GAMEADESIGN ART GM GAME MUSICDESIGN & AUDIOM PMUSIC PRODUCTION & AUDIO PB PRODUCTION BUSINESS & MARKETING MARKETING C CODE A ARTC GCODE B BUSINESS &SPEAKER SPONSORED SPEAKER BY VLAMBEER SPONSORED BY VLAMBEER
cloud 9
hertz
pandora
Guerrilla Games
C
A
foyer pandora
club cloud 9
P
masterclass Developing Better Games for Education
Marijn Giesbertz • Lead Visual Effects 9:00 - 10:00
9:00 - 10:00
Marijn Giesbertz joined Guerrilla Games to work on their Killzone games. Today, 3 games and 8 years later he’s working on a new unannounced IP for the Playstation 4.
The Production and Visual Effects of Killzone SF With the arrival of next generation consoles comes more processing power and memory… and with that, a whole lot more possibilities. Take an exclusive look behind the scenes of this Playstation 4 launch title and hear about the challenges the team were faced with during production. You’ll also learn more about how a lot of the visual effects like dynamic dust, rain, level extensions and various particle effects were achieved.
C
sjoerd de jong
Joris Dormans is gameplay engineer at Ludomotion. As an academic he is heavily involved in the international research community that focuses on procedural content generation for game.
Shawn Alexander Allen is a game designer, artist and writer from New York City. He is currently working on Treachery in Beatdown City, a retro styled tactical beat ‘em up.
With 15 years of experience in the Unreal Engine, Sjoerd is an expert at a wide range of Unreal Engine topics. Currently, as Evangelist for Epic Games, Sjoerd travels throughout Northern Europe to show and teach Unreal Engine 4.
Generating Dungeons that Can Be Solved in Multiple Ways
Building a better beat ‘em up
The Magic of Unreal Engine 4
This talk discusses how to generate nonlinear dungeons beyond branching tree structures, while retaining control over the various paths open to the player. It discusses how to create alternatives, balance the difficulty for each, and theming different parts of the level with different types of gameplay. The techniques used are based on model driven engineering and multiple, transformational grammars operating on graphs and tile maps.
While working on Treachery in Beatdown City, we at Nuchallenger needed to analyze and get to the roots of what makes the beat ‘em up/brawler genre tick and surprise, it’s complicated. Beneath the exterior of multiple heroes punching, kicking, and sometimes stabbing their enemies is a complex system of enemy interaction. Beyond that, the genre has also been a paradigm shifter in terms of cultural interpretation and racial/gender diversity. This talk will examine both gameplay and culture in order to create better brawlers, and perhaps better games overall.
C
11:00 - 11:30
GRiN
Julian Mautner MSc. is founder and lead developer of Stillalive Studios, an independent game studio in Austria. Today stillalive studios counts 15 members and is working on “Son of Nor”, an action adventure.
Jan Willem is the game designer behind such classics as Ridiculous Fishing and Super Crate Box. He is ‘50% of Vlambeer’, the other 50% being Rami Ismail.
Wim Wouters is a selfmade game developer. In 2002, he founded GRIN, with one goal in mind: to conquer the world with 3D games. Right now, GRIN is developing its first big indie title, Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries.
Eye Tracking: how will it improve your game?
Non-Stop Action: Designing the Gameplay of Nuclear Throne
Once upon an indie game: the fairy tale behind Woolfe
Son of Nor will be among the first games that officially supports the upcoming Tobii eye-tracking sensor bar. Imagine only having to look at the spot you want to terraform. Don’t move your mouse to pick up a rock, just look at it. Julian will be showing how the game takes advantage of using eye tracking, how it is integrated and used. A side by side comparison of playing it with and without eye tracker follows, in which the benefits of using it will be shown off.
Vlambeer’s Jan Willem Nijman explains how not giving players time to think can sometimes result in better gameplay, and provides an in-depth look at the mechanics ensuring that Nuclear Throne is a game best played with guns blazing. No cooldowns, no waiting, just action!
