Day 2
Friday 9.10
The second day of the conference looks more into the development side of things.
With talks, workshops and panels with a focus on the nitty gritty of making games, from networking to music creation and design problems, we will cover a variety of topics from experts sharing what they've learned over the years.
with: Arden Osthof We all want to create games where gameplay and story go hand in hand. But how do we make that a reality during development?
with: Niklas Mikkelsen Niklas opens up Unity and explores the guts of what Toem 2 is. A highly interactive search for how's and what's of the game.
with: Marijam Did When "Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World" was published in 2024, the videogame industry already seemed to be at a crossroads. Two years on, that crossroads has become even more urgent: consolidation is accelerating, funding is drying up, jobs and critical spaces are disappearing, and the political importance of games is still routinely underestimated. Drawing on the book and on conversations and encounters with game communities around the world since its publication, this talk asks: what has changed, what have we learned, and what would it actually take to build a different future for games?
with: Ke-ren Wang Getting a game funded is an essential parts of getting it made. But navigating the application process doesn't have to feel like a black box , when you can ask the people behind the fund directly. Bring your questions about eligibility, timelines, budgets, or anything else that's been on your mind — and share your feedback on how we can better support the games community here in Zurich.
with: David Stark Workshop based on the process on how David Stark (Zarkonnen) used mockups of potential games to gauge traction.
with: Brenden Gibbon A post-mortem on remixing a hardcore genre for both the core and the cosy audience.
with: Elias Farhan Beach Slap is a fast online-multiplayer party game built in Unity that runs on hardware as old as an iPad Air 2. This postmortem walks through the real engineering decisions behind it: a deterministic MVC architecture where the same gameplay code drives local and online play, rollback netcode, input compression, and how we debugged desyncs. Honest lessons about what worked and what didn't.
Still a surprise
with: Michel Ziegler Will Todd Documenting Everyday Lives through Videogames. How can we connect both forms of aesthetic media as ways of understanding the everyday life as well as opening up discussions surrounding those lives?
with: Melvin Frank Jasmin Oestereicher At Sidekick Publishing, we believe a games’ success is about how the product, sales strategy, and community intertwine from day one. Drawing from our roots in creator-led entertainment, we focus on what makes a game resonate with today's organic influencer networks and the current streaming trends.
with: Alexia Mathieu This talk will explore the relationship between virtual clothing and video games worlds. It will present the interactive potential of digital fashion and proposes game mechanics in which clothing plays a central role.
with: **Ethnography with game makers** Ruth Eggel's talk explores the potential and challenges of research in game studios and collaborating with game makers through ethnographic methods.
with: Aleksandar Gavrilović Argo Tuulik Dora Klindžić The panel will serve as a deep dive into this radically different approach to fundraising and indie promotion, and how studios should think outside the box when presenting themselves and their games to an audience in an ever-saturated market Also, on the panel, there will be a discussion on the RPG innovations in Summer Eternal's game Red Rooster. Hush hush!
with: David Stark Reverse talks! You have a question or a topic that you struggle with? Pose it to the hivemind and get other attendees suggesting fixes afterwards. Inform listeners about the depth and nature of your problems and introduce conversation topics, and maybe feel less alone.
