The first DevGAMM event in 2021 took place on May 12-14, again in the online format.
This time, we beat all records: over 3,800 attendees have registered for the conference! We had 109 speakers and 201 game submissions from 37 countries across all the event activities. Let’s see how it all went!
Sessions and Workshops
At DevGAMM Spring 2021, we hosted ten themed tracks, including our first-ever tracks on Community management, Project management, and in collaboration with Values Value – Talents & Ethics track.
Sessions were delivered by such celebrity speakers as narrative designer Rhianna Pratchett, Steam’s business team, Stuart Macdonald from Remedy Entertainment, Marc Lericolais from Douze Dixiemes, Jamie Smith from Sumo Digital, Bálint Varga from The Wild Gentlemen, and lots of others.
Overall, the three stages of our online conference have seen speakers from Google, Wargaming.net, Xsolla, Belka Games, Voodoo, tinyBuild, MY.GAMES, Pixonic, G5 Games, Kefir, ironSource, and dozens of other game companies and studios.
Sponsors ran additional activities at their virtual booths within the Industry Expo. Guys from tinyBuild, Wargaming, Alawar, RoasUp, Values Value, InGame Job engaged in live discussions with attendees, held workshops, and even listened to game pitches.
Roundtables gathered up to 10 industry professionals for burning topic discussions. In total, we had 10 roundtables in three days where people talked about publishers on Steam, f2p game launch, future of gamedev, LiveOps, and other things. Among the moderators were experts from Pixonic, PSV Game Studio, META Publishing, Belka Games, and other companies.
Game activities
Developers presented more than 100 different games at Virtual Showcase. The attendees had a chance to check out materials about new projects and have a live chat with their makers.
Every day, we held Review Sessions in Game Design, Marketing, and Art. Experts in the relevant fields analyzed new projects and suggested ways to make them better.
For three conference days, bloggers showed 90 new games at the Streaming Showcase. Among the streamers who joined the event and streamed games on their Twitch and YouTube channels were Amiko-сhan, Ruslan_maybe, Mr Holodilnick, and several more thanks to the support of HypeFactory: MJRAMON, Noizen, Rubendahause, and k_i_r_a.
We had a live final of the Public Pitch competition preceded by 4 qualifying rounds that took place in April and May. Experts from Bossa Studios, remote control production, Those Awesome Guys, and tinyBuild watched the revised presentations of projects and determined the winner: the developers of Eonica Chess Battle from StandArts studio.
Networking and Employment
Traditionally, all the business meetings were held in PINE. We’ve added to the platform’s Publisher Cafe section the contact details of 30+ most active publishers and investors eager to discover new games.
Random Networking was organized with the support of Skillbox, where attendees had 5-minute calls with a randomly picked person.
We also held two Speed Game Dating tracks divided into mobile and desktop. Developers and publishers had a chance to find each other randomly, introduce themselves, and continue the talk in a regular video call. Publishers from Buka Entertainment, Creative Mobile, Nordcurrent, Kefir, G5 Entertainment, and others took part in the activity.
The conference attendees had access to the Career Wall placed on InGame Job portal where they could discover new job opportunities. It featured over 150 job vacancies at tinyBuild, Wargaming, Vizor, Melsoft, Belka Games, MYTONA, and other companies.
Parties
On the first conference day, we gave our own online party in Party.Space’s stylish nightclub space. And on the last day of the event, Games Industry Gathering held a 12-hour party that gathered gamedev representatives from all over the world!
It was the first time in 18 months that DevGAMM threw an offline party. It took place on May 15 in Moscow and gathered more than 300 people who were happy to reunite with their old friends and make new ones. See the photos from DevGAMM Moscow Party on our Facebook page.
Live streams
DevGAMM Spring 2021 became the first event where we had three live stream collaborations with three different game media: Igromania, DTF, and Disgusting Men. The first two were sponsored by Ten Square Games and tinyBuild.
During live streams, hosts talked with developers of more than 50 games presented at the conference, went over gameplay, and engaged in discussions with sponsors and the DevGAMM team. Altogether, Twitch and YouTube streams collected over 150,000 views in three days!
DevGAMM Awards
In keeping with the best traditions, online DevGAMM Awards ceremony became the conference’s grand finale. More than 100 game industry experts voted for the best projects! This time, we had 23 games from 17 countries nominated in 8 categories, and a $40,000 prize money brought by the sponsors tinyBuild, Xsolla, Green Grey, and GEM Capital, was shared among the winners.
The Grand Prize, as well as Best Desktop Game title, went to the developers from EXOR Studios for The Riftbreaker. The project Until We Die developed by Pixeye Games won as the Best Indie Game.
Credits
Our special thanks for the support of DevGAMM Spring event goes to our sponsors and partners: Unreal Engine, Voodoo, tinyBuild, Xsolla, Unity, Wargaming, Ten Square Games, Belka Games, MYTONA, Green Grey, GEM Capital, Melsoft, Alawar, WhisperGames, Skillbox, G-Core Labs, RoasUp, HypeFactory, Strategic Music, PINE, Values Values, InGame Job, NIKO Firm, Bombora.
Thanks to all of you who attended the conference. Thank you for staying with us online. We are happy that there are so many of you. We love you and can’t wait to meet you again, no matter how and where 🤍
DevGAMM team