GRIN is currently developing its first big indie title, Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries, a grim take on the story of little red riding hood. Less well known is the fairy tale that went on behind the scenes of this project. It all started when a guy walked into the GRIN Headquarters, applying for a position as 3D artist. He didn’t get the job. But there was something about the Little Red demo in his portfolio that kept GRIN’s creative team awake at night… A talk about finding magic beans. About surviving dragons / challenges, chasing treasures / money, building castles and hoping for a “happy ever after”.
C
B
P
KUULUU
SoftLayer
Jendrik Pösche
Anthony Trabano
The 5 Mortal Sins of Launching an Online Game
Paul Koller
Former Studio Director and VP of Irrational Games in Boston and a career-long marketeer of entertainment products. Founder of SouthPaw Strategy. Worked on BioShock Infinite, Star Wars Battlefront, Doom 3, Call of Duty (various).
The art of demaking
Figuring out how to present your game
hertz
Before you start figuring out your marketing, you need to ask yourself “What do I need to communicate?” Because if you don’t figure that out first you might end up missing opportunities and wasting time and effort promoting the wrong things. Marketing people have different ways of figuring out what to communicate, here’s mine.
Lohika Games
pandora Twitch
G
B
P
Jonathan Joyce • Live Programming Director
Derek Watts, Art Director of the Mass Effect-trilogy en Core Game Designer of Jonathan ‘Carnage’ Joyce is the live programming director of Twitch, the world’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Watts is responsible for the iconic art style leading video platform 17-11-14 ControlConferenceGuide.indd 23:45 5 for gamers. He works closely with publishers and develof the Mass Effect universe. opers.
Leveraging Twitch for Publishers and Developers Jonathan will talk about live broadcasting on Twitch, with a focus on (independent) developers and what they can do to leverage the platform.
Based on his acclaimed work on “Remember Me” (Capcom) and “Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag - Freedom Cry” (Ubisoft) Olivier Deriviere will explain the different steps that lead him to create unique musical soundscapes. He will expose his way of collaborating with a developer and how the music production and integration througout the production is handled.
G
pandora
A
The process of creating unique music for your game
M
Daniel ‘c418’ Rosenfeld
UNITY
C
G
A
Componiser & sound designer • minecraft
Andy Touch
Henrike Lode is CEO and founder of the Copenhagen-based independent game studio Lohika that is currently working on the award-winning puzzle adventure Machineers. Henrike received her M.Sc. in Game Design in 2012 and is now teaching other students Game Development at the IT University.
Daniel is the composer and sound designer of the famous lego video game Minecraft. He is known to create melancholic, minimalistic and beautiful music.
Having previously taught game development to University students, Andy Touch 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.
Educational games have had a bad reputation for years, and many don’t believe its possible to align learning content with game mechanics in a way that doesn’t destroy the gameplay. It sure isn’t easy, but this talk will you give you some insight on what design principles to watch out for. It will take you step by step through the process of research, prototyping and testing that was necessary to create Machineers - a game that teaches you to think like a programmer, but feels like a real puzzle game.
C
Ronimo Games
Abbey Games
Joost van Dongen
Bas Zalmstra
G
Achieving a great soundscape with zero scripted events Imagine you are creating a completely randomly generated game. Now imagine how potentially anything could happen in every entirely randomly generated scenario that you will encounter. Every little monster that you will randomly see, every little random flower that you might notice. Every random forest that you encounter. Every random zombie outbreak you visit. As a sound guy, you need to prepare yourself for any of these million possibilities and write music and sound triggers to account for any of them, right? Well, I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t.
Guerrilla Games
C
A
A Hands-On Guide to Unity’s New UI System LIVE DEMO ON STAGE Andy Touch will show a hands-on demonstration of how to use Unity’s brand new UI system to create polished and interactive screen-space 2D HUD and world-space 3D UI for games.
Sarah Elmaleh
M
G
Voice actor/Writer/curator
Joost is lead programmer and co-found- Bas is one of the founders of Abbey er at Ronimo Games, the studio behind Games and mainly responsible for develthe 2D MOBA Awesomenauts. oping their internal engine and tools.
As Principle Tech Programmer at Guerrilla Games, Jeroen Krebbers has worked on the cutting-edge rendering technologies of Killzone 2, 3 and Shadow Fall. He is currently working on the upcoming new IP.
