Develop:Brighton

A brisk guide to Develop:Brighton 2021

We hope the sun is shining on this year’s Develop:Brighton for its return to the seaside. However, given it’s late October we wouldn’t bet on it. The silver lining to those presumed clouds is that it’ll give you more time to see more of the conference.

There’s so much great information to absorb at this year’s event that compiling this list was tricky. Everyone has their own specialty and interests, so tastes will differ but we’ve concentrated on forward-looking talks from interesting perspectives. Here’s our top ten highlights.

THE KEYNOTES

You really shouldn’t miss any of these, and that comes from a person who has overcome the traditional Thursday morning hangover to not only attend but actually host one of the things. All this year’s keynotes are essentials (and all in Room 2).

Debbie Bestwick will be kicking things off at 9.45 on Tuesday morning, speaking about her 30 years at Team17. With that day finishing on a bang too with a Fireside Chat with Insomniac’s Ted Price at 17.45.

Mike Bithell’s panel of indie creators will launch Wednesday by discussing creativity, again at 9.45. With that day’s finale being the brilliant Lorne Lanning and Bennie Terry III discussing the creation of Oddworld: Soulstorm. And we can testify that’s not a story to be missed.

TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY

Orthors Story: Running a Black Owned Games Studio What’s Next for the UK Games Industry? 3D Audio in Games: What, Where, Why and How?

11.00 - 11.45, Room 2 11.00 - 11.45, Room 2 11.15 - 12.00, Room 5

FROM players to creators, Orthors will be diving into the key aspects faced when making their games - from figuring out how to develop a game with no coding experience, to watching their game being published on the Apple App store. This talk is a rare opportunity to hear from and ask questions about a truly diverse studio in the UK. THE KEYNOTE has ended, so pop to the loo and then sit right back down. Jo Twist remains one of the UK industry’s most passionate voices. Things have been in turmoil over the last 18 months, and if anyone is going to do a great job of taking stock of all that in a single talk it’s Twist. A BIG THING from the new generation of consoles has been support for 3D audio formats for unparalleled sonic immersion. In this talk PlayStation’s Cal Armstrong will explain the new approach needed for audio from the ground up, with best practice and tips for use on PS5.

Being Boring: How Less Innovation Made Overboard! a Hit

12.00 - 12.45, Room 3

OVERBOARD! was a big success for developer Inkle and yet was made in just 100 days. The learnings from that process are intriguing enough plus we think Inkle’s Jon Ingold is almost as engaging a speaker as he is a writer. Recommended to challenge all your preconceptions about how games should be both made and launched.

10,000 Players, One Match: Experiments in Game Design with Massive Interactive Live Events

14.00 - 14.45, Room 2

EVEN if you think the metaverse is a bunch of bunkum, there’s no doubt that scale is exciting and that creating experiences for thousands of simultaneous players is a technical and design challenge of literally epic proportions. In this session you can hear from Improbable’s Bernd Diemer on all of that and get a glimpse of the future. What Great Level Design Really Takes: An Entire Studio

12.00 - 12.45, Room 4

A REAL TREAT. Dana Nightingale from Arkane Lyon is responsible for the level design of Dishonored 2’s Clockwork Mansion, an all-time classic. Here she will talk about how such work is dependent on the entire studio getting behind such level design.

How Much Does This Even Cost? Using Analytics Tools to Measure ROI on Consoles & PC

16.00 - 16.45, Room 5

WITH STEAM’S introduction of UTM analytics to track paid marketing, the console and PC world has taken a step towards the mobile ecosystem. Kat Welsford will talk through setting this up and how it can be used by everyone from tiny indies to AAA – and being from Square Enix she should know. It’s Not Real Money, it’s Robux: A Pan-European Exploration of Children’s Attitudes Towards In-game Spending

12.15 - 13.00, Room 2

MONETISING GAMES that are designed for children has become a tricky ethical debate, one pushed to the fore by the rise of Roblox. Here Jelena Stosic and Raj Pathmanathan from UK research and strategy agency Kids Industries, discuss recent studies into the issue, what drives that spending and how to proceed ethically.

Delete Your Video Game Website (and other sensationalist advice)

14.00 - 14.45, Room 3

“WE NEED A NEW WEBSITE”... “We need to be on TikTok”... “We need to make dev diaries for YouTube”... “We need to do a weekly live stream”... the string of advice for marketing your game seems endless and is frankly unachievable for smaller developers. Here Etch’s Dan Thomas looks to help you prioritise your efforts.