The aggressive game studio AGGRO CRAB has done a lot to market their games and brand - but some of these ideas might be pushing it. Paige Wilson, Head of Community for the Seattle based studio will go through her top 10 favorite posts that people thought were a "bit too much". This will hopefully provide insight that sometimes you need to step out of your comfort zone when marketing your games. 

Mobile devices may not pack the same punch as high-end desktops, but that doesn’t mean your game has to suffer. In this talk, Max will explore how to increase mobile GPU performance through Shader Optimization, Precomputed Visibility, HLODs, Instancing and more. Whether you're working in Unreal Engine 5 or another game engine, come learn how to make the most of Mobile GPUs. 

User interface is an underestimated way to enrich your game's experience. Get inspired as Jonathan gushes over some kick-ass UI, enlightened as he breaks down what makes them so appealing, and empowered with tools and approaches to give your own project a metaphorical varsity jacket and mirrorshades.

Join Logan as he brings us through how truly effective pre-production can pre-empt or prevent many of the major pitfalls a studio will experience during production.

Composer Tom Jensen will examine the sketching and feedback process of creating game music, using real world examples from Blackheart and The Ruins of Calaworm. The talk will show the actual communication between the game devs and composer, how the sketching process unfolded, the issues and unexpected joys, and what was learned. Tom will utilize musical examples of what was sent to the devs, their feedback, and the responses and re-writes that ensued. This will show the progress from concept through to early sketches, to finished tracks.

After decades of designing levels, teaching level design, and writing 100,000+ words for The Level Design Book, artist / indie dev / recovering academic Robert Yang isn't so sure what level design is anymore. This microtalk is about level design, architecture, not-architecture, and why it's all so tricky to teach and think about.

Hi, I'm Francis Stephens, Lead Programmer on Mini Motorways at Dinosaur Polo Club. I've been a programmer in the gaming industry since 2016 and during that time I've shipped games, delivered updates and deployed patches.

This talk is how I write code that is both flexible and maintainable in all stages of development. I’ll share with you the software principles I lean on every day to deliver production code which is flexible enough to support the creative needs of the game and maintainable enough to meet the technical requirements of a long term project.

In this talk we’ll go through a few tricks, tools and methods that will come in handy for anyone interested in creating VFX for games. Scaling from the basics of using the Niagara system in Unreal Engine, tips for creating more dynamic VFX, and useful optimization tools, this talk will give a welcoming introduction for developers new to using Niagara and provide deeper insights for those already familiar with it. The objective is not only to give some guidance on how to best make use of Unreal Engine tools but provide some resources for anyone wanting to learn and improve on VFX in general. 

This talk looks at how to design, plan, and build prototypes for interactive experiences, with a focus on fast iteration and modular design. I’ll share practical strategies for gathering the right context, creating flexible, self-contained features, and finding the right balance between polish and rough work. It's about creating prototypes you can mess with, break, tune up, and throw away.

Demi Schänzel is a small-time game designer known for making bad video games with even badder interfaces.

Despite this, their games have gone on to be nominated for a number of design awards.

Over the course of this talk they’re hoping they can lure you away from all the guidelines usually associated with interface design, and inspire you to chase after wildly more playful ways of making interfaces - making you more unemployable in the process, and maybe even a bit happier too! 

It's all about UE5 survival techniques, staying alive and navigating the apocalypse of Non-manifold zombie polygons!! Surviving apocalyptic overdraw and fighting off those draw call ghouls - join me for the night of the living dev: we are going to have a look at how we made the environments for No More Room in Hell 2! (content warning: some horror & zombie gore).