2022 Game Devs of Color Expo

Player Dynamics can be difficult to understand but it is a critical part of designing games. Seth Smith, Senior Game Designer on VALORANT’s Social and Player Dynamics team will provide the audience with a baseline understanding to help the audience grasp the discipline of Player Dynamics and the role it plays not just in gaming but across industries. Player Dynamics aims to create environments that foster and encourage healthy play and inclusive gaming culture. If we continue to focus on this work, it can help drive change, and, as an industry, help create communities where players can thrive.

Despite more game funding options than ever, many marginalized devs find themselves relying on crowdfunding over and over again. In this talk, 3 developers with successful crowdfunding campaigns tell it all: why they chose that route, what it took to get funded and what happened AFTER the campaigns ended!

Harness the power of horny and come hear why every game either *is* a dating sim or *should be* a dating sim in this (surprisingly PG) talk. Yichao highlights the power of character and player relationships in games and takes a journey across past and present titles and IP's he's worked on, from Magic: the Gathering to League of Legends and beyond.

Action games are some of the most prevalent and popular video games of all time, but the design and creation of action games is highly technical and takes years to learn and understand. In this talk, Alex Rushdy discusses his experiences making action games (including the critically acclaimed Dawn of the Monsters) and offers some insights and tips that he learned throughout the process. From Space Invaders to Mario Bros to Bayonetta, this talk offers practical advice applicable to any and all action-based video games.

Claire Kwong makes physical games about touch and intimacy. She’ll talk about the process of developing and exhibiting 3 games: Chromapose, a mobile game that makes people dance together with their phones; Interpose, a mobile game where you dance face to face with a partner; and Light Touches Skin, a large scale installation that uses projection to move peoples’ bodies. These games let people explore and transgress social boundaries.

You’ve heard that you should be using TikTok to market your games. Maybe you’ve even tried a few posts to varying degrees of success. Jared launched an indie game account to a million views in their first two weeks. Since then, he’s surveyed several other developers for the best tips to get the algorithm working in your favor. Which metrics drive the most views? How do you make viral videos? What should you know before running a campaign? Jared tries to answer these questions with a data-driven approach so your game can get seen on TikTok.

A discussion on the use of categories and genres in pitching and marketing your game to potential publishers and audiences. Words have power, but what does that even mean when faced with options of similar but distinct classifications.  

Stories influence how we view and engage with the world. Since video games necessarily center one person – the player – it’s all too easy to fall back on the hero’s journey as the default narrative structure. As we increasingly recognize the importance of collectivism and community over the actions of a lone hero, it’s time to explore a different narrative framework for the stories that we want to tell.

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) systems have become more and more prevalent in game design and development - especially in the indie game community - as seen in popular games such as No Man’s Sky, Minecraft, Hades, Spelunky, The Binding of Issac, and so many others. The Game and AI research community has also worked on exploring and developing more complex PCG systems that could be incorporated into these games and have a more influential impact on the player experience. But these systems are hidden behind preset algorithms and templates that the player has no impact on.

What if there could be a way the player’s decisions and gameplay would influence how the PCG system makes levels and other content that can adapt in real-time? This talk will demonstrate how to incorporate more engaging PCG systems that interact and learn from the player in real-time on various platforms - including social media, level editors, and games themselves.

Are you working on a digital RPG? Does it have a Combat System? You may have run into spots where Damage Numbers don't quite work out: regular battles feel too long to be engaging, boss battles feel too quick to be impactful. If Combat is where your player will spend much of their time: you'll want to make sure you are getting most mileage from it.

This talk is focused on improving your Damage Numbers for better player guidance and storytelling potential. We will cover tools to help you with this process and even a small workshop where we build a Combat encounter using these principles.

Post Play Story Dynamics an exploration in design and dynamics of a game and its connection to the greater community, an exploration guided by the question: “What stories do I want players to tell each other when they're done?”

We normally cannot control the discourse our game creates, but there’s a lot that we can do to influence how a game lives on after us. This talk will discuss examples of games that have different levels of Post Play Story Dynamics and how one can achieve the level that might be best for the experience they are crafting.

In this talk, you'll hear a breakdown of how one man has tried to survive in the evolving indie game industry. Ron Jones is the founder and CEO of The Indie Cluster and has been pooling resources and promoting indies for a decade. He'll lay out tools and strategies on getting your game in front of customers. He'll also dissect the game market to isolate the direction it needs to grow in. With current trends and the lack of visibility, Ron has been able to bridge creators to opportunities in a way publishers don't. Check out the gems being dropped as we invite you to our network of success.

An artist’s biggest asset is their work. Starting with an introduction to copyright law in the music context, this talk walks through sample clauses from real work-for-hire contracts and license agreements, and compares the copyright interests in each. This talk also discusses the case brought by Halo composers Marty O’Donnell and Mike Salvatori against Microsoft, for unclaimed royalties from their work on the Halo series soundtrack.

In the throws of developing my studio VIVIDBLUE LTD's first game, Duskwitch, I learned how nothing exists in a contextless vacuum. And by reflecting on why I'm telling the stories I want to tell, I learned how how I was participating a continuity of Black speculative fiction storytelling and afrofuturism.  And with that, I learned more about my relationship with my own Black identity and what that means for developing strong values for my studio.

Hosted by Dani Dee, lead developer of High Elo Girls, and joined by Validate: Struggling Singles In Your Area lead developer Dani Lalonders, Belle Automata lead developer owl., and Skate & Date lead developer Geneva, we will discuss how each of our games explore themes of existentialism, self-actualization, and evolving identity through relationships formed in unique gameworlds built by us, for us.

