Program
NB! The talks will take place in PINE Tool. All DevGAMM ticket holders will get access to the platform beforehand.
6 in-parallel stages
till 7 p.m. (GMT+3)
UX&UI
Pacing the Flow of Information in AAA Games: From the Open World of Horizon Zero Dawn, to the Sandbox That is Battlefield V
Ahmed Salama, Lead UI Software Engineer / UX Designer, DICE EA
Gameplay pacing is critical in deciding which information is presented to the player at any given moment, while he is playing. In this talk you will take home tools that can help you and your team pace the flow of information that is presented to your player.
Ahmed is an Egyptian Lead UI Generalist with 7+ years of experience in AAA games and 14+ years making UI. His work can be found in titles like Killzone: Shadow Fall, Horizon Zero Dawn, Battlefield V and Star Wars: Battlefront II
Interactive Cognitive Art – Envisioning Information of Complex Interfaces
Ivana Randelshofer, Lead UX Supervisor, Ubisoft Düsseldorf
A picture says more than thousand words, but data as information does not always speak for itself. This talk will take you on a journey to explore different methodologies on how to make complex data comprehensible by users and how to make context your best friend in order to empower players and helping them to make the right decisions.
Ivana Randelshofer is the Lead UX Supervisor at Ubisoft Düsseldorf and will share her experiences, both from the games industry as well as from her research background, on how to empower players with information and make their life a little bit easier when dealing with complex interfaces.
UX/UI Craft community
Anna Magieva, Lead UX Designer, King
Craft communities / unions as a successful system of organization and way of management have existed since ancient times. Anna will share how this idea was adapted to the realities of the modern game company at King. She will show how it was built step by step and what was achieved from both business and employees perspective. Also, Anna will give some practical tips on creating such a community.
Anna is a lead UX/UI designer with 15 years of experience in developing mobile and social games. She is responsible for reaching business goals through the best design solutions based on close collaboration with players. Currently, Anna works at King (Berlin Studio).
Designing Real-time Dashboards to support eSports spectating
Sven Charleer, Freelance UX, Dashboard, Dataviz R&D
One of the key challenges related to popular real-time eSports games (e.g., MOBAs and FPS) is empowering viewers to effectively follow rapid gameplay. In this talk I elaborate on our research findings and the design goals for creating dashboards that contribute to the eSports viewer’s experience.
Sven Charleer spent 10 years working as a software engineer and game developer, after which he pursued a PhD at the Human-Computer Interaction group at KU Leuven, Belgium. Today he is a lecturer and freelance designer, adviser and researcher, focused on data visualization, UX and video games.
What horse a player needs
Sofia Chebanova, UX Lab Manager, Wargaming
Sofia will share how to evaluate Game, Sound and UX Designer’s ideas using qualitative research and involvement of players. We will explore if player’s expectations meet developer’s one. Also you will know what else is important for players except victory.
Sofia Chebanova began in UX research in 2009. In 2012 she joined Wargaming. Since that she built a 19 people qualitative player research team, integrated player research in company’s game development lifecycle, constructed player research laboratory, conducted studies for WOT, WOT Blitz, Caliber.
Technology & Development
Solving the challenge of multiplayer games
Deepak (Sorcus) Chandrasekaran, VP of Product, Developer, Roblox
Alexander Simakhin, CEO, Drunken Monday LLC
When it comes to making multiplayer games, the stakes get high involving large teams and significant upfront costs, so few indie developers invest in such projects. VP of Product Deepak Chandrasekaran will explain how Roblox built its entire platform on making multiplayer experiences, and what the future of multiplayer games looks like.
As VP of Product, Developer at Roblox, Deepak (Sorcus) Chandrasekaran leads building and expanding the tools and technology that power the developer experience. Since joining Roblox in early 2011 he’s driven innovations in Roblox’s social ecosystem, avatar framework, and core user experience.
Alexander is CEO/Founder of indie game company, former tech lead at Techno Bears LTD and Destiny Development.
Huawei Mobile Services: Game Services
Ivan Zhigarkov, Developer Technical Support Engineer, Huawei AppGallery
Ivan will show cloud abilities of Huawei Mobile Services for game developers for Android platform. This section will cover step by step integration of Game Service into project source code and show its core features.
Ivan is a Developer Technical Support Engineer at Huawei company. More than 5 years in apps for Android OS development. Independent application developer at Google Play.
Smart bot behaviour in PvP fighting games. How we applied machine learning in Shadow Fight Arena
Alexander Shcherbakov, Lead Game Designer, Banzai Games
What are the challenges when applying machine learning methods in a fighting game? Which algorithms and special techniques are to be used? In this presentation Alexander will share his experience of using reinforcement learning when creating a bot in Shadow Fight Arena.
Alexander Shcherbakov has been working as a game designer at Banzai Games since 2014. There he was involved in the fighting games Shadow Fight 2, Shadow Fight 3. Currently Alexander is working on game design, analytics and AI development for Banzai’s new PvP game Shadow Fight Arena.
Artificial Intelligence based on Neural Network in Gamedev
Kirill Bravichev, Software Developer I, Sperasoft
Kirill will tell you what is meant by AI based on neural networks, what approaches currently exist and why they are good or bad from the viewpoint of the developer. He will also reflect on how neural networks can affect the gaming industry in the future.
Kirill Bravichev began his career as a game logic programmer on the World of Warships Legends project (Wargaming.Net), but in September 2019 he joined the Sperasoft Studio team as a software engineer. During this time, he managed to take part in several AAA projects of the company.
Console release: troubles, money, two devkits
Dmitriy Fokin, CEO, CarX Technologies
Dmitriy and Mikhael are going to talk about the lifecycle product on PS 4 (Pro) and XBox One (X) consoles. They will share an interesting experience of bringing the product to the console market via the self-publishing model: from the preparation of the build to the sales results of the first and second stages.
