CEGC 2016 Event Guide by CEGConf

EVENT GUIDE 2016

lETTEr from ThE DIrEcTor The Central European Games Conference 2016 With the Central European Games Conference our goal is to advance the development of the digital games sector in Central Europe. For the second edition, we have set our target high; with a main conference, 3 summits, 1 game jam, 1 engine track, 40+ exhibitors, we expect ~500 games industry professionals throughout the 5 days to discuss the latest trends, to network, and to share their knowledge. CEGC 2016 FEATURES With this year’s special features, like the WIG & Diversity Summit, the Education Summit, and the CEE++ Summit of Games Industry Enabling Organizations and Associations, we have recognized the need to support these overlooked fields within the games sector. Another highlight is Games Made in Poland at CEGC which includes dedicated sessions by Polish game studios, a selection of Polish games at the Indie Expo, and a Polish reception. Thanks to the support from the Polish Institute Vienna, we were able to accommodate a delegation of ~30 Polish games industry professionals with housing and transportation. The new additions to the conference do not stop there. For developers in Central Europe we provide free buses from Poland, Czech republic, Croatia, and Slovenia in order to support them to reach CEGC. We also created more possibilities for companies to find talent at CEGC, like the new on-site job board to make it easy to spot open positions in the games industry. DIVERSITY This year’s conference focuses on Diversity. We want to celebrate the diversity and individuality of all participants. Our goal is to create an inclusive environment, where everyone feels welcomed, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religious belief. We want to support people who make Diversity happen! Central Europe is one of the most culturally diverse regions, and with CEGC we want to show the different influences and development of the manifold cultures in this area. This will bring the various talents from the region into the limelight of this international conference and increase their visibility. 6.000+ HOURS FOR CEGC Our distributed organizing team worked 6.000+ hours to make CEGC 2016 happen! That equals more than 250 days, that we worked for free next to our main job. And as we are not professional event managers, we only can do our best with the given resources. So please consider to say “Thank you” to the team, when you see them. On top of that, CEGC doesn’t receive any public funds and grants, and is 100% volunteer-driven. Therefore, we appreciate the support from our sponsors and partners very much. Without our wonderful partners, we wouldn’t be able to run this show. OPPORTUNITY MAKER At Games Austria - official organizer of CEGC - we see ourselves as opportunity makers. We provide a platform that generates and fosters opportunities for Central Europe, since we believe that to strengthen the sector in our own country, we must strengthen the sector in the region. The Central European Games Conference, the Games Austria GDC Scholarship Program, and all our other projects are opportunities for you. It is up to you, if you wait around for opportunities to knock, or if you take them. It is a great pleasure to welcome you at the Central European Games Conference held at the University of Vienna. With your attendance, CEGC melts together games and technology with 150 years of Viennese history, giving the event a unique flair of combining the tradition of the old Austrian monarchy and the life in digital age.

mariebeth aquino Executive Director

ABOUT CEGC 2016 In its 2nd edition, the Central European Games Conference (CEGC) continues Games Austria’s initiative to raise the visibility of game development in the Central and Eastern European region. Building on our experiences from last year, we are happy to now provide five days of networking and creating opportunities at the University of Vienna as our new venue. CEGC 2016 features: • • • • • • •

~ 500 ATTENDEES ~ 40 INDIE EXHIBITORS 2-DAY DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE 1 ENGINE TRACK, 3 SUMMITS, 1 GAME JAM 3 PARTIES 70+ SPEAKERS 60+ SESSIONS FROM 18 COUNTRIES

To reinforce our diversity theme even further, we have introduced three summits for this year’s edition. We found each of their topics to be important both to our members and the games industry as a whole and thus warranting further discussion in their own dedicated summits:

Furthermore, our Indie Expo will again accompany the conference program, providing Indies with an opportunity to connect, receive feedback and promote their games. The daily social program in the evening will allow developers to network in a relaxed environment.

•

Game development enthusiasts itching to put their inspirations and connections right to work can do so at the Austria Game Jam, which will take place right after the conference.

•

Central European Women in Games and Diversity Summit CEE++ Summit of Games Industry Enabling Organizations and Associations Education Summit

We hope you will enjoy this conference that our team of volunteers has worked hard to put together and we wish you an exciting time in Vienna!

