Auch wenn in diesem Jahr weder am Sonntag noch heute eine Teilnahme möglich sein wird, hier an dieser Stelle der Hinweis mit einem Überblick auf die Themen und TeilnehmerInnen, die sich heute zu Wort melden werden:

Monday, August 19, 2019

9:00 AM
11:00 AM
devcom Women’s Networking Breakfast (in Cooperation with Womenize)
For the second time and in cooperation with ’Womenize’, devcom invites you to take part in the “Women‘s Networking Breakfast”. Our idea is to bring women from the games industry together, to mingle, exchange knowledge and ideas and meet new people. And following the idea of inclusion, the event will be open for people of all genders, to take part in several roundtables on various topics. We take care of food and drinks, you do the networking! And for the best part: Even if you don’t have a devcom ticket, you can still participate by simply registering (RSVP) for the “devcom Women‘s Networking Breakfast” a ticket in our ticketshop. The “devcom Women‘s Networking Breakfast” takes place on Monday, August 19, from 9-11am within devcom’s conference premises. Please note: Registering for the “devcom Women‘s Networking Breakfast” only allows access to the breakfast event itself, not to devcom Developer Conference as such!
Press Center 2nd Floor

10:00 AM
11:00 AM
Building Borderlands 3 Narrative
Randy Varnell is the Managing Producer of Narrative on Borderlands 3 at Gearbox Software. Since joining the studio in 2009, Randy has worked as Design Producer on Borderlands 2 and Creative Director for Battleborn. Prior to Gearbox, Randy worked at Macromedia, Ensemble Studios, and MumboJumbo.
Offenbachsaal
Keynote
– Randy Varnell (Gearbox Software)

10:00 AM
6:00 PM
Video Game Bar Association (VGBA) European Summit: Game Business and Legal Affairs
Registration is needed!
Congress Saal 4th floor
Summit

11:30 AM
12:30 PM
What comes first: The Story or the Game Design?
A question that is often asked, and the answer should be: “Both!”. Storytelling in games is far more than just writing scenarios. It’s a complex and multi-layered way of creating games that starts with the first gameplay decisions, to the level and character design up to the marketing process, where the meaning is key. Instead of choosing between these two pillars of the game creation that are narrative design and game design, weaving both of them together is key!
Offenbachsaal
Talk
– Jehanne Rousseau (Spiders)

11:30 AM
12:30 PM
Physical Storytelling - Action & Combat Choreography (+ Live Mo-Cap)
Creating a complete, integrated visual language for the action and combat in your game can be a challenge. Come learn how to develop an eye for action and combat choreography from Eric Jacobus, a 20 year stunt man and filmmaker who was the stunt talent behind Kratos in the 2018 God of War, 8 characters in Mortal Kombat 11, and the recently announced Marvel’s The Avengers.
Europasaal
Talk
– Eric Jacobus (SuperAlloy Interactive)
– Zac Swartout (SuperAlloy Interactive)

11:30 AM
12:00 PM
Black, Gay, Gamer, Founder - Adding new Voices to Gaming
What founders from minority groups can bring to the game industry is more than representation. It is a whole new toolkit to help tell stories for all audiences. In this talk, Dan shares the experience accumulated for almost 20 years of building diverse teams in order to create unique products. He makes the case that you should consider minorities in your team for more than political correctness but a real competitive advantage. Dan will go through a few practical reasons why diverse teams have better chances of survival and why the movement started in music and now in movies is bound to repeat in games, the rise of universal stories.
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Talk
– Dan Bernardo (Playtra Games)

11:30 AM
12:00 PM
Go China, Go strong – Best Practices for a winning China Strategy
Jorvik Zhang will share how Tencent’s proprietary global application acceleration platform (GAAP) offers a solution to the following questions when deploying games to a worldwide audience. • How to enable players from around the world to play together on the same global server • How to reduce latency • How to ensure high availability Furthermore, you can experience our next generation, feature-rich, in-game voice solution (GME) that allows high quality in-game communication. Learn how to integrate this service into your existing games in just a few days.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Jorvik Zhang (Tencent)

11:30 AM
12:30 PM
"What the heck are we making?" The Importance of holistic Research in visual Direction
In this talk Whitney will take us on her journey creating the visual direction for Contrast and We Happy Few. She will focus on conceptualization in the very early stages of production. She will discuss why a holistic approach to conceptualization (considering narrative, history, art, music and game design as part of visual research) is important in creating coherent worlds with depth and originality. The art direction processes should be an adventure! 
Art & Visuals
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk

Whitney Clayton (Compulsion Games)

11:30 AM
12:30 PM
Anno 1800: Texturing the Industrial Revolution
Visit the vibrant and detailed world of Anno 1800 set in the age of industrialization. Polluted production areas with brick walls and smoky chimneys, heavy machines made of steel, giant dusty windows, smog, fires and explosions, steamships, grain fields, residences… The art department of Ubisoft Blue Byte Mainz was faced with the challenge of creating hundreds of game assets for the newest installment of the Anno franchise. Discover how they created and textured those assets. How has the Substance toolset changed the texturing workflows but also introduced new challenges? Have a chat with the artists in charge.
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk
– David Shelton (UBISOFT BLUE BYTE MAINZ)