Dmitriy Fokin has more than 10 years of experience in gamedev. He has worked for CarX Technologies since 2016.
Code quality of game engines: is it really that bad?
George Gribkov, C++ Developer, PVS-Studio
We are looking for errors in program code for more than 10 years. Famous engines such as Unreal Engine 4, Unity 3D, Cry Engine, and even Amazon Lumberyard also fall under our scope. How many mistakes have we found in them? Spoiler – a lot! In my report I will show you real examples of C and C++ errors we found and how they could be avoided.
George is a C ++ developer at PVS-Studio, in which he is developing a static code analyzer. He is the author of articles and talks on the search for errors in various programs and computer games – for example, Vangers: One For The Road and VVVVVV.
Q&A session with Escape from Tarkov development team
Hosted by Valentin Simonov, Unity
Nikita Buyanov, COO, Battlestate Games
Georgy Lemeshko, Lead Programmer, Battlestate Games
Alexander Petersen, Lead 3D Artist, Battlestate Games
Alexander Kovalchuk, Lead Animator, Battlestate Games
Yuri Lebedev, Lead Backend Programmer, Battlestate Games
Unity Sessions
Adaptive User Interface – Using Device Simulator to Fireproof your UI
Chema Damak, Technical Evangelist, Unity Technologies
This session will showcase how to leverage the Device Simulator feature to reduce iteration time. An existing user interface will be adjusted to become more adaptive throughout various mobile device aspect ratios, using Unity UI and developing simple solutions with code.
Chema is a longtime gamer, armed with a computer science degree. She’s held numerous roles on games for different platforms for over seven years ago. Drawing on her passion for games, today Chema is a Unity evangelist based in Copenhagen, educating users and sharing her passion for Unity.
Automating game testing: War Robots experience
Eugene Demidenko, Senior Automation Developer, Pixonic
Testing the application for different devices is a meticulous process that takes up a lot of time. In this talk Eugene will share his experience making an automated game testing system, including a home-made framework based on NUnit, Unity Test Tools, and a manual testing data collection tool.
Eugene worked in game dev for 7 years. For the past 3 years he has been making the lives of QA specialists and developers at Pixonic a little bit easier with an automated testing system. The system allows them not to launch the app a dozen times to look for heisenbugs and regression tests.
Power to the Artists: The Evolution of 2D Game Tools
Rus Scammell, Technical Product Manager, 2D, Unity Technologies
Unity 2D toolset includes many new features for dynamic lighting, materials, shaders, and post-processing. Find out how to unlock these tools for big artistic and workflow gains.
Rus is a games technology generalist and he takes a holistic approach to game development. He builds 2D and 3D art, has a passion for interactive design and is always looking for better code architecture and production methods. He has been making games and game tools for more than 15 years.
Connecting ECS and MonoBehaviour Approaches in Enterprise Mobile Game Development
Aleksey Lukyanov, Lead Unity Developer, Azur Games
Aleksey will tell you how Azur Games combines the best features of ECS and MonoBehaviour approaches in game development. Visit the talk to learn what are the benefits of MonoBehaviour components for artists and designers, why ECS is so good for code production and how to combine both these features in one project.
Aleksey Lukyanov is working in game development for about 10 years specializing in digital interactive on Unity. In Azur Games he’s responsible for creating internal frameworks for implementing client logic in online action games. Works with ECS in development since 2018.
The Rendering of Pathologic 2
Andrew Saraev, Graphics Programmer, Ice-Pick Lodge
This talk explores rendering tricks used to create the open world of Pathologic 2 by Ice-Pick Lodge. It will show how Unity shader libraries can be altered to achieve dynamic GI and consistent atmospheric effects across indoor and outdoor locations and what other things can be done to extend the built-in deferred rendering pipeline.
Andrew Saraev is a Unity developer with an interest in graphics. He was the Lead Graphics Programmer on Pathologic 2 by Ice-Pick Lodge and did additional programming on Manifold Garden by William Chyr Studio.
Graphics debugger RenderDoc: breaking graphics down to the last detail
Sergey Kormishin, Rendering Engineer, CoreMission.net
The talk is about graphics in games for beginners: using RenderDoc graphical debugger. We are going to:
– break down frame captures from Unity and analyze it;
– find out what batching is and talk a little bit about rendering pipeline in Unity;
– learn how RenderDoc is useful for analysis.
Sergey Kormishin is a rendering engineer. He participated in the development of such games as Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, Rainbow Six: Siege, Assassin’s creed: Odyssey. Sergey is the editor of the gamedev section on CoreMission.net.
Static Analysis and Unity Projects: why and how
Viktoria Khanieva, C++ Developer, PVS-Studio
Any mistake in the game development process can be costly. There are many ways of minimising errors in the source code. One of the crucial steps of the code checking that often gets overlooked is the static analysis. In this talk Viktoria will show how you can integrate static analysis in the development process on Unity and why it matters.
Viktoria is responsible for the C++ analyzer and general-purpose diagnostics development at PVS-Studio. Took part in MISRA diagnostics development. Author of articles on Habr.
From junior/indie developer to middle+ (C#, Unity3d)
Eugen Dubovik, Lead programmer, DouDou Games
It’s about how to evolve in gamedev as a programmer. Why YouTube tutorials are bad and contain bad practices, what architecture paradigms are adopted in game dev, how to raise your skill.
Eugen Dubovik is a developer with programming experience of more than 3 years. He worked in such companies as Azur Games, Interactive Mult, RookOne Games, DouDou Games. His projects include King of Sails, Battle Royale, unannounced console RPG, Tropicmania.
