?

During this discussion panel we dare to do the impossible to clash the harmony with algebra.

Maria-Kochakova-Narratorika DevGamm

Host: Maria Kochakova, Narratorika

Evgenii-Danilov-Devgamm

Evgeniy Danilov, Independent Expert

Evgeni Puzankov, Suricate Games

Alina-Brazdeikene-Creative-Mobile DevGAMM

Alina Brazdeikene, Creative Mobile

Alexey-Kolesnikov-Mail_ru DevGAmm

Alexey Kolesnikov, Mail.Ru Group

Special Events

“Play & Chat”

Iliya-Esaulov-GameShow devGamm

Host: Iliya Esaulov, GameShow

Host-Roman-Goroshkin-PR-in-GameDev

Host: Roman Goroshkin, PR in GameDev

Imagine a traditional discussion panel where experts talk about the state of game development.

Imagined? Sounds boring? We agree!

Down with banal discussion. It’s time to turn it into … a competition!

What is the competition in the gaming industry? eSports tournament, of course!

Game-show

Panel supported by GameShow

Leonid Sirotin, Independent Expert

Marina Goncharova,
101xp

Semyon Voynov,
Zeptolab

Roman Povolotskiy, 2RealLife

Valentin Merzlikin, Creative Mobile

Alexandra Pestretsova, My.com

Game Lynch

Game Lynch is a special event where your game is reviewed by an expert within 5 minutes in the most hilarious and blatant way possible!

Game-Lynch-Devgamm

Host: Alex Nichiporchik, tinyBuild

Jon Carnage,
Twitch

Rami-Ismail Vlambeer

Rami Ismail,
Vlambeer

Sergey-Galyonkin-Epic-Games DevGAMM

Sergey Galyonkin,
Epic Games

Chris Remo Campo Santo Devgamm

Chris Remo,
Campo Santo