TABLE OF CONTENTS 03

ABOUT CEGC

General Information

Floor Plan

Conference Highlights

CEE++ Summit

CE WIG & Diversity Summit

Education Summit

Unreal Engine Track

games made in poland

Schedule

Speaker Directory

Session Abstracts

Indie Exhibitors

Showcase / Austria Game Jam

University of Vienna

Partner Award Winners

CEGC Award / Scolarships / Travel

CEGC Team

Partners

cegconf.com GENERAL OVERVIEW wed, feb 17, 2016

thu, feb 18, 2016

fri, feb 19, 2016

sat, 20

sun, 21

opening 10:00 13:45

main conf.

lunch

14:30 18:00

games made in poland

cee++ summit

lunch

unreal engine track

wig &

diversity

summit

main conf.

austria game jam

main conf.

cee++ summit closing

unreal engine reception @vrei 19:00 open end

cegc reception @vrei

wig & diversity reception cegc social event @wiener eistraum

austria game jam

cegc indie expo

lunch cegc indie expo

cee++ summit

edu summit

official cegc party @ schwarzberg

austria game jam start

austria game jam finale

@microsoft

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CEGC 2016 GENERAL INFORMATION AND FACTS PRESS CONTACTS

Conference Hours 2016

SOCIAL EVENT HOURS

CEGC CONTACTS

Main Conference Hours Thursday, February 18 10:00 - 18:00 Friday, February 19 10:00 - 17:30

CEGC Welcome Reception Wednesday, February 17 19:30 at VREI

CEGC Mariebeth Aquino Partners, Sponsors, Management pr@cegconf.com mary@gamesaustria.com Games Austria press@gamesaustria.com Simon Walner Austria Game Jam simon@gamesaustria.com GAMES AUSTRIA CONTACTS

Exhibition Hours Thursday, February 18 10:00 - 18:00 Friday, February 19 10:00 - 17:00 CEE++ Summit Hours Wednesday, February 17 14:30 - 18:00 Thursday, February 18 11:30 - 18:00 Education Summit Hours Friday, February 19 10:00 - 13:45 WIG & Diversity Summit Hours Friday, February 19 14:30 - 17:00 Unreal Engine Track Hours Wednesday, February 17 14:30 - 18:00 Austria Game Jam Hours Friday, February 19 18:00 - 01:30 Saturday, February 20 09:00 - 01:30 Sunday, February 21 09:00 - 19:00 Game Jam Final Presentation: Sunday, February 21 16:00 FACTS

Unreal Engine Reception Wednesday, February 17 18:30 - 19:30 at VREI Punch-drinking and Ice-skating Thursday, February 18 19:00 at Wiener Eistraum

Črtomir Drofenik Speakers crtomor@cegconf.com

Polish Reception Friday, February 19 13:45 - 14:30 Polish Corner in Main Ceremonial Chamber, at University of Vienna

Markus Redl Exhibitors markus@cegconf.com

WIG & Diversity Reception Friday, February 19 18:00 - 19:00 at Schwarzberg Bar Official CEGC 2016 Party Friday, Feb 19 19:00 at Schwarzberg Bar Conference Badges are required for entry at the Official CEGC 2016 Party. LOCATIONS CEGC 2016 University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna Austria Game Jam Microsoft Austria, Am Europlatz 3, 1120 Vienna SOCIAL EVENTS LOCATIONS

CEGConference

@cegconf

Use #CEGC2016 for any discussions regarding the conference.

Schwarzberg Bar Schwarzenbergplatz 10, 1040 Vienna VREI VR-Lounge Lindengasse 53, 1070 Vienna Wiener Eistraum Rathausplatz 1, 1010 Vienna

For first aid and medical emergencies please get in touch with our staff or volunteers. Lost & Found items will be at the registration desk.

board@gamesaustria.com

Vlad Calu Event Cooperations vlad@cegconf.com Katharina Krösl Volunteers katharina@cegconf.com

DIVERSITY THEME Central Europe is one of the most culturally diverse regions and the. Central European Games Conference has chosen Diversity as the centerpiece for its second edition. We welcome the variety and individuality of all conference participants. Diversity will be the running theme throughout all CEGC 2016 events!

CODE OF CONDUCT At CEGC 2016 we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religious belief (or lack thereof). We expect the attendees of the CEGC 2016 to share our values and to demonstrate consideration and respect towards all the game community members. Make sure to notify the CEGC team members about any concerns regarding the behavior of any other conference participants. CEGC 2016

Use #IAMCEGC for social and other related events. Conference Badges are to be worn at all times during the event. We will not replace any lost or damaged badges.

Mariebeth Aquino Chairwoman Simon Walner Secretary Matthias Maschek Treasurer

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Visual identity, design and assets for the Central European Games Conference are developed by Rares Cinteza. rarescinteza.com

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wants to be inclusive to the largest number of contributors • wants to increase games community citizenship • wants you to exercise consideration and respect in your speech and actions • wants you to be mindful of your surroundings and of your fellow participants You can find more information about the Code of Conduct on our website: cegconf.com/tos.hmtl

CEGC 2016 ADVISORY BOARD “CEGC is a showcase of how diverse the gaming landscape in Central Europe is. As such, it attracts developers from some of the most innovative game studios in the world. CEGC brings people closer together and enables them to gain new perspectives.” martin Pichlmair

head of advisory board

Martin Pichlmair Co-Founder / Head of Program Broken rules / ITU Copenhagen aut / den