Business & Marketing
Discussion Panel: Hypercasual. Look from inside - developer's perspective on achieving success
Hosted by Alina Gribanova, Boombit
Konstantin Boronenkov, CEO, Hypnocat Studio
Ilya Nikitin, CEO, Sila Games
Ivan Domankov, CEO, HighCore Games
Fireside Chat About Development, Publishing & Next-Gen Consoles
Randy Pitchford, founder, Gearbox Entertainment Company
Steve Gibson, president, Gearbox Publishing
Hosted by Alex Nichiporchik, tinyBuild
Randy Pitchford is a video game industry veteran of more than 20 years and founder of the award winning, best-selling video game developer Gearbox Software. Randy has created, developed, produced, directed, written, designed and otherwise driven or significantly contributed to some of the most successful and famous video game franchises of all time from leading the creation of the critically acclaimed, record breaking original franchises Borderlands and Brothers in Arms to building industry leading, genre defining games with licensed properties including Half-Life and Halo. From his first commercial, professional work on the infamous Duke Nukem video games in the mid-1990s to today’s efforts to create tomorrow’s hottest new video game franchises, Randy Pitchford has become one of the most impactful and respected video game developers in the world.
Steve Gibson, a Gearbox Software leader for more than a decade, is the president of Gearbox Publishing. Prior to this title, Gibson was Gearbox’s Head of Publishing and previously Gearbox Software’s Vice President of Marketing. Gibson led the launch of Gearbox Software’s publishing division in 2015 with the collector’s edition of Homeworld Remastered Collection. Before his tenure at Gearbox, Gibson was the founder and president of Shacknews.
Alex Nichiporchik founded tinyBuild in 2011 to make video games. The company has since then worked on games like SpeedRunners, Punch Club, Hello Neighbor, Party Hard, and more – in most of which Alex acts as a producer from the publishing side.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Kickstarter
Anya Combs, Director of Games, Kickstarter
Come learn the secrets behind running a successful Kickstarter from someone on the Kickstarter Games Team! We’ll talk about tips and tricks, look at what a projects did right, but most importantly you’ll learn how to be featured on Kickstarter.
Anya Combs is the Director of Games at Kickstarter. She has been in the digital games space for over a decade, overseeing multiple mobile and online titles launched for Nickelodeon & AddictingGames, and has worked with countless game creators launching successful projects on Kickstarter.
Grow your game with Google ad monetisation
Bogdina Buvaeva, Mobile App Consultant, Google
The talk will cover best practices for ad monetisation with Google AdMob: how to ensure your users are happy with ads, how to choose the best ad formats and make sure that you are making the most revenue with different ad networks. Also the talk with cover the basics of analytics necessary for success with ad monetisation.
Bogdina Buvaeva is Strategic Partner Manager at Google AdMob. Bogdina helps top growing developers to build successful and sustainable ad monetisation strategy. Before Google, Bogdina worked in innovations and startups industry in Moscow.
Why TikTok is a new black: gaming audience on the most dynamic platform of 2020
Stepan Slyusarev, Head of Global Business Solutions, Russia, TikTok
Stepan will focus on key advantages for gaming companies to boost their products and brands on TikTok, reflect on relevant segments of the platform’s audience and share the most inspiring cases and best practises of gaming clients.
Stepan leads sales and revenue growth of TikTok Ads in Russia & CIS since 2019. He has 11+ years of digital marketing and business development experience. Prior to TikTok, Stepan worked at Google, IBM and Httpool.
3 Facts you might not know about Gen Z
Tatiana Serganova, Commercial Strategist, Snapchat
The session will be focused on understanding Gen Z audience. It will provide insights on Gen Z behaviour on Snapchat, their attitude towards purchasers, their behaviour during COVID-19 pandemic. It will showcase successful cases of Snap kit integration, examples of the Ad creatives with the highest Eng rate/ CTR in the gaming vertical.
Tatiana Serganova is the Snapchat’s 1st employee who opened up Eastern Europe and CIS markets. She has Master Degree in Digital Marketing and 8 years of gaming advertising experience. Prior to Snapchat, Tatiana was a Digital Account Director at the largest agency, OMD UK.
Your successful launch with Google AC
Daria Bogdanova, Gaming Growth Manager, Google
In this session Daria will cover the key success factors of launching UA campaigns for mobile gaming apps with Google. Daria will cover , among others, measurement and creative best practices .
Daria Bogdanova is a Gaming Growth Manager at Google who helps high potential developers from Southern Europe and Russia scale their apps by providing user acquisition strategy and market insights. Daria got a Master ‘s Degree in Market Research at IE Business School (Madrid).
10 Must-Know Tips for Free-to-Play Game Distribution. The Case of Imperia Online
Mariela Tzvetanova, CMO / CBDO, Imperia Online JSC
The presentation reveals how companies like Imperia Online, Bytro and others from Stillfront Group have succeeded in brand diversification and what can be done to empower businesses to distribute more successfully their brands and stay ahead of the trends in this dynamic industry.
Mariela Tzvetanova is the CMO / CBDO at Imperia Online, one of the biggest game production companies in SEE, part of Stillfront Group, where she leads games successful presence in portals, platforms, social networks, messengers and telco apps. She has more than 10 years of professional experience.
World of Tanks Blitz: Breaking MAU and revenue records in just 6 years after the release
Aleksander Filippov, Lead Game Design, Wargaming
World of Tanks Blitz, like many other projects, faced a 3-year crisis. In the report I will try to tell how we overcame it. What specific approaches and solutions allowed us to return a positive trend, improve funnels and achieve new MAU and Revenue records.
A gamedev veteran who joined the industry in 2007 as a game designer. In 2015, settled at Wargaming in World of Tanks Blitz team dealing with a variety of tasks, including monetization, rating and training systems, tournaments, quests, clans and the matchmaker. In 2017, switched to the position of the lead of World of Tanks Blitz analytics unit. In 2018, turned back to game design, and since then has been combining the roles of game designer and unit lead.
iOS 13 and Covid-19 subscribtion impact - comparative analysis
Anna Baidachnaya, VP Sales EMEA, Braavo Capital
The session will show the main changes in the subscription monetization landscape. On 9/19/2019, Apple released iOS 13, and most of the subscription-based apps expected the significant change at the Conversion and Revenue metrics. We analyzed more than 500 applications working with Braavo and ready to share the actual data.