11:30 AM
12:30 PM
Should I put my Titles on a Netflix for Games?
Since Google’s Stadia, Microsoft Xcloud project, Amazon and other big players announced their cloud gaming services the topic is hot. Are you thinking about bringing your games to a cloud gaming platform? Do you want to know which services are out there? Which business models or technical requirements they ask for? Is it worth it or not yet?
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Juan Carrillo (PlayGiga)

11:30 AM
12:30 PM
Connecting the Dots – Everspace Post Mortem
After an intense rollercoaster ride of spearheading 3D mobile gaming for over a decade, industry veterans Michael Schade and Christian Lohr rebooted as Rockfish Games in 2014 and delved into premium PC and console gaming. Together with their former core team, best-known as creators of the iconic mobile space shooter series “Galaxy on Fire,” the serial entrepreneurs raised over $450K on Kickstarter plus another $250K through their online shop for Everspace, Rockfish’s PC and console debut in 2015. Two years later, the fast-paced and story-driven 3D roguelike space shooter became one out of twelve Steam Early Access Platinum Graduates of 2017 as well as a surprise hit on Xbox One, PS4 and Switch, with over one million units sold in total. However, Everspace would not have happened without one single incident missing from a 25+ year-long series of major successes and failures; which is worth to have a quick look at before Michael will take a deep dive into the making of Everspace. In his in-depth talk, Michael will share details about the creative process in developing the vision for Everspace and also cover various technical and design challenges during production, what changes had been made, what lessons the team had learned, and how all this eventually lead to a different creative direction for Rockfish’s next space shooter. Takeaway The success story of Everspace is a perfect example of how everything is connected, and that creating games under high pressure with lots of constraints can lead to great results, even without going through a lot of crunch for the development team. In this multi-angle talk, attendees will get an understanding about where and when creative focus is needed, when pragmatism is key and when it is time to start dreaming about your next project.
Hall 11 - Stage 5
Talk
– Michael Schade (ROCKFISH Games GmbH)

11:30 AM
12:30 PM
... ask what the Compiler can do for you!
C++ is a strongly-typed language. We all seem to make sure we have proper types for our players, units, game objects and whatnot, but tend to stick to good-old floats when it comes to other primitives. I want to explore what other options we have and what can we gain from taking them.
Showfloor Stage
Talk
– Mikołaj Radwan (Techland)

11:30 AM
1:00 PM
Studio Setup and Workflows for mixing Dolby Atmos
Dolby´s immersive sound format Dolby Atmos can be found everywhere from cinemas to home-theatres to smartphones, in live broadcast, streaming platforms and game audio. This session will give an overview how to make your sound studio ready to mix and deliver audio in Dolby Atmos. Showing the Dolby Atmos content creation tools and workflows and explaining studio design principles for Dolby Atmos.
Dolby Atmos Stage
Talk
– David Ziegler (Dolby Germany GmbH)

12:00 PM
12:30 PM
An open-hearted Talk about being an Introvert at a Game Company
In a world where open spaces, fast thinkers and louder people tend to be celebrated, it can be challenging to be an introvert and be able to feel included, and to thereby contribute to the fullest potential. This talk is aiming to give a definition of the spectrum between introversion and extroversion. Also, based on real-life scenarios and personal experiences, discuss situations and action points that will be able to raise awareness as well as fostering a better environment for everyone.
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Talk
– Renato Pelizzari da Silva (King)

12:00 PM
1:00 PM
Mixtvision Press Conference
Press Center 2nd Floor
Press Conference
– Benjamin Feld (Mixtvision)

12:00 PM
12:30 PM
Waylanders: Creating the mythical Brigantia from the real legends
This presentation will show the work of the entire process of creating real scenarios developed for the videogame The Waylanders. Scenarios that have been studied and adapted to meet both the needs of the fantastic story of the game and its own limitations. The Waylanders is an RPG inspired by classics like Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights 2 or Baldur’s Gate. Set in Celtic mythology and medieval Galicia, the adventure will take you through emblematic real locations such as the Cathedral of Santiago, A Coruña, Ons or Fisterra.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Sergio Prieto (Gato Studio)

12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Stop Hiring! How We’re Mass-Growing New Leaders From Within
What if you could turn all your employees into effective leaders using in-house training that runs itself? This is the story of Splash Damage’s Leadership Development Program (LDP), a training scheme completely unique within the games industry. Spanning 12 months, LDP covers everything from personal productivity to running effective teams. Covering both progressive concepts and proven techniques, LDP is completely taught by our own staff in-house at our studio. This talk will explore all aspects of Splash Damage’s LDP. You’ll learn how we built an in-house training course from scratch, how we made it self-sufficient, and how the program completely upended my own idea of what it means to be a leader.
Offenbachsaal
Talk
– Richard Jolly (Splash Damage)

12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Talent War - The Latest Tactics to hiring Game Developers
This panel of experts from production and HR will give advice and tips to all studios searching for local and international talent. The multi disciplined team behind the game is the first requirement of a successful game. How do you know that your team can deliver in every area? This panel will take questions and tell all.
LeadershipCultureDiversity
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Panel
– Dr. Sabine Hahn Melek Balgün (Melek Balgün)
– David Smith (Women in Games)
– Ekaterina Dolgova (Redhill Games)
– Catharina Due Bøhler (Sarepta Studio)