Although augmented reality (AR) glasses are anticipated, mobile phones are still the most accessible hardware device. A major obstacle in han held AR is touch screen interaction; however, it is one of the common interaction and direct manipulation methods. Given the screen real estate, it is difficult to interact with virtual objects in handheld AR scene. These limitations impede content creation and affect usability. Since current data needed for AR is positional and location-based, one might look toward existing sources to provide more unobtrusive user interactions than what is currently offered and reimagine how the mobile phone fits within the larger interaction ecosystem.

When we tell stories procedurally, meaning with elements of randomness, we get to surprise ourselves as storytellers. By stepping back and allowing the seams of our narratives to blur, our stories can take on wholly new hues and shades. But how do we introduce chaos to our narratives without building chaotic, unwieldy systems? Let's figure that out by building some!

In this talk, Sherveen Uduwana breaks down how to build procedural narrative systems to be as painless as possible, looking at both character-driven & event-driven approaches found in games like Hades and Wildermyth, respectively.

Boss fights are often keystone experiences that mark important moments in a larger video game journey. In Dauntless, every fight is a boss fight and the only way to continuously deliver new encounters is to do it as a team.

Join Anthony as he walks through through the process of multi-disciplinary encounter design on a live-service game, sharing personal insights into leading a team and the ways teams can come together to create exciting multiplayer PvE encounters by Winning Together.

Building a game in physical space can be complex and requires many considerations - interactions, scale, narrative, mechanics, environment, installation, accessibility and more. In this talk, Adelle breaks down their latest game - a multiplayer immersive XR installation called Star Catcher - from these various perspectives. Learn about the considerations of these various elements from the perspective of Star Catcher and apply them to balance your own games.

Spoken by a trained anthropologist who specialises in identity development, semiotic NPC Design: Mapping Symbols of Identity outlines how narrative designers and game developers can utilise the linguistic philosophical field of semiotics - that is, how meaning is communicated through symbolism  - in order to directly translate human experience into programmatic representation. Attendees will learn thought strategies for building NPC design frameworks, with a particular eye to procedurally generated NPC design.

This session explores ways to have successful in-person networking experiences. It also delves into the nuances of building a robust support system in one's professional world. Through this session, I hope to motivate the attendees to embark on a journey towards symbiotic, fulfilling professional relationships.

Breaking into games is intimidating even when you’ve got years of training, but how do you make a path for yourself when you don’t come from a games background? More importantly, how do you figure out what you're doing once you're in?!

In this talk, Marcela Huerta (Community Director, KO_OP) will show you how embracing your unique history, skills, and special interests can help you find peace in the chaos of the internet and lead to a more rewarding, singular community and marketing strategy for your games, using Goodbye Volcano High as a case study.

When it comes to rhythm games, pushing momentum is always the focus of progression. The challenge is defining a fresh, direct and correct approach to the composition while being cognizant of battle design limitations. This talk will demonstrate the creation and implementation of an interactive score for a Hunting RPG with rhythm combat mechanics.

Inclusive Character Creator is speculative design research that seeks to address some of the long standing issues of sexism, racism, sizeism, and ableism prevalent in most 3D character creators in interactive media. This project centers on the experience of players who engage with character creators and avatar makers in order to express their physical identity. This talk will cover prior work in this area as well as the design and production of an interactive demo. Finally, this talk shares a summative checklist of inclusive design principles for character creation.

In the past year, we've seen game developers band together in combating the crunch, harassment, discrimination, and job insecurity that have plagued the game industry for decades. They're organizing into labor unions and wielding collective worker power against injustices that have been left unchecked for too long!

Learn what labor unions are, their history, and what they mean for developers of color in their fight for inclusion and representation in games!

Studio culture will make or break teams; therefore, we all play a role in creating and sustaining healthy studio cultures.

As team members who lack the power and authority to enact systemic change, what can we do to make our workplaces better? What power might we exercise? What must we learn from the hardship and trauma of what has come before to make our futures better?

Crucially, studio leaders are critical enablers for how culture might influence an awesome vs. toxic environment. Given the recent controversy around indie studio leads who purported to—but ultimately failed in—creating safe harbours from the abuses endemic to the industry, there is a clear disconnect between the espoused values of leadership and subsequent reality.

The research is clear: toxic workplace cultures destroy teams, result in worse products, and harm the industry as a whole. It is clear that we need to level up our culture so that the next generation of game developers can be inducted into a healthy and happy industry.

Whether facing an interdimensional threat or drinking with the demons of Hell, Night School Studio’s critically-acclaimed games build worlds that are rooted in characters facing both pivotal moments in their lives and within the larger world. Our studio co-founder and lead writer Adam Hines with art director Ruel Pascual will share insights from that process by focusing on the creation of characters from our games OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, Afterparty, and Next Stop Nowhere.

Business development means different things to different sized studios, come learn about key rules in business development to help you better understand it and more importantly grow that skill!

How to Get Away With Murder: Subverting Genre Expectations will give you the tools you need to tell gritty, genre stories without doing harm to your audience. The goal of this talk is to demonstrate how engaging openly and fearlessly with identity, power, and the specific language of genre can free up creative potential to pull off…the perfect murder.

Making indie games is hard! Let's talk about it! With over 10,000 games released on Steam in 2021, indie developers need to be more intentional than ever about how we allocate our time and resources, and very honest about what our goals are for our games, or we risk taking on more risk than we are actually comfortable with.

Join Code Coven's Head of Curriculum Francesca and Program Instructor Sherveen as they share knowledge gained from years running game boot camps and their own indie teams and learn their strategies for navigating the challenges of the indie space!

Black hair isn’t just part of ourselves, it’s a living artform, and a major part of creative entertainment. How do games lack authentic Black hair when it’s so influential in other works? This panel will discuss the good, bad, and ugly when it comes to rendering coily hair in games. Attendees will learn how we can forge a better path forward with laid edges and clean hairlines.