Anna is currently the VP Sales and Business EMEA for Braavo, a category-defining fin-tech company that provides flexible & highly scalable funding for mobile app businesses around the globe. Anna entered the mobile games industry in 2008 as an indie developer with a successful app series for kids.
Fireside Chat about investing in Russia
Michael Cheung, General Partner, Makers Fund
Alex Nichiporchik, CEO, tinyBuild
Michael is a partner at Makers Fund, a fund dedicated to investing in creators building the future of Gaming. He spent the last decade helping interactive entertainment companies grow and scale overseas to Asia, US and Europe. Makers has backed companies such as tinyBuild, Bossa Studios, Betadwarf, and FaceIT.
Alex Nichiporchik founded tinyBuild in 2011 to make video games. The company has since then worked on games like SpeedRunners, Punch Club, Hello Neighbor, Party Hard, and more – in most of which Alex acts as a producer from the publishing side.
The Art of Pitching a Game
Michael Schauble, Director of Business Development, tinyBuild
This talk will outline best practices for pitching your game to publishers. We will cover how to most successfully connect with and pitch your game to publishers.
Michael Schauble is Director of Biz Dev at tinyBuild. He has 10+ years experience in the games. 5 years at Xbox: Xbox Game Studios, ID@Xbox, Game Pass. Responsible for content acquisition, negotiations, and partner relationships.
Creating your PR Plan: 5 steps to get coverage
Kirill Perevozchikov, Director, White Label PR
Need a PR plan to launch your game on PC and consoles? We got you covered. You will receive a clear & tested 5-step process on how to plan your PR campaign. We’ll go into detail on you should research your competition, define your USPs, plan according to your game production schedule, and keep your target audience in mind.
Kirill is a director of White Label PR, a global PR agency with offices in Los Angeles and Hamburg working with gaming publishers like THQ Nordic, Deep Silver, tinyBuild, MY.GAMES, Wargaming and others.
Analytics
Live data panel: lead analysts vs real game data
Vasiliy Sabirov, Head of Analytics, devtodev
Konstantin Kochurov,
Analyst, devtodev
Georgii Steshenko,
Data Analyst, Remedy Entertainment
Vasiliy Shushval, Director of analytics, KamaGames Studio
Live data panel: lead analysts vs real game data
Vasiliy Sabirov, Head of Analytics, devtodev
Lead analysts from different game studios will get the real game data and together will explore it, looking for insights, problems and points of growth. Analysts will create hypothesis how could games increase their KPI based on real data.
Vasiliy Sabirov, head of analytics at devtodev, 9 years in analysis of games.
Fireside chat: Q&A session about Live Ops in mobile and AAA game development
Fawzi Mesmar, Head of Design, EA DICE
Vasiliy Sabirov, Head of Analytics, devtodev
Fawzi Mesmar and Vasily Sabirov will talk about what Live Ops is, how it works in different companies and across various markets (Europe, USA, Asia, CIS), and the difference in approach to Live Ops between mobile and AAA gaming.
Fawzi Mesmar has 17 years on industry experience in the Middle East, New Zealand, Japan to Europe working for companies like DICE (EA), King (Activision Blizzard) and Atlus Ltd to name a few. Previous work includes entries in Battlefield, Persona and Candy Crush franchises.
Vasiliy Sabirov, head of analytics at devtodev, 9 years in analysis of games.
1001 events: launching tracking for the project
Georgii Steshenko, Data Analyst, Remedy Entertainment
Nowadays, looking at just high-level metrics is no longer enough to successfully launch f2p game. It is necessary to analyze in detail the various actions of players in order to operatively make decisions to improve the project. In his report, Georgii will share his experience in creating a tracking design for launching mobile f2p games.
Georgii Steshenko was involved in analytics on a variety of projects, ranging from the F2P shooter Halo Online for PC to casual Magic Jigsaw Puzzles on mobile platforms.
User segmentation, RFM analysis or "fishing dialogue"
Kate Nagornaya, Analyst, Belka Games
In this talk user segmentation will be explained by total payments, by payment history (frequency and quantity). We will talk about minnows, dolphins and whales, interpretation of their data and how their behaviors can be different.
Kate Nagornaya is a Game Analyst in Belka Games (Funky Bay project). She has 4 years of game analysis experience (kids, match-3, simulations, and many other genres). Now she is working with the fastgrowing project, farm with adventure experience.
Let’s Work Together! How to improve your game with your players. Cooking Diary Case.
Igor Petrov, CRO, MYTONA
Everyone knows that creating a good product worth a lot of effort. But few people think that behind the game improvements always lies a players’ opinion.
MYTONA will talk about constant improvement of the game and how to reach top grossing charts thanks to the close relationship with the players.
I am working at MyTona, as a Chief Revenue Officer.
Steam Report - 2019 in Graphs & Diagrams
Dmitry Krause, Game Analyst, HeroCraft
This session will provide an analysis of the biggest changes that happened to Steam in 2019 and their effects on indie game developers. Topics covered: the pace of Steam’s audience growth compared to the increasing number of releases, impact of reviews on sales, best pricing strategy for an indie title and much more.
Dmitry Krause has been working as a games marketing manager at HeroCraft for the last 5 years, with the last 2 years dedicated to market analysis, as well as research related to indie PC games and their performance.
Case: having extremely many A/B tests at one time and being ok with them
Vladimir Sankov, Product analyst, Crazy Panda
At Crazy Panda we are trying to keep up the status of data driven company. That is why we are carefully testing every step we take. At some point analysts can no longer manage that amount of AB-tests by themselves. Vladimir will tell about how we have handled this.