12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Adapting to an Art Style – from 60 Seconds! to 60 Parsecs!
"Adapting to an Art Style” came to be because of the need for a talk that doesn’t just focus on creating game art from scratch. There are many amazing presentations and guides about creating compelling character designs or rich environments. But working on a game is a team effort and that means coordinating with each other. In Art that means understanding the established art style and working together with it. It all comes back to the basics: the 7 Elements of Art. But theory alone is boring and hard to follow. Due to my work on 60 Parsecs! I have a lot of practical examples to show and insights to share. Additional to all my examples I will talk about some challenges I experienced during my journey and I will show some mistakes I made. These provide us another valuable viewpoint and an encouragement to never stop learning and growing. This talk aims to teach basic knowledge about how to determine the rules of a pre-existing art style and how to adapt to it. This is very useful for artists who join a project that already has an established style and also beginner artists who struggle to stay consistent in their own art. Most importantly, it’s a valuable insight on becoming a part of a team that needs to operate in a consistent and synchronised manner – a quality that is in great demand in the games industry.
Hall 11 - Stage 5
Talk
– Agata Bednorz (Robot Gentleman)

12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Business Design: Setting Your Studio up for Success and avoiding total Disaster
Hope is not a valid business model. To increase your chance of success, you need to be putting as much effort into "designing" your business as you do designing your game. Countless studios are built as a necessary byproduct of shipping a game, with no deliberate thought into the factors that will actually enable your game to succeed and your studio to thrive. The choices made around product roadmap, business model, marketing strategy, community development, corporate structure, compensation, funding, etc, help set a critical foundation for building a viable business. From countless mentoring and coaching engagements from across the globe, the same patterns around the lack of intentional business design keep emerging. This pragmatic session will explore the fundamentals of business design so you can go forward with more confidence.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Jason Della Rocca (Execution Labs)

12:30 PM
1:30 PM
What’s the Point of "Procedural"?
Procedural Audio as a term has become widely used but the understanding of what it involves, the ways in which it can be defined and how it can benefit game audio, lacks clarity. Through reviewing twenty years of developing game audio technologies, this talk will attempt to define procedural audio, making reference to a range of custom tools Paul has helped commission. How best to scope new tools, where procedural audio can be best deployed and the ways in which game audio could progress will all be topics under discussion.
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Paul Weir (Earcom)

12:30 PM
2:30 PM
Workshop: CRYENGINE 5.6 (Presented by CRYENGINE)
This CRYENGINE 5.6 workshop covers the latest advancements made by our dev team. Hosted by our Learning Manager Brian Dilg, attendees will be invited to go hands-on with the engine during an in-depth session covering: • Major additions and enhancements to the AI system, including a behavior tree editor in the sandbox, NavMesh exclusion improvements, runtime feedback such as debugging information, and much more • Vast improvements to the prefab system, including migration to the asset system, drag-and-drop creation, live swapping, and a pipeline to migrate legacy prefabs to the new system • New particle features that allow tessellated particle ribbons, mesh and opaque particle shadows, and generation of forces • Physics extensions with a new pressurized closed buoyant cloth simulation, full body IK for ragdolls, and skinned ropes and ropes built from CGF meshes • A new project creation and management workflow inside the sandbox itself • Extensive optimization across the board with refined profiling tools, delivering a lower memory footprint and higher performance in both the CPU and GPU
Showfloor Stage
Workshop
– Brian Dilg (Crytek GmbH)

12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Beyond a Steel Sky 2 – Breaking and redefining the Rules of Adventure Writing with A.I.
Industry Legend Charles Cecil, founder of Revolution Software, will talk about how his experience of writing adventures for almost 40 years has culminated in the creation of Beyond a Steel Sky. Charles will describe the creative and technical challenges of writing an adventure set in a unique world, populated by wilful characters driven by advanced AI, that will respond to – and be subverted by – the player’s actions. In production on Apple Arcade, PC and Console, Beyond a Steel Sky aims to evolve and redefine the adventure genre. Session Takeaway: - Audiences really appreciate, and so reward innovation - particularly in interactive narrative games - To avoid chaos, take time to fully prototype your vision before moving into production
Europasaal
Talk
– Charles Cecil (Revolution)

12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger. Empower Your Game Design with Lean Design Thinking
No matter if it is a startup or a maturing company, with the daily business at hand, resources are often bound. In such an environment, the ability to design compelling and success promising game features is paramount. In this session, Christian will give a brief overview of Design Thinking and shares insights on how SEAL.GAMES transitioned from a competitor-monitoring and trends-adopting development style to an entirely creativity-driven workflow that embraces the principles of Design Thinking, Entrepreneurship and Lean practices. He will thoroughly explain each step of their methodology and introduces you to a way of Game Design that empowers you and your team to come up with features that are relevant to both, your players and your business.
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk
– Christian Haja (SEAL.GAMES)