Sarah Elmaleh is an actor and voiceover artist based in Brooklyn, best known for voicing player character Katie in Gone Home.
two opposing approaches to gameplay programming
Taking Killzone Image Quality into the Next Generation
Abbey and Ronimo are two studios that use opposing approaches to gameplay programming and thus to how game designers create and tweak gameplay. Abbey uses LUA scripting and lets game designers write the gameplay, while at Ronimo the programmers implement the gameplay in C++ based on what the designers want. The coders then create tools for the designers to tweak and modify the gameplay. In this talk Bas and Joost will explain their approaches and compare the pros and cons they have experienced.
This talk focuses on the technical side of Killzone Shadow Fall. We present the details of several new techniques that were developed in the quest for next generation image quality, and the talk uses key locations from the game as examples. We discuss interesting aspects of the new content pipeline, next-gen lighting engine, usage of indirect lighting and various shadow rendering optimizations, and much more.
C
B
P
What are game researchers actually researching? This is your chance to find out and get in touch with the game scientists. A selection of academics will be presenting their research and some of the results. The session will be hosted by Rafael Bidarra, Professor at the Delft University of Technology.
cloud 9
club cloud 9
foyerPanel pandora
club cloud 9 masterclass
‘Funding support’ by Creative Industries Fund
Formats for the applied games industry
What are the needs and necessities in terms of support from the games industry in for example knowledge, seed capital or presentations abroad? Do the current possibilities for applications efficiently serve those needs? For this session, the Creative Industries Fund NL has invited several developers and policy makers from the games industry to discuss the needs of the industry and the different possibilities for funding support within the scope of the Fund. An important concern is the improvement of the links between designers/ makers and clients/manufacturers. Speakers for this session are: • JP van Seventer Dutch Game Garden and member of the Creative Industries Council • Bas van Berkesteijn Woedend, former chair of the Game Fund, co-founder Vanguard Games • Eva Nieuwdorp Codeglue and the Dutch Games Association • Karel Millenaar Fourcelabs • Marjoleine Timmer grant officer Game Fund and Creative Industries Fund NL • Host: Joris van Ballegooijen Grant officer E-culture Creative Industries Fund NL. Panel session: 13:00 - 14:00 Q&A: 14:00 - 15:00
Her home studio is equipped with a Neumann TLM-102 microphone and supports live direction. She proudly serves in the Game Audio Network Guild Voice Actor’s Coalition, and occasionally curates, writes about and speaks on videogames.
But what is a format? What does it consist of? How can the applied games industry benefit from format thinking? What do you sell, when selling a format? Do you also deliver the production team? What can the applied game industry learn from the television industry here? The masterclass is hosted by Patty Geneste. Jurriaan van Rijswijk will do a short introduction on his vision on the role of formats in the applied games industry. Patty Geneste has been representing formats on international conventions for years. She knows what a format is, what can be sold and how to sell it. The challenge is to create a format approach for the applied games industry, in cooperation with applied game industry management. The combination of Patty’s experience with the game world, will lead to new insight for all masterclass participants.
Recently released games include the award-winning party game Johann Sebastian Joust and sci-fi Facebook satire Redshirt.
ec t uthte nretherlah nds
concept artists
Control
Like John Sweeney, Nick Gindraux was one of the concept artists on The Last of Us. He is currently working on Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. He also lectures at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.
hertz
The television industry has known formats for several decades. The Netherlands is the third format country in the world, after the United States and the United Kingdom. Endemol and Talpa are two names from the Dutch television and media industry that are known worldwide for their formats.
This Masterclass is organized by Growing Games & iMMovator
Nick Gindraux
John Sweeney is concept artist for Naughty Dog where he works on Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. He’s best known for his incredible art for The Last of Us which won him a spot in Into the Pixel 2014.
