The Boston Festival of Indie Games today announced its BostonFIG DevTalks track of special educational sessions designed for game developers at all levels. These talks are available for free to attendees of the festival, taking place on Saturday, September 14 on the MIT campus in Cambridge. BostonFIG DevTalks feature top presenters from tools and tech companies such as Epic Games, Unity, Microsoft, Adobe and more. DevTalks are scheduled from 10 am to 7 pm, and are located in the Mezzanine Lounge at Stratton Student Center at MIT.
*For more info on the Boston Festival For Indie Games, and on the talks. Keep reading below and pay a visit to http://bostonfig.com/talks/, and www.BostonFIG.com as well.*
Creating Multi-Platform Game and Graphics OptimizationÂ
Carl Callewaert, Lead Product Evangelist at Unity Technologies.
Learn how to create 3D games in one dev cycle and tricks and tips on graphic optimization to target a wide range of mobile.
The Essential Steps For Mobile Games Success!
Todd Marks, CEO of MindgrubÂ
In the early years, putting a cool game in the store was all you needed to do. Â Today, with millions of apps and games available for download, Mindgrub has found that there are six key ingredients to rising above the noise and creating a successful mobile game. Â Tis presentation will discuss the steps taken when releasing a game in order to drive downloads, increase popularity, and get a ROI.
Let’s Compose: with Darren Korb
Darren Korb, Audio Director at Supergiant Games
Darren, composer for the critically-acclaimed game title Bastion, will give insights into his composing and production workflow, in front of a live audience! Be a part of the process as Darren creates a new piece of music with your help.
Once Upon a Time: Giving Players the Freedom to Create Their Own Story
Jim Brown, Lead Level Designer at Epic Games
Designers spend much of their time coming up with environments, game mechanics and combat encounters that help tell their game’s story. But there’s a second story to each game, the one created by the individual player’s moment-to-moment actions in the game. With these two conflicting stories going on (the authored storyline and the more organic player’s story), which takes precedence and can they co-exist within the framework of a single video game? This talk examines the popular techniques for storytelling in games and attempts to explain how almost everybody has it wrong.
The Good the Bad and the Ugly of Game Startups
Paul Neurath, game entrepreneur and co-founder of Looking Glass Studios Â
Gearing up for his 4th independent game startup in over three decades, Paul has seen most everything a game startup can throw at you. In this talk, he shares the good, the bad, and the ugly of what you are likely to encounter. He will also lay out some key strategies that can help manage through the inevitable challenges of building a game studio, and better enjoy when things are running smoothly.
Intro to Game Development on Windows 8
Michael Cummings, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft
Attendees will learn about the various tools and technologies that can be used to build games for Windows 8. Each tool presented will be demoed. Additionally, requirements for publishing to the Windows Store will be discussed and how to Monetize and Market your Games.
Tune Your Game Designer/Developer Workflows
Tom Krcha, Sr. Creative Cloud Evangelist at Adobe
Boost your game designer/developer asset creation workflow and safe hours. Learn tips and tricks to extract data from Photoshop and Illustrator effectively and fast to use them within the code. Understand how to get GPU-ready 2D skeletal animations for games from Flash Pro timeline animations.
How To Do Your Own PR (and When Not To)
John O’Leary, Account Supervisor at TriplePoint PR
There have never been more opportunities for indie developers to successfully self-publish a game. PR is often referenced as a marketing tool indies should focus on. But what is PR, why should you do it – and how? In this presentation, TriplePoint PR will draw on recent projects to share some best practices for doing PR for mobile, PC and console games.
Intellectual Property Law and Game Development
Darren Shield, Attorney at Zussman LawÂ
Why should you avoid putting “Scrolls†in the title of your game? What are the pitfalls of using Creative Commons-licensed music in your game? Why should you care about privacy? Game development intersects with the intellectual property law in many ways. Get up to speed on the legal issues you need to build your game.
Create 2D Cross-Platform Games with Corona SDK: Code Less, Play More
Jen Looper, Boston Corona SDK Ambassador
Corona SDK Ambassador Jen Looper will show mobile developers how they can use Corona SDK to build a Candy Crush-style game, with sophisticated effects and gameplay, in under 1 hour! Jen will do a code walkthrough and cover how to work with a physics engine, handle touch events, implement game logic, provide score keeping, and make use of in-game audio.
          The 2nd annual Boston Festival of Indie Games will be held on Saturday, September 14, 2013 at the Stratton Student Center and the Johnson Athletic Center on the MIT campus. A celebration of independent game development in a variety of media and genres, Boston Festival of Indie Games is free and open to the public. Festival attendees play video games and tabletop games in a casual, inclusive environment, plus attend film screenings and keynote talks. To register to attend, visit www.BostonFIG.com.