At Crazy Panda Vladimir is working since april 2019, developing projects like World Poker Club and The Household. His major responsabilities are improving monetization, mainly through personal offers system, and setupping AB-tests.
Analysis and improvement of in-game events
Oleg Medved, Live Ops Manager, Plarium
Oleg will tell you at what stage it is necessary to start thinking about analytics and how to write a description of the task correctly. What types of analysis are universal, and where is an individual approach needed. What decisions are made based on the analysis and what happens after that.
Oleg is a gamer and producer with many years of experience. For him, it has become a habit to open any game and look at it from a professional point of view, searching for what can be improved, even if it’s just an evening session for pleasure.
How I switched from telecom to game analytics and what i understood
Amir Omarov, Lead Game Analyst, WhaleApp
The main differences in approaches for analytics and what you need to be prepared for, when you radically changing directions.
Amir Omarov, Game Analytics Team Lead. Began career in analytics more than 5 years ago. During this time, managed to work as an analyst in such areas as banking, ecommerce, consulting, telecom and finally, gamedev.
"Whales" in free-to-play games
Vasiliy Shushval, Director of analytics, KamaGames Studio
We will talk about the highest paying users in free-to-play games. How they appear, what benefits they bring, how to count them without messing up the analytics, and how to make sure we treat our “whales” well.
New approach to reach core audience by psychology
Aleksandr Odaynik, CMO, humanteq.io
The session will focus on application of a new approach in user aquisition based on psychological segmentation using Facebook Ads and Google Ads as an example. How to collect data, process and obtain segments that can be used to UA with cases demonstration.
Alexander Odainik has over 10 years of experience in analytics and marketing. He worked in gamedev companies such as Game Insight, Awem Games, etc. At the moment, he leads the mobile direction at humanteq.io
Game Design & Narrative
Open world level design
Pascal Luban, Game designer & creative director
Open world games offer a unique challenge to designers: the level design of the map is a central feature of the player’s experience, not the game system.
In this detailed talk, Pascal Luban will cover the key issues a design team must address when planning their open world.
Pascal works as game designer since 1995 for studios and publishers like Activision, SCEE and Ubisoft. He was lead game designer on Alone In The Dark – The New Nightmare and lead Level designer on the multiplayer versions of both Splinter Cell – Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory.
Prototyping as a key game design instrument
Dmitry Pimenov, Producer, Banzai Games
This talk will focus on different advices on how to iterate your gameplay prototypes and use them for game design devision-making. The session will explore various techniques, common pitfalls and some instruments from a perspective of a new project of Banzai Games studios.
Dmitry Pimenov is a producer at Banzai Games which is a main developer of Nekki games. Dmitry participated as a Producer and Game Designer in Shadow Fight series and is working currently on a prototype of a new action project.
Rules of Engagement
Steve Thornton, Sperasoft
This talk is a deep-dive into Steve’s techniques and “rules” for engaging the player, with case studies from projects Steve has personally contributed to as well as some of his favorite games and this year’s releases – how to keep the player thinking, and training them to interact with your game the way you want
Steve Thornton has 10 years of experience in gaming industry – including design credits in many of the LEGO games and co-development contributions to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey during his time with Sperasoft, a Keywords studio based in Saint Petersburg
In search of the meaning of games
Yaroslav Kravtsov, R&D Manager, DevGAMM
Maximal level of video games deconstruction for the searching of the meaning why we play games. Why we love some games while in other games we lose interest very quickly. Main goal is to find key elements that can bring and keep players in our games on practice. Exapmle of the fundomental approach to the game design.
Yaroslav Kravtsov presence in game industry since 2007. He has worked in G5, Mail.ru Games and as indie developer. Most know games: Allods Online, Skyforge, Armored Warfare, Message Quest. In the present time he is R&D Manager in DevGAMM and new media artist.
Eight useful approaches to creating your characters
Alexander Ginzburg, Senior Game Writer, Lazy Bear Games
The session will demonstrate eight useful templates that can be used in order to create the protagonist, the antagonist, NPCs, or even mobs fast and effectively. They have stemmed from literature, theatre and cinema writing practice and were adapted for game writers’ needs.
Alexander works in game development since 2014. His projects include commercial role-playing quests (Questoria), RPG-survival Day R (tltGames), “lazy RPG” Swag and Sorcery and RPG-tycoon Graveyard Keeper (Lazy Bear Games). He executed functions of the main game scriptwriter, narrative designer and quest-designer.
How to work on problems in game design, and why it is vital. Experience of Taonga project
Artem Anisin, Game Design Jedi
“Taonga: The Island farm” is one of the most perspective games on the Facebook platform. Artem will be talking about funny and sad real stories that happened during project production. How these issues were solved and, most importantly, what conclusions were made from a game design perspective.
Artem Anisin started the career as a game designer in 2012 in Drimmi. He has worked in small indie teams and big companies like Game Insight. Artem was in charge of whole game design on Taonga: The island farm and currently provides consulting on game design.
Narrative Designer's Work Pipeline and Practicalities
Barisbi Alborov, Narrative Designer & Game Writer
The session will focus on the practical side of narrative design, diving deep into the work process and specific tasks facing narrative designers, as well as common problems and possible conflicts they might encounter at different stages of the development cycle.
Barisbi Alborov is a narrative designer and game writer, as well as an author of a series of educational articles on narrative design and game development. He is best known for his work on the narrative puzzle game “The X-Files: Deep State”, and has rich experience developing other projects.
Game Design Review
Within a few one-hour sessions, experienced experts will show and tell what is wrong with several pre-selected games. They will dissect features, point out the untapped potential of the metagame and / or monetization, tell about other shortcomings. So that the feedback remains constructive, experts will offer options for solving these problems.