17-11-14 23:45
CONFERENCE 25
pandora
foyer pandora
14 no vember 20
club cloud 9
16:00 - 17:00
hosted by: Rafael Bidarra Professor at the Delft University of Technology
foyer pandora
C
naughty dog john sweeney
• Christiaan van den Berg – TNO
15:00 - 16:00
Jeroen Krebbers • Principal Tech Officer
Game Research Showcase
• Esther Oprins – TNO
14:00 - 15:00
Henrike Lode • CEO & Lead Artist
Playfully teaching programming with Machineers
• Harald Warmelink – HKU
13:00 - 14:00
Olivier Deriviere is a composer specialized in interactive music. For more than a has tried to push game music to a point that it enhances the player’s experience. He also has created unique and memorable soundtracks for games such as Remember Me and Assassin’s Creed IV Black - Flag Freedom Cry.
decade4he ControlConferenceGuide.indd
• Robbertjan Schravenhoff – HKU
This Masterclass is being organized by ClickNL, DGA, VCAG, HKU & TNO
Paul Koller works together with some of the best-known names in the gameindustry to bring their games to obsolete platforms. Not afraid of the technical challenge, he is best known for his Commodore 64 ports of Canabalt, Super Crate Box, and Super Hexagon.
Derek Watts • Art Director
Speakers:
Southpaw strategy [formerly of irrational games) Leonie Manshanden • founder
hertz bioware
If you’d like to join, please register by filling out the form below.
B
Independent Developer
M
Seating is intentionally limited: there is only room for 30 participants, who will work together in small groups.
11:30 - 12:00
Jendrik is currently working as the ex- Anthony Trabano is Cloud Infrastrucecutive producer on the Linkin Park Re- ture Expert at SoftLayer, an IBM Comcharge game project at KUULUU. pany.
C
The kind of applied games we will be looking at are those aimed at learning in educational settings. You will be introduced to several examples of games designed for and applied in educational environments. You will get hands-on experience with a game concept validation tool (which you can keep!), and reflect on how extensive the process of applied game validation and evaluation can be.
P
wim wouters • founder
Composer • Remember Me & AC Black Flag: Freedom Cry 13:00 - 14:00
B
jan willem nijman • game designer
cloud 9 Olvier Deriviere
14:00 - 15:00
Take a look at how Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 empowers developers. By building a simple game live on stage, the presentation will demonstrate some of the most useful features found in Unreal Engine 4.
Julian Mautner • Founder & Lead Developer
cloud 9
15:00 - 16:00
LIVE DEMO ON STAGE
G
vlambeer
Then this masterclass should help you out! Researchers and designers from the Value Centre Applied Games (vcag. nl), hosted by HKU University of the Arts and TNO will help you get to grips with validation and evaluation in the applied game design & development process.
11:00 - 11:30
11:30 - 12:00
G
So you’re thinking about developing applied games for educational purposes, but not completely sure if you speak the right language? You’re wondering how your own game concepts can be appropriately used in learning environments, and whether you’re ready for the challenges that lie ahead?
P
Shawn Alexander Allen • Game Designer
Developing and launching a game in general is not an easy task. It takes a lot of time, a lot of people, a lot of planning and a lot of assumptions. On top of those operational challenges, the A demake is an SPONSORED interpretation aSPONSORED modern game running on an older platform. In gaming jungle where “survival the fittest” is very P real. An army of&genius GAMEAmarket DESIGN ART is aGM GAME MUSIC DESIGN & AUDIO PRODUCTION & AUDIO BUSINESS MARKETING &SPEAKER MARKETING A ARTsocial C GCODE M of PMUSIC B PRODUCTION B BUSINESS SPEAKER BYof VLAMBEER BY VLAMBEER a similar way as GameJams do, this self-imposed limitation is meant to increase developers, the most stunning design, super-engaging game idea and striking strategy are not creativity in game development. In this talk he will show what unconventional enough. If the hosting infrastructure behind the game fails, fans don’t get the experience they coding schemes are necessary to develop games for obsolete platforms, which expect and walk away. Learn from the stories of some of the most creative and successful can be completely opposite to modern coding practices. gaming studios how to sidestep the common landmines of bringing your online game to the top.
16:00 - 17:00
Epic Games
G
Joris Dormans • Founder & Gameplay Engineer
Stillalive Studios
C CODE
Nuchallenger
A
10:00 - 11:00
10:00 - 11:00
Ludomotion
G