1:30 PM
2:30 PM
INFINITO Project: A Bridge between Japan and Europe
Game creator Goichi "SUDA51" Suda will explain his project with VANTAN Game Academy (Tokyo, Japan) and VIGAMUS Academy (Rome, Italy), showing the two "punk" indie games on stage for the first time, each one of them developed by joint teams of students from both game schools. The games will be playable at devcom (VLG indie booth) and gamescom (Vigamus Academy booth, Education area, Pavillion 10).
Offenbachsaal
Fireside Chat
– Goichi Suda (Grasshopper Manufacture Inc.)
– Hiromi Ishikawa (Vantan Inc.)
– Marco Accordi Rickards (Vigamus Academy)

1:30 PM
2:30 PM
Developing Procedural Systems for Marvel’s Spider-Man
At Insomniac Games, we used many procedural systems to assist in authoring content for Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4. Those systems authored streets, buildings, traffic, lighting, audio and much more. This presentation provides an overview of many of those tools, and describes the process for developing them in collaboration with artists and designers. A few of the more interesting systems are explored in greater detail.
Europasaal
Talk
– David Santiago (Insomniac Games)

1:30 PM
2:30 PM
The Transformation of Remedy: A View behind the Scenes
Remedy Entertainment was founded in 1995 and has gone through many development phases over the years. Three years ago Remedy set a new strategy, that would require a far bigger and challenging transformation: Creating longer-lasting, world-class games much faster that Remedy had done in the past without losing the creativity, going from single-project studio to a multi-project organization, growing from 130 people to way over 200 people, and building financial capabilities to work on both partner- and own brands. CEO Tero Virtala will go through the reasons for this strategic change with a look on what was the starting point, what development steps and changes were taken, and looking back, what has gone right, what not, and what has been learned along the way. The presentation has a special focus on selected key developments and changes, that are not that visible to the outside world, but have been key enablers in driving the transformation while maintaining focus on games and people. The presentation ends on discussing where Remedy is at the moment and what the next phase of Remedy will be.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Tero Virtala (Remedy Entertainment Plc.)

1:30 PM
2:30 PM
Zen and the Art of Team Maintenance
As Producers, our jobs revolve around expectations: setting them, managing them, and meeting them. It sounds straightforward, until you start to factor in how the individual members of your team may respond to those expectations. Some will be great at meeting deadlines on their own, while others may require more hand-holding and accountability. Some will be able to set effective boundaries, while others may take on too much, predisposing them to burnout. Some will happily carry out tasks as instructed, while others may need to understand the reasoning behind the task. And, of course, some need to do things their way, or not at all. In other words, there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution to ensure the individual members of your team are meeting deadlines, fulfilling expectations, doing great work and achieving their own goals as well as those of the project. In this session, Amy will talk about how to apply Gretchen Rubin’s “Four Tendencies” framework to working with teams. Through it, you’ll better understand how your individual members could respond to internal and external expectations, as well as some strategies to improve their efficiency, while reducing stress and burnout.
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Talk
– Amy Dallas (ClutchPlay Games)

1:30 PM
2:30 PM
Deep Adaptive Music: Using AI to Soundtrack Video Games
This talk provides an overview of how AI can be used to make more interactive video game soundtracks, and introduces the concept of Deep Adaptive Music (DAM). DAM extends adaptive music by leveraging AI. In DAM, music is generated in realtime by an AI system running directly inside an interactive experience. DAM is particularly suitable for video games, as the generated music can adapt its emotional state on a granular level. The music responds to both user’s interaction and the game state. This talk describes the historical evolution of AI in video game music, provides examples of DAM, and discusses experimental results that show that DAM may be able to increase users’ engagement by up to 30%
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Valerio Velardo (Melodrive)

1:30 PM
3:00 PM
Dolby Atmos on an Indie Budget (+ Showcase)
An overview of Dolby Atmos integration on the upcoming console arcade racer "Inertial Drift”. Highlighting key audio elements of the game, demonstrating technical aspects of implementation, and showing that implementing Atmos is feasible and worthwhile for a small indie team. 
Dolby Atmos Stage
– David Baxter (Boom Clap)

1:30 PM
2:00 PM
Intellivision Amico: Getting back to the core Roots of Gaming (Presented by Intellivision)
Let´s face it: people are spread all over the place playing games, 3 billion people a day who play games are just looking at their phone. Families consider technology in a negative manner sometimes. Intellivision Entertainment is using technology to bring families and friends of all skill levels back together. Intellivision Amico is about to get back to the core roots of gaming with a home entertainment system, that invites everyone to gather and play games together side by side. Intellivision will have a incredibly robust library of new games, that are easy to control, fun to get into and designed to bring people together. Intellivision Entertainment is putting Europe on the worldwide map for quality game development with currently 20 games in development all over Europe!
Hall 11 - Stage 5
Talk
– Hans Ippisch (Intellivision Entertainment Europe)

1:30 PM
2:30 PM
Art-Direction vs. Proceduralism in 3D Architecture
The ever-growing demand for richer 3d worlds drives the development of powerful content creation workflows. The typical approach involves procedural systems which may work very well for certain tasks – while 3d architecture remains a major challenge. This presentation talks about the topic’s fundamentals and outlines some of the design processes and technologies developed at vrbn studios. 
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk
– Matthias Buehler (vrbn studios AG)