10:00 – 11:00 – Spaceship Commander & Artyom Volkov
11:15 – 12:15 – Jumpy Quads & Anna Kersar
12:30 – 13:30 – Broken Lines & Serge Himmelreich
15:00 – 16:00 – Orange Cast & Artyom Volkov
16:15 – 17:15 – The Darkest Red & Irina Burylina
17:30 – 18:30 – Blocks Racing & Sviatoslav Torik
Panel Discussion: Retention without HR. Project Managers and Producers are on the case
Talent Management
Alina Mudraya, CEO, Values Value
Eugene Sudak, Head of Game Design, Pixonic
Alexander Shtachenko, Product Owner, GamePoint
Dmitry Kuratnik, Game Producer, Gismart
Anna Faryna, Chief People Officer, Vizor Games
We have not only cookies – employees retention stories
Sergey Volkov, HR Director, 1C Entertainment
Sergey will tell you how to effectively build work so that cooperation is long and productive, and what to do if a letter of resignation is already on the table.
Sergey Volkov is HR Director of 1C Game Studios and 1C Entertainment. Before that, he worked in consulting for 13 years, 6 of them – headed the gamedev department in Spice It, helping studios around the world with the selection of employees.
Game Industry Salary Report 2020: Insights and New Data
Alina Mudraya, CEO, Values Value
Roman Vasyliev, Co-founder, CEO inGame Job
Based on the results of the Game Industry Salary Report 2020, Alina and Roman will talk about game professionals’ wages depending on the country, age, experience, profession and many other factors.
CEO at Values Value, the recruitment company, an expert at hiring game development talents. Alina has been working in HR and recruitment for more than eight years, four of them in the game industry. Alina loves the game industry for its sincerity and openness.
CEO and co-founder of inGame Job, the platform with all the game industry jobs. He has been working in project and product management for 10 years, 5 of them in the gaming industry. A born analyst, loves working with data and statistics.
MYTONA Heroes: How to Make a Team of Achievers
Lena Timofeeva, HR director, MYTONA
In this presentation you will learn about the development of specialists at MYTONA, which projects and features mytonians create for their teams, and the details about the internal project MYTONA Heroes which became the winner at the first gamedev HR Awards.
Lena started as a development engineer, and 7 years ago moved to HR. She was a recruiting lead at MYTONA since 2017, and recruited over 500 specialists for Seekers Notes, Cooking Diary, Ravenhill, Riddleside, Manastorm. A year ago Lena became the HR director, currently overseeing all team-related aspects.
Onboarding as a competitive advantage
Anna Farino, Chief People Officer, Vizor Games
This talk will show you how to customize the onbording for the company. Where in the process you can add elements of gamification. And how to keep it alive with a minimum budget.
Anna Farino has been developing as a community manager at Vizor Games for 5 years. She knows and remembers how they also did the social “Zombie Island” and “Klondike”. She felt natural between the development team and the crowd of players. Now she is working as a Chief People Officer.
Coaching as a tool for employee retention
Oksana Afonina, Business Coach
The session will provide an overview of current best practices and use cases of coaching in a business setting. You’ll learn about criteria for hiring coaches for your teams, insights about internal coaching programmes at Google and Facebook, as well as some cases of employee retention and engagement from Oksana’s practice.
Oksana Afonina is an accredited business coach for professionals in tech and gaming industries. For the past 10 years she worked on partnerships with game developers at Google, Facebook and AppLovin.
How to make benefits work
Galina Tokareva, COO, Perk Card
This talk will focus on global and regional bonuses and benefits trends. Why only 11 percent of respondents told their rewards systems were highly aligned with their organizational goals, and 23 percent reported that they did not know what rewards their workers value?
Galina Tokareva is HR Tech startup co-founder. 8 years in IT and HR. Worked in different companies from startup to corporations. She has managed remote global team from Siberia to San-Francisco. ICF-certified coach.
Creating company synergy for emploees' retention
Dmitry Shubeykin, Deus Craft
Game development is an industry where without fun there is no product. To create fun you need to create a safe environment using the principles of non-violent communication, bring the conceptual apparatus of all participants to the same, while maintaining freedom of expression and diversity of the team composition.
Dmitry Shubeykin – Top Manager with more than 10 years of experience in various positions at Deus Craft. He implemented the company’s global changes with the development of the team and staff. With the help of a systematic approach to managing changes, the company achieved and increased profitability.
Mix
Broadcast: About live streams in simple words
Aliaksandr Razuvalau, Broadcast Lead, Wargaming
Dmitriy Zhukov, Video Engineer, Wargaming
Why do we keep searching where nothing can be found? At times, we strive to astonish the audience with breathtaking, Hollywood-ish VFX and out-of-the-box stories while the audience’s simple need to get information via communication slips our mind completely. And for the latter purpose, nothing can beat live streams.
Aliaksandr and Dmitriy will discuss:
- Types of live streams, their strong sides and downsides;
- Broadcasting. The evolution of streaming;
- Why it is important to amuse the viewer sometimes, and how live streams can help with it;
- The devil in the details (as exemplified by big assets);
- Appetite comes with eating, or Why the client is sometimes wrong;
- Process transparency, estimation issues and labor costs.
With 7 years’ experience in gamedev under his belt, Aliaksandr joined Wargaming back in 2013 as a video editor and today is spearheading the broadcast team. Among other achievements he was a speaker at CG Event in 2017 and 2018, was on the team behind World of Tanks AR Spectate, as well as lead the Rapid Production team within Wargaming’s in-house creative agency. His team created the World of Tanks Action Star project that was on the AME Awards shortlist and also won Gold MarCom Award.
Joined Wargaming over 7 years ago as a video editor. Later, took charge of the Video Editing Team. Today is into the development of live streaming as one of the most demanded formats that helps deal with all sorts of tasks, from presentations to teleconferences to large-scale projects such as Stream of the Year and WG Fest. In this role, Dmitriy has also tackled outstanding challenges such as enabling video communication with the ISS crew.
