Description

David recounts experiences working on the audio for indie hit DREDGE, how he got involved and how the collaboration between him and the devs was fostered, and his experiences working on and shipping 5 titles with indie studio Strange Scaffold in the last year. David offers his thoughts on how best to collaborate with audio artists in the indie game scene, especially on tight budgets and timelines.

Join Pedro for an online talk showcasing Unreal Engine 5's Niagara VFX production pipeline.

A showcase of my in development product, Surreal 98, a runtime retro game transcoder, along with a talk about how good development practices can help you stay on track and deliver on complex projects.

In this session, Julian will run through “natural barriers” to everyday judgement and collaboration he’s encountered across multiple midsize teams (8~25) and studios, and the general solves he’s seen repeated from team to team. This is a talk for designers, producers, leaders or anyone finding themselves in a position to influence their team’s daily ways of working. (This is a preview/test-run of a talk for NZGDC 2025. Ask questions, give feedback or just pull faces from the back row, all feedback is good feedback!)

Do you think the characters from your game are rad but are not sure if they would translate well to cosplay? Well, look no further than talking to a cosplayer to get the inside scoop on how your current designs hold up! This talk will go over how learning about clothing and picking up cosplay can improve your own character designs, cross industry skills, and what cosplayers want artists to know about our craft.

Game audio no longer needs to be primitive or rudimentary! Simple is good, but simple and effective is even better. Chances are, you want your game's audio to support and enhance the gameplay as much as possible—and the good news is, there are many surprisingly accessible ways to achieve this. In this session, Hamish will showcase a variety of techniques to help you work with sound design and music that genuinely enrich the player's experience, in ways that are sometimes subtle but always elegant and effective.

Ever wanted to know how games dial up the juice? How they get that extra zing to their visuals and effects? Shaders are normally the answer. If you have ever wondered what they are or how you can use them to get some great well performing aces up your game-dev sleeve, then come and join Ian on a visual codeless journey on how you can make your game visuals to go from "good" to "OMG-WTF-HOW-DID-THEY-DO-THAT!?". The talk will go through techniques and tricks that you can use and apply in any engine like Unity, Unreal and Godot.

Why do so many game development teams struggle to succeed? Why is collaborating, managing the project, and having a good development process so hard? What is all the fuss about agile and why doesn't it seem to do what it says on the tin and help with these challenges?

Most leaders unintentionally build "ambulances" reacting to problems like burnout, disengagement, and poor performance only after they happen. But what if you could build a guardrail at the top of the cliff instead. Preventing these issues before they arise? In this session, I'll introduce the 5X Performance Triangle, a research-backed framework that helps leaders create high-performing, sustainable teams by aligning context, culture, systems, leadership, and people. Through real-life case studies and interactive reflection exercises, you'll learn how to move from firefighting to proactive leadership, and build a culture that thrives.

The nature of a creative role is to come up with ideas. In game development, these ideas may look like concept art, game-play mechanics, a piece of code... We come up with an ocean of ideas but only a few are realised. More often than not those dearest to us are shut down. The key to face this reality and remain passionate about the creation process is a skill that all creatives ought to cultivate.