2:00 PM
2:30 PM
Reventure: Marketing an indie retro-ish Game in 2019
In his session Javi talks about how he and his team turned their indie game with a quite low visual appeal into a commercial success on a ridiculously low marketing budget.
Hall 11 - Stage 5
Talk
– Javier Cepa (Pixelatto)

2:00 PM
3:00 PM
Modus/Maximum Games Beer Reception
devcom Piazza
Beer Reception
Modus Games

2:30 PM
3:00 PM
How to find the right Project and Audience for your Studio
Choosing the right projects for your company is crucial to your success. Listening to your players, carefully monitoring the competition and choosing the best target audience help to find the perfect project for your company.
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk
– Jan Theysen (KING Art Games)

2:30 PM
3:00 PM
Bringing Characters to Life using Procedural Animation
Gamers expect to be able to explore increasingly realistic, immersive and interactive worlds. The challenge for animators is balancing character design and development with the complexities involved in delivering their vision. This session will explore how leveraging the same tool set used by the digital human pioneers can bring game characters to life through realistic behaviour and interaction with the game world. Learn how to reduce your production cost and get a sense of how procedural animation can fit in your development pipeline. At the same time, find out how AAA studios use these techniques to bring their characters to life, and give their players a chance to personalise their characters.
Hall 11 - Stage 5
– Ahmed Elhasairi (IKINEMA)

2:30 PM
3:00 PM
SimCity BuildIt: Developing Highly Scalable Backend
SimCity BuildIt is the most successful iteration of the classic city builder franchise with over 200 million players worldwide. This session will focus on how the SimCity BuildIt engineering team tackled the challenges of scalability, service availability, performance and cost efficiency. The speaker will present a high level view of the game server architecture and share learnings from the project.
Tech & Programming
Talk
– Matti Palosuo (EA tracktwenty)

2:30 PM
3:00 PM
Show and discuss common methodologies in running projects in corporate reality that can be used in gaming. Point out where std approach based on software development proven methodologies cannot be used for gaming projects.
Talk about a difference between producer and project manager. Major takeaways are my lessons learned after years in gaming coming from the automotive industry:
1. Agile elements to be used and which are not recommended
2. Waterfall elements to be used and which are not recommended
3. Agilefall :)
4. Values that are necessary to be an effective Producer
5. Values that each dev has to keep in mind to be part of gaming projects
6. Pitfalls of a PM when joining a gaming studio
7. What can be learned from non-gaming PM
8. Processes and process methodologies can be used in the dev process
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Talk
– Maciej Łączny (Weadvise.pl)

2:30 PM
3:00 PM
The Rise of Adult Gaming (Presented by Nutaku)
The adult gaming market as an alternative to the overcrowded stores. Developers are struggling to get funding and ensure discoverability of their games on the mainstream games. Let’s take a dive into a market vertical that is growing at a rapid pace: The Adult Game market. We’ll look into the main stores’ issues and how game studios can expand their business into this nascent market and how to reach our 25M+ users as well as take advantage of Nutaku’s funding opportunity. Takeaways: New business opportunity and better knowledge of a market vertical / Niche.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– ean-Francois Tremblay (Nutaku Publishing)

2:30 PM
3:00 PM
How does it sound? Automatic Metadata Extraction and Fingerprinting for Audio
Sound is an inevitable ingredient in the game industry. It made enormous progress starting from the earlier looped themes of Tetris and Super Mario to the accomplished soundtracks of modern games. Sound composition is a creative process that often relies on production archive with stems, loops and beats. Audio content in such archives comes along with descriptive metadata in a structured text form. However, the audio waveform signal itself can also be a source of information. AI-based automatic metadata extraction can deliver the information on style, mood, musical instrument, tempo, rhythm, harmonic progression, melody line, etc. Audio fingerprinting can be used to recognize and match a particular recording and thus help out in tracking content reuse and repetitions. The talk with introduce these techniques and show the way how those are widely used in audio archive management for broadcast and creative industry.
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Hanna Lukashevich (Fraunhofer Institute)

2:30 PM
3:00 PM
Level up your E(mpathy) Game (Presented by GEDANKENtanken)
Only 15% of Germans are at work with heart and mind. The remaining 85% have little or no commitment to their work. In the past, the goals for self-realization were building a house, planting a tree, fathering a child and then waiting for retirement. In a time of "having nothing", these were probably interesting challenges. This world has changed fundamentally since then. While people used to be limited in their choice, today we have endless possibilities. And this leads to disorientation and despair. Who am I, what do I want, what can I do and what may I do? We feel an inner urge for more - more than just extrinsic motivators. But where do we find a compass that aligns us for the new world? Where do we find the will, the ability and the permission to get into action? How do we use our time sensibly? If your purpose itches too, then you’ve come to the right place! From "inner resignation" I lead you to "with heart and mind“ at work. Because more joy in life radiates also on the results in the job.
Hall 11 - Stage 5
Talk
– Alexander Jäger (GEDANKENtanken)