The Art of the Pitch Deck
Christopher Wulf, Publishing Director, Those Awesome Guys
Alan Dang, Producer, Genvid Technologies
This session will focus on the key elements that need to be included if you are sending your pitch deck to a publisher or similar. The talk will touch on the construction, content and more!
Christopher Wulf is the publishing director for Romanian publisher Those Awesome Guys, the developer behind the friendship-ruining party game ‘Move or Die’ and publisher of monster-dating game ‘Monster Prom’. In his previous career path, Christopher has seen the other side of the spectrum, having worked as developer relations manager for the Indie MEGABOOTH – organizing and curating showcases and standalone trade shows across the Western hemisphere.
Alan Dang is a Producer at Genvid Technologies, working with a variety of independent studios on interactive streaming experiences. His game development experience has spanned console, mobile, VR, and Arcade games from launch titles on the Oculus Quest to Killer Queen Arcade.
Management Approaches to Localization. The Case of Stronghold Kingdoms
Mark Barney, Vice-President of Operations, Firefly Studios
Localization is one of the most important ways to engage with fans and find new markets for our games. In this talk an American polyglot will share his experiences managing localization in the games industry and help inform teams both small and large how they can manage their costs while delighting their customers.
Mark Barney is the Vice-President of Operations at Firefly Studios, makers of the internationally renowned Stronghold series. In his nine years at the studio he has overseen the production, design, and live operations of their successful MMORTS title, Stronghold Kingdoms and its transition to mobile.
Sound design for live streams and teleconferences
Yuriy Ocheretyanyy, Sound Designer, Wargaming
In his talk Yuri will take a deep dive into:
- Sound processing and mastering;
- Vocal processing techniques (automixer, equalizer, compressor);
- Audio-to-video synchronization;
- Coding and processing settings in various software environments.
With 10 years’ experience in game industry, Yuriy has spent 7 of them at Wargaming working as a sound designer in a video team. In this role, he operates live streams, acting as the sound designer and orchestrating the interaction between all participants of the stream, both technically and organizationally. Among other projects, Yuriy contributed to a variety of Wargaming live streams, including Stream of the Year, Tanker’s Day, WG Fest, Blitz Twister Cup, and the annual live streams with developers and bloggers. He also was behind the WGTV Voiceover project which was presented at WGDC 2016.
Viewer-centric design for eSports and interactive game streams
Christopher Hamilton, Developer Relations, Genvid Technologies
This session will explore how developers can directly address their viewing audience by designing optimized experiences for spectators. Starting with examples in eSports, the speaker will explore new forms of engagement, monetization and experiences that become possible, leading to entirely new games and potential audiences.
Christopher works in developer relations for Genvid Technologies. Since 2007, he has worked for Nevosoft, Playcademy, GameHouse, and Rovio. He serves on the boards of the IGDA and the Finnish Game Jam and regularly serves as a judge and mentor.
Hardware, software and settings for game developers to start making YouTube videos
Oleg Pridiuk, Developer Relations
Producing great videos is actually hard, but the entry barrier for “good enough” videos in the context of game development is low enough for this talk to make sense. The talk assumes you’re low on budgets and time =]
Oleg has been in developer relations for 11 years at companies like Unity and King. He is now an independent consultant who designs and executes devrel programs as a service.
Tale about infinite crunch. Project DeepWeb development story
Andrew Kokhan, CEO, NightCat Studios
The session will focus on the development history of Project DeepWeb, problems and experiences of team, mistakes and results of 2 years of development.
Andrew is a game director and filmmaker, founder and head of NightCat Studios (earlier NightCat Games). He has worked on Project DeepWeb game as game director, programmer, soundtrack composer, and live-action cutscenes director.
LiveOps Masterclass with Minecraft
Gama Aguilar-Gamez, Principal PM – Minecraft Marketplace, Microsoft
Thomas Gutschmid, Principle Program Manager Lead, Microsoft
Chris Casanova, Microsoft
In this talk, learn how Team Minecraft uses the building blocks of Azure PlayFab to customize their LiveOps and analytics strategy to support their growing player base around the world.
Program Manager at Mojang for the past 2 years, previously ran the Minecraft in-game Marketplace, lead the production of Realms Plus and previously worked on multiple products in Office and Windows over the prior 11 years.
Thomas has worked on video games for over decade with a good chunk of that time building technology and platforms for game developers. He has had the lucky opportunity to work on a slew of amazing games and projects such as Sea of Thieves, Crackdown, Playfab, Minecraft, Fable, Xbox Live and Killer Instinct. Today he’s charting a course forward for LiveOps in Xbox’s Game Developer Experience group.
Producer at Mojang Studios currently running the Mojang Studios Live Operations team over the past year. Previously led the Minecraft Marketplace services team and worked across several divisions of Microsoft including Xbox Global Publishing and Enterprise Services and Support where he contributed to the likes of GTA V, The Witcher 3, COD: IW, Halo 5, and now Minecraft.
Art & Visuals
How to upgrade the look of the characters and win even more audience love
Aleksandr Yudin, Art Director, Belka Games
Let’s talk about how to completely update the graphics in the game (Clockmaker), in particular, the characters. How to maintain and increase the love of the audience and how to maintain a new level of quality and style.
Alexander began his career in game development in 2011 with the position of 2D artist in the Melsoft company.
He joined Belka Games in 2018 as a character artist. Six months later, he became an Art Lead on the Clockmaker project, and from mid-2019 he began to act as Art Director.
Fight scene production
Vasiliy Rozhkov, Senior Animator, Sperasoft
We will talk how to create short fight scene. We will discuss editing, composition, a bit choreography and how to make your scene great.
Vasiliy Rozhkov makes games for 8 years, but his career as animator has started 4 years ago with Jingliks. Now he is working at Sperasoft for more than 3 years and took part in several projects like Anthem, Injustice and Rainbow six.
