CONFERENCE
| 
INDEPENDENT GAMES
Monday, March 25 & Tuesday, March 26
The Independent Games Summit represents the voice of the independent game developer at GDC. It features lectures, postmortems and rants from some of the most notable independent game creators, including many former and current Independent Games Festival finalists and winners. The Independent Games Summit seeks to highlight the brightest and the best of indie development, with discussions ranging from game design philosophy, distribution, business, marketing, and much more.
Search for all Indepedent Games Summit sessions
Click here for Sponsorship Opportunities
2013 HIGHLIGHTED SESSIONS
Crowdfunding for Indies: Real Numbers and Trends
Thomas Bidaux (ICO Partners)
In this session, Thomas Bidaux will present his latest findings about how successful video game projects really are by using research done on the Kickstarter platform. Beyond the very large mediatized projects, there is the reality of small-sized and mid-sized campaigns who have their own stories to tell, some happy and some less fortunate. This session will look into the numbers behind this phenomenon, and use these numbers to draw some conclusions about what works, what doesn't, and the direction crowdfunding is taking.
Molyjam: How Twitter Jokes Can Save Video Games
Anna Kipnis (Double Fine Productions)
Fake Twitter account, @PeterMolydeux, has been lovingly parodying Peter Molyneux's fantastically ambitious game ideas. In two weeks, our modest plan for a local game jam based on these tweets exploded into an international event, with over a thousand people participating in more than thirty cities worldwide. This story is about how Molyjam was invented, organized, and became viral in such a short time. It's about why jams like Molyjam are important to stave off creative stagnation in our industry, and (best of all) the kind of bizarre, preposterous games that resulted from this exercise.
Obsessive-Compulsive Development: A Postmortem of the Development of Retro/Grade
Matt Gilgenbach (24 Caret Games)
Retro/Grade was featured in the 2009 IGF, with nominations in Excellence in Design and Excellence in Audio. After almost four years of grueling crunch, the game was finally released to positive reviews. Although 24 Caret Games was silent during development, Matt Gilgenbach will now talk about what went wrong on the project and in his personal life, as his obsessive-compulsive disorder caused development to spiral out of control. He will also discuss what he learned from the mistakes on Retro/Grade, and his new and healthier approach to indie game development.
Free Indie Games: Curating the DIY Revolution
Terry Cavanagh (Independent)
Porpentine (Independent)
By hunting down and curating games that defy convention on both cultural and technical axes, Freeindiegames is one of today's most important game-related sites. In this presentation, Porpentine will describe how outsider voices are challenging and redefining the nature of games, talk about figames as a response to the huge growth in indie DIY, and present some of the best, most overlooked indie games of 2012.
Designing Without a Pitch - FTL Postmortem
Justin Ma (Subset Games)
Matthew Davis (Subset Games)
The creation of FTL: Faster Than Light began with the desire to experience what it would feel like to be the captain of a starship. Many games have focused on space battles, but few games have focused on what happens in the ship itself. The player experience was the primary goal; gameplay structures, mechanics, and genre were all secondary. By focusing on a high-level goal of experiencing a singular feeling, and developing it with minimal preconceptions about FTL's gameplay, Subset Games was allowed to frequently alter or abandon aspects of its design, which eventually led to the game we know today. Matthew Davis and Justin Ma will share their creative process as they take you step by step, from concept to crowdfunding to release.
Shellrazer - Designing In-App Purchase Without Losing Your Soul
Shane Neville (Ninja Robot Dinosaur Entertainment)
Designing a successful game with In-App Purchase (IAP) does not have to be an evil, soul-sacrificing affair. Shane Neville will explain how the Shellrazer team designed an IAP system that generates 30% of the game's revenue without using any of the free-to-play tricks that have given IAP a bad reputation. The talk will cover RPG mechanics, game balance, and an analysis of the three types of players developers must consider.
INDEPENDENT GAMES SUMMIT ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Kellee Santiago
Independent
Kellee Santiago, as president and co-founder of thatgamecompany over the last six years, has developed one of the most prominent brands in independent and innovative game development, pushing the communicative possibilities of video games as a medium. She is currently a partner in IndieFund, which aims to support the growth of games as a medium by helping indie developers get, and stay, financially independent.
Kellee graduated with an MFA from the Interactive Media program at the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, where she teamed up with fellow student Jenova Chen on the student-created game, Cloud. The game went on to become critically acclaimed and landed the two a three-game deal with Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. to develop downloadable games for the PlayStation Network. The three titles, flOw, Flower, and most recently, Journey, were each record-breaking commercial successes and award-winning titles.
Kellee speaks around the world at video game, business, and entertainment conferences on innovation in games, entrepreneurship, games as art, and better methods for video game development. In 2010 she became a TEDFellow, and was recognized as one of The Ten Most Influential Women in Games of the Past Decade. Kellee has also received the 2011 Microsoft Top Women in Gaming award for Business.
Kellee graduated with an MFA from the Interactive Media program at the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, where she teamed up with fellow student Jenova Chen on the student-created game, Cloud. The game went on to become critically acclaimed and landed the two a three-game deal with Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. to develop downloadable games for the PlayStation Network. The three titles, flOw, Flower, and most recently, Journey, were each record-breaking commercial successes and award-winning titles.
Kellee speaks around the world at video game, business, and entertainment conferences on innovation in games, entrepreneurship, games as art, and better methods for video game development. In 2010 she became a TEDFellow, and was recognized as one of The Ten Most Influential Women in Games of the Past Decade. Kellee has also received the 2011 Microsoft Top Women in Gaming award for Business.
Steve Swink
Arizona State University
Steve Swink is an independent game designer based in Tempe, Arizona. Currently, he is working on Scale, a first-person puzzle platformer. Previously, he was lead designer of Atlantis Remixed (a literacy game for high school kids at Arizona State University), game/sound designer at Flashbang studios, and a designer at Neversoft. Steve also wrote "Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation."
Matthew Wegner
Flashbang Studios
Matthew Wegner founded Flashbang Studios, an 8 year-old independent game development company best known for its "Blurst" portfolio of experimental games. Elsewhere, Matthew is an Indie Fund member, TIGJam organizer, photographer, conference planner, web/database programmer and unicyclist.
SPONSORS
SUMMIT MIXER AND TABLE TOP SPONSOR
Agawi, focused on the mission of delivering "Any game, Anywhere, Instantly," provides high-performance, scalable and cost-effective cloud gaming solutions through its state-of-the-art streaming technology for post-PC-era devices, such as tablets, TVs and STBs. Agawi is launching a new cloud gaming service here at GDC and would love to talk to Indie developers and other ecosystem partners. agawi.io
SUMMIT MIXER AND TABLE TOP SPONSOR
Twitch's video platform is the backbone of both live and on-demand distribution for leading video game broadcasters including casual gamers, pro players, tournaments, developers and gaming media. We connect over 23 million gamers around the world each month by allowing them to broadcast, watch and chat from everywhere they play.
TABLE TOP SPONSOR
The MOGA mobile gaming system's award-winning game controllers transform smart phones and tablets into portable gaming consoles. The revolutionary MOGA Arm™ holds phones securely in place for gaming on the go. The free MOGA SDK is the emerging gold standard for mobile game input. Visit us at Developer.PowerA.com.
Shortcuts
Follow Us
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