3:00 PM
4:00 PM
World-building in Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
Adam Olsson, Lead Environment Artist at Ubisoft Massive, will talk about the process of building the open world for Tom Clancy’s The Divison 2, and the challenges that came with building a game of this scale. There will be a deeper look into how he and his team built a logical and connected world with an emphasis on environmental storytelling.
Offenbachsaal
Talk
– Adam Olsson (Ubisoft Massive)

3:00 PM
3:30 PM
Pitching done right - Preparation is everything
Technically and artistically you have everything under control, but how do you get to the public? Good ideas, creativity and hard work are rarely lacking in indie game development, but the number of overlooked pearls increases with each new studio and each indie game released. Inverstor or Publisher - everyone wants to know, in a few words, why investing time, money and energy in your baby will be worth it. We will get a brief overview of what questions you should answer before contacting a potential partner.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Bjoern Bergstein

3:00 PM
4:00 PM
Publisher-Developer Relations: What it takes to build a fruitful Work Relationship
Publisher-Developer relationships have had an unhealthy past, however times are changing and overall these relationships have been improving. Let’s point out several of the various ways to make this relationship better for everyone involved. Lessons learned from my own past experiences and current relationships from AAA to indie.
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Lance James (Versus Evil)

3:00 PM
4:00 PM
Hyper, Hyper... Scale!
Games are changing and how we build them is evolving all the time. From Mobile to “Games as a Service” the change is continuous and the requirements for modern backend solutions is not always well defined. In this platform agnostic session you will learn what scaling software actually means and how to communicate these limitations to your management. You will see how you can actually run 1 Million Concurrent Users on your Architecture and how to prepare for the big launch day without going offline. To get to this point we will talk about the basics like Dimensions of scale and the CAP Theorem and what these things have to do to with Distributed Systems. From there we will dig deeper on the game specific requirements in these system for Web APIs as well as Dedicated Game servers to give you the tools and knowledge to accelerate your backend development for your next title.
Hall 11 - Stage 5
Talk
– Andreas Pohl (Microsoft)

3:00 PM
3:30 PM
Hyper-personalization fueled by Psychometrics
Hyper-personalization is the key for games to succeed as a service. The current approaches to personalization fall short of actually understanding the person behind the player. Psychometrics are the missing piece to the personalization puzzle and present the ultimate power-up for games as a service.
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk
– Bastian Bergmann (12traits)

3:00 PM
4:00 PM
Four years in: Surprises, Revelations and Gotchas with Dolby Atmos
Dolby Atmos has been available as an immersive surround sound format for console and PC games since 2015. In four short years, we have enjoyed the release of head-turning titles that use Dolby Atmos to their advantage. With every victory comes a revelation, a lesson learned, and a potential epiphany. Andy Vaughan, Developer Relations for Console and PC games at Dolby will talk through the soaring highs and crushing lows that have punctuated the past four years of integration. 
Dolby Atmos Stage
Talk
– Andy Vaughan (Dolby Laboratories)

3:00 PM
4:00 PM
GIC Pitching Format: Polish your Game Idea
While every year we discuss how the market became more difficult, we still do not consider enough why some games succeed while others don’t. This is down to many factors one of them being the game idea. There are still too many games developed without a proper idea for them. In this format brought by Game Industry Conference, we inspect game ideas proposed by the audience. Bring yours to have it analyzed as a whole and torn down to pieces.
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Panel
– Alina Gribanova (BoomBit)
– Jakub Marszałkowski (Indie Games Poland Foundation)
– Karol Zajaczkowski (11bit studios)
– Lukasz Hacura (Anshar Studios)

3:00 PM
4:00 PM
Wolfenstein Youngblood’s Design Challenges when going from Single Player to Coop
In this in-depth fireside chat, moderated by VentureBeat’s Lead Writer Dean Takahashi, Game Designers Andreas Öjerfors, Alissa Hägglund and Aydin Afzoud talk about the design challenges MachineGames faced when the Wolfenstein franchise took the step from a linnear, directed single player experience, to an open coop experience where major game mechanics had to be changed to facilitate a new structure for storytelling, enemies, missions, player progression and weapons.
Europasaal
Fireside Chat
– Dean Takahashi (GameBeat at VentureBeat)
– Andreas Öjerfors (MachineGames)
– Dean Takahashi (GameBeat at VentureBeat)
– Andreas Öjerfors (MachineGames)
– Aydin Afzoud (MachineGames)
– Alissa Hägglund (MachineGames)

3:00 PM
4:00 PM
Gameye’s stateless Microservices: Architecting, developing and testing a highly scalable System (Presented by Leaseweb)
Showfloor Stage
Talk
– Elmer Bulthuis (Gameye)

3:30 PM
4:00 PM
PR with $0 budget
Can you do your own PR without hiring an expensive PR Agency? Yes, you can! We will talk about how to reach out to press directly, how to prepare a pitch, how to plan a PR campaign, which assets to have at hand, and other tips on doing your own PR. The talk will also touch the costs and preparations that are usually involved when doing a full-scale International PR campaign and the best ways to save budget while still making an impact. The talk will contain examples from PR campaigns of Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Pathfinder Kingmaker.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Kirill Perevozchikov (White Label PR)