Concept Art trends – The future of the gaming and film industries pipeline
Viktor Manin, CEO & Art-director, Anvil Frame Studio, Scream School
We’ll talk about how the concept artist’s pipeline has changed over the past few years, about Unreal Engine, realtime rendering, VR. About the skills that modern industries require from the artists and why the concept artist now is not just about “hand-painting”.
10+ years experience in film and game industries. Art Director, Director, CEO / Co-founder of Anvil Frame Studio.
Worked on Warface, Lost Ark, Breathedge, Life is Feudal: MMO, Another World VR, etc.
Curator of the Concept Art program at Scream School / Universal University.
Physically Based workflow в 3ds Max/Maya – Substance
Alexander Getman, technical specialist, Autodesk
Let’s take a look at ways to bake textures in 3ds MAX, namely: baking shading network into PBR material and exporting to FBX, correctly baking MikkT normals, baking lighting. Also, we go through Substance plugin for 3ds Max and Maya.
Alexander’s career in the CG industry began in 2001. Alexander modeled and prepared for the animation of 3D characters for full-length animated. For the past 10 years, he worked as a CG supervisor at Trehmer Studio, where they made graphics for commercials, feature films and TV screensavers.
Game Studies
Discussion Panel: How business and science coexist in the gaming industry
Hosted by Alexander Mezin
Alexander Zezyulin, Wargaming
Yuri Krasilnikov, Belka Games
Alexander Lenkevich, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
Alexander Vetushinskiy, Lomonosov Moscow State University
Arseniy Deriglazov, Freelance / FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg
Handmade Pixels: Indie and the Quest for making smaller, newer, and more authentic Games
Jesper Juul, Video game theorist, Royal Danish School of Design
How can a video game on a small budget stand out? Through a new history of the independent game festivals from 1998 to 2020, I will show three strategies for making *authentic* games. These strategies show how to combine production, design, and marketing to make an independent game stand out in the world.
Jesper Juul is an influential video game researcher. He has worked as a game designer, programmer, and developed some of the world’s leading game educations at MIT, New York University, and IT University Copenhagen. His fourth book Handmade Pixels was published MIT Press in 2019.
A Brief History of Game Studies
Alexander Vetushinskiy, Research fellow, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Sberbank Gamification Lab
Game Studies is a scientific discipline that exploring video games. In his talk Alexander Vetushinskiy explores, how it came to be, what questions does it answer and what are its uses in game development.
Alexander Vetushinskiy is a research fellow in Lomonosov Moscow State University (Faculty of Philosophy), expert at Sberbank Gamification Lab, lecturer in Higher School of Economics (Game Design and Virtual Reality) and Institute of Business and Design (Game Design).
Science in search of "useful" game design
Olga Morozova, Research associate, Institute of Psychology of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow Game Center
Scientists have long tried to use video games for a variety of tasks, from teaching children to the treatment of trauma and testing of IQ. They succeed often, but not always. From Olga’s report you will learn why games work and don’t work, how scientists test the “usefulness” of a video game and how they hone recipes for “useful” game-design.
Olga Morozova specializes in cognitive science. She is a researcher at IPRAN, a member of Moscow Game Center, and a member of expert council for the development of esports at the State Duma. She runs a blog “Igrologia”, where she talks about research on video games.
Narrative Designers Hate Him: How to Write Great Stories Using This One Weird Trick
Arseniy Deriglazov, Narrative Designer, Games Researcher, Freelance, FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg
Are narrative theory and the practical reality of narrative design hopelessly divorced from each other? How far apart are they now, and is there any way to bridge the gap? This talk will explore the divide, provide a primer on video game narratology and contrast it with case studies from story development on Pathfinder: Kingmaker and other titles.
Arseniy Deriglazov started out as a narrative designer in Owlcat Games. Most recently he’s lead the narrative & quest design team in Enplex Games. He’s also been a game researcher since 2012, giving talks at science conferences (Geek Picnic, DiGRA) and teaching narrative design at university level.
More Than Just A Tool: The Proper Definition of Gamification
Alexander Vetushinskiy, Research fellow, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Sberbank Gamification Lab
Gamification has been actively used for more than ten years. During this time, gamification was criticized more than once, but each time it returned in a new improved guise. In the session I will examine how gamification should be understood in the context of modern realities (both in business and in academia).
Alexander Vetushinskiy is a research fellow in Lomonosov Moscow State University (Faculty of Philosophy), expert at Sberbank Gamification Lab, lecturer in Higher School of Economics (Game Design and Virtual Reality) and Institute of Business and Design (Game Design).
Haptivism. Technics of the Body in Computer Games
Alina Latypova, researcher, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
Alexander Lenkevich, vice-head, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
Computer games as a part of culture suggest a variety of practices of gamer’s body organisation, its assemblage, discipline, construction. Still they suppose zones of resistance to normalisation through experiments (from speedrunning to performances, etc.). Such hacking of the emerging corporeal schemes is analysed through the concept “haptivism”.
Alina Latypova is a researcher of the Laboratory for Computer Games Research and a scientific collaborator at the Centre for Media Philosophy (St. Petersburg).
Alexander Lenkevich is a vice-head of the Laboratory for Computer Games Research, an organizer of the Laboratory scientific and research seminar and a scientific collaborator at the Centre for Media Philosophy (St. Petersburg).
Media Philosophy and Game Studies. Brief Introduction
Alexander Lenkevich, vice-head, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
The aim of media philosophy is to understand how media form our experience. Media philosophy allows to compare games with other media and reveal their specificity (interactivity/interpassivity, computability/incomputability, immersion/distance, etc.). During the speech, the basic notions and theses, connected with games research, will be presented.
Alexander Lenkevich is a vice-head of the Laboratory for Computer Games Research, an organizer of the Laboratory scientific and research seminar and a scientific collaborator at the Centre for Media Philosophy (St. Petersburg).
Any Questions?
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