3:30 PM
4:00 PM
Beyond Bandersnatch: Designing for Interactive Live Action
Flavourworks have spent the past few years reinventing the marriage between film and video games. The foundations of this process began by examining traditional game design practices to question how the new studio should be built and allow for a new innovative approach. This talk will cover discoveries that the studio made and how they have integrated a game development workflow with the complexities of filmmaking.
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk
– Jack Attridge (FLAVORWORKS)

4:00 PM
5:00 PM
Devs under Influence(rs)
Description: Influencer marketing is a brand new world, a competitive one that you have to understand. Why should you try to get influencers’ coverage? How can you choose and contact them? What mistakes should you avoid? And what can you expect in return?
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Mylène Lourdel

4:00 PM
5:00 PM
GameCraft: A Method to make your Game Idea strong and viable
Sviatoslav will share a method to create or revise your game idea in a new, unexplored way. You will be taken through the whole 6-hour process in 40 minutes: from a spark of an idea to a sum of possibilities, pitch concept and a number of USPs. To be totally fair with you Sviatoslav will provide a challenging game idea run through GameCraft as example.
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Talk
– Sviatoslav Torik (Wargaming.net)

4:00 PM
5:00 PM
Dive into a narrative-driven Adventure that explores the Future of our Ocean with Beyond Blue
Inspired by and made in association with BBC’s award winning nature documentary series Blue Planet II, Beyond Blue is the latest game franchise being developed by E-Line Media through an inclusive process with leading ocean experts. It’s goal is to inspire a global audience while they explore the awesome wonder and unbounded mystery of our planet’s beating blue heart through an original and moving narrative-driven adventure. Beyond Blue’s Creative Director (Michael Angst) will share how working with leading scientists from around the world has helped build and shape the near-future world of Beyond Blue.
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Steve Zimmermann (E-Line Media)

4:00 PM
5:00 PM
The Artful Experience
In this talk Benjamin will make a point why empathy and narrative should guide all your design decisions and why the industry should shift its focus from the ongoing chase for better graphics, more content and more features to a more holistic and satisfying user experience. Fun and escapism (and anger) shouldn’t be the only currencies when it comes to a medium that is becoming a central part of our unified social narrative. Today games have a great influence on how we see the world. So the big question is, how do we deal with this responsibility and how do we design relevant and meaningful experiences in the future?
Hall 11 - Stage 5
Talk
– Benjamin Feld (Mixtvision)

4:00 PM
5:00 PM
Telling the Story: Game Narrative for Designers
Big publishers can afford to hire professional writers for their games, specialists in writing dialogue and plot.But what if you don’t have a big budget? Don Daglow has won many awards as a game designer, including an Emmy for creating Neverwinter Nights, but he’s also an award-winning playwright and novelist. In this session he’ll provide a framework for game dev teams to create stories that feel strong and unique, and which support and empower fun gameplay and engaging mechanics.
Europasaal
Talk
– Don Daglow (Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Foundation)

4:00 PM
4:30 PM
A small Step for Greece... Incentives and Policy Making in Games
Greece is a small country and even smaller in terms of game production. But what happens when we combine the active involvement of the local indie community, an institutional framework for investments in games and last but not least, community building initiatives? How the Greek game ecosystem was affected by the domino effect and what have we learned so far?
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Talk
– Elina Roinioti

4:00 PM
4:30 PM
The Backend Revolution AMA: Using microservices to scale your games (Presented by Leaseweb)
Showfloor Stage
Talk
– Alexander Nyahoe (Leaseweb GmbH)
– Elmer Bulthuis (Gameye)
– Dennis Simon (Tipico)
– Simon Dotschuweit (Dorado Games)

4:00 PM
5:00 PM
Innogames Cocktail Reception
devcom Piazza
Cocktail Reception
InnoGames GmbH

4:30 PM
5:00 PM
Funding Options under the new German Federal Government Games Programme
The computer games industry is rapidly growing all over the world. Germany is the biggest market in Europe and ranks fifth internationally. Computer game development forms an important part of the digital creative industry and has great innovative capacity. In the Coalition Agreement of February 2018, the CDU/CSU and SPD parties recognized the importance of the computer games industry and agreed to support the development of games in Germany. In the Federal Budget for 2019, 50 million euros were allocated for a new a national grant programme. The aim is to make Germany more attractive for developers and competitive at international level. The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure is in charge of implementing the new programme. In April 2019, a pilot phase for projects up to 200,000 euros of funding was started. The second phase, catering for larger projects, is planned for Fall 2019 upon finishing a formal notification process with the European Commission in the context of the common market provisions.
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Talk
– Dr. Christian Schlosser (German Federal Ministry of Transport and digital Infrastructure)

4:30 PM
5:00 PM
Game Data Storage: Modern Storage Strategies and best Practices (Presented by Leaseweb)
Storage systems have become key components of modern online games. Yet it is difficult to design which data goes where, and what technical solutions to use for which kinds of data. Add to that the advent of GDPR, where compliance rules make it even more critical to consider where player data should and shouldn’t go The panelists will discuss their experiences in storage systems, which data they store in what kinds of database systems and why. They will also share their experiences in keeping the data compliant and to be able to efficiently address player request for data information or deletion. Finally they’ll be looking at the cost factor of the various different storage solutions.
Showfloor Stage
Talk
– Nathan Camarillo (Improbable)Murat Erdibil (Crytek Gmbh)Michael Hempel (Crytek GmbH)

5:00 PM
6:00 PM
Interactive Cognitive Art
A picture says more than thousand words, but data as information does not always speak for itself. Video games often struggle with an increasing amount of information that has to be available to the player at the right time. While huge, flow-breaking HUDs were tolerated in the past, today, clean, immersive and minimalized approaches are often a must-have across many genres. The challenge for developers is to make sure, information is always accessible, conclusive and understandable, so players can make fast and correct decisions. A truthful design shortens the time in decoding information and thus fosters player control and empowerment. This talk will take you on a journey to explore different methodologies on how to make complex data comprehensible by users. “Cognitive Art” initially described infographics such as maps, train schedules, graphs or diagrams – visualizations that were meant to inform, rather than to simply be pretty, decorative art. The science behind creating such information displays offers many valuable approaches on how to visualize complex data and to focus on the relevant pieces of information that actually help people understand and making decisions. Following up on the famous studies about ‘envisioning information’ by Edward Tufte, we will review how those acclaimed techniques of creating context for better staging of information, have evolved and how they can be utilized on interactive displays, such as video game interfaces. We will discuss how we, as developers can apply such a envisioning information-framework on diegetic, special, meta or HUD-interface representations to make a positive impact on player decisions during gameplay.
Hall 11 - Stage 2
Talk
– Ivana Randelshofer (Ubisoft Blue Byte)

5:00 PM
6:00 PM
Romance and Games: The Design of a Lovestory
How do you design a relationship? This was the main challenge encountered while developing Don’t Make Love. A game where the player acts as one of the two partners of a praying mantis couple, torn between their mutual love and the instinct to have sex – which could lead to the male mantis’s death. Showing the nuances of oral communication, the seriousness of a conversation about sex, death and a relationship stalemate, presenting reversed gender dynamics and the portrayal of love all led to specific design decisions. This talk will summarize how the development of the game was affected by these aspects and how players reacted to our approach.
Hall 11 - Stage 5
– Dario D’Ambra (Maggese)

5:00 PM
6:00 PM
Amplitude Studios: The Game of Making Games - Together!
In this session company founder and creative director Romain de Waubert and executive producer Jean-Maxime Moris discuss Amplitude Studios’ philosophy of co-developing games with their community. From an original idea dating back to 2011 up until 2019, they discuss how the Games2gether platform came about, how it evolved over time, and how it helps them make better games, game after game.
Hall 11 - Stage 3
Fireside Chat
– Romain De Waubert (Amplitude Studios)
– Jean-Maxime Moris (Amplitude Studios)

5:00 PM
6:00 PM
How to get rid of Lag and Kicks - redundant Client/Server Connections of the MMORPG Tibia (Presented by Leaseweb)
CipSoft’s MMORPG Tibia is fascinating players for more than two decades. Despite its oldschool look it is a very fast paced and hardcore game that takes a lot of skill and time to master. Therefore connection issues like lags and kicks can put you very quickly in dangerous situations where you could die in seconds and throwing back your progress for days. Tibia has always been the target of Distributed Denial of Service attacks mostly to gain unfair advantage over other players. Thus connection issues have been one of the two major concerns for our players. After different approaches we finally found a solution by combining the reliability of a DDoS mitigation service with the low latency of a direct connection by using both connection types at the same time. This solution greatly improved the customer satisfaction with the connectivity of the game and also decreased the motivation of issuing DDoS attacks that harm other players.
Showfloor Stage
Talk
– Stephan Vogler (CipSoft GmbH)
– Anton Scheungrab (CipSoft GmbH)

5:00 PM
6:00 PM
Europe - the best Place to create Games!?
In this panel we will talk about different state support models and government aid programs for the games industry. How can Europe step up its game and rise to the global competition?
Hall 11 - Stage 1
Panel
– Ina Göring (game - The German Games Industry Association)
– Benedikt Grindel (Ubisoft Blue Byte)
– Elina Roinioti Jo Twist (Ukie)
– Julien Villedieu (French Video Game Trade Association (SNJV))
– Dr. Christian Schlosser (German Federal Ministry of Transport and digital Infrastructure)

5:00 PM
6:00 PM
devcom NRW Indie Awards
Europasaal
Indie Award

5:00 PM
5:30 PM
Cyber Security in the Games Industry
Evolving connectivity and new technologies are ubiquitous in our daily lives, influencing everything including the way we work, mobility and health care. In this rapidly changing environment the gaming industry appears as an innovative space where Cyber Security plays a decisive role. So how can security be strengthened?
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Arne Schönbohm (BSI)

5:30 PM
6:00 PM
Okay, One More Round: Designing for Replayability and Retention
Games like Cluster Truck and Rocket League excel in creating that elusive "Okay, one more round!" moment. In this talk, we’ll explore what design methods can be used to enable that moment in games, and in turn, increase retention and replayability.
Hall 11 - Stage 4
Talk
– Steven Crouse (Pixel Maniacs)

9:00 PM
3:00 AM
devcom NRW indie developer night
BUMANN & SOHN
Official Party