Magdalena Cielecka Producer Artifex mundi,

Tadej Gregorčič Founder motiviti, slo

Jarek Kolar Project Lead Bohemia Interactive

pol

Reka Kaloczy Digital Artist / Animator Freelancer, hun Johanna Schober COO Sproing, aut

cze

Tom Grochowiak Founder moaCube, pol

Michael Putz CEO Bongfish, aut

Brandon Sheffield Games Director necrosoft, usa

Ana Jembrek Game Designer Fit Brains, cro

Christopher Schmitz Director of Production Quantic Dream ger / fra

Jan Wagner Founder Cliffhanger Productions Games aut / ger

CENTRAL EUROPEAN PARTNER ASSOCIATIONS CEGC 2016 works closely with games associations from Central Europe to be able to strengthen the entire region. With the CEE++ Summit, CEGC supports those associations by providing a platform to strengthen the communication between them. national games associations are an important factor for the advancement of the sector. Don’t forget to support your local association! Croatian Game Developers Association cro, cgda.hr

Romanian Game Developers Association rou, rgda.ro

Syndicat National du Jeu Vidéo fra, snjv.org

České hry cze, ceske-hry.org

Game Dev Hub svk, gamedevhub.org

International Game Developers Association global, igda.org

Budapest Game Developers

Games Slovenia slo, gamesslovenia.si

European Game Developers Federation eu, egdf.eu

hun

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ground floor

Floor Plans

registration

entrance STREET ACCESS side stair access elevator UP TO 1st FLOOR

registration

main stair access UP TO 1st FLOOR entrance STREET ACCESS

1st floor

cont.

room 3

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room 2

1st floor side stair access elevator

speaker lounge

room 1 room 2 room 3 exhibition pitch & match social area speaker lounge wardrobe

social area

exhibition

showcase

exhibition

wardrobe

room 1 staff room

pitch & match

main stair access

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CEGC 2016 HIGHLIGHTS

Tina Merry Director, WW Core QA Electronic Arts Bucharest, Thursday, feb. 18 10:30 - 11:30, room 1 highlight

rou

diversity

Career Development in the Games Industry “I love this industry!” - This session will explore the concept of career development, as Tina describes some of her experiences working in the video game industry. A helpful framework and tips from others who work in game development will be part of the agenda.

Marek Rabas CEO and Co-founder madfinger Games, cze Thursday, feb. 18 14:30 - 15:30, room 1 highlight

czEch rEpUblIc

MADFINGER Games: The Story of Independence and Survival marek rabas, CEO at mADFInGEr Games, will describe the exciting journey from a small indie studio of four individuals to a full-fledged business with 85 employees. marek will share the core values, that everyone at mADFInGEr Games honors since the beginning and which have led to more than 120m of downloads.

Michal Staniszewski Creative Director and Founder Plastic, pol friday, feb. 19 10:00 - 11:00, room 1 highlight

poland

A Diversity of Ideas In current times it is really hard to invent a new type of gameplay, or to create a new setting for video games. The fundamental question remains: do we need to check all existing games and try to find the one that hasn’t been created yet? Or maybe we are all constrained in a box of games, and we just need to get out of it. With the use of simple paradigms of number theory, the speaker will try to sort and order all the existing ideas and point out those truly valuable and universal.

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Simon Sicko CEO and Founder Pixel Federation, svk Thursday, feb. 18 12:45 - 13:45, room 1 highlight

sloVakIa

Story of Pixel Federation The ups and downs of the game studio from Slovakia, or how we became an independent developer and self-publisher.

Marek Rosa CEO, CTO, and Founder keen Software House, cze Thursday, feb. 18 16:00 - 17:00, room 1 highlight

czEch rEpUblIc

Space Engineers: Game Dev Success through Early Access Early Access is becoming more and more popular, with indie developers adopting community driven development as a way to kickstart their projects. many have tried but failed to deliver or sustain the quality of their titles. In this talk you will learn how a small group of developers boldly went to a place where everything they did fell under the watchful eye of fans, and created one of the most successful Early Access titles to date, Space Engineers, with sales exceeding 1.6 million copies.

CEE++ SUMMIT 2016 The CEE++ Summit of Games Industry Enabling Organizations and Associations aims to provide a platform to strengthen the communication between these support structures.

wednesday, february 17 14:30 - 18:00 Thursday, february 18 11:30 - 18:00 ROOM 3

With this summit CEGC wants to support people who support game developers and the games industry in Central and Eastern Europe. It encourages organizations supporting the games industry to share their projects and initiatives with the Central European community of associations and organizations.

wEDNEsDay, fEbrUary 17, 2016

ThUrsDay, fEbrUary 18, 2016

14:30 creating opportunities in central Europe mariebeth aquino, games austria, aut

11:30 cEE++ summit opening & summary day1

starting from scratch: building a Game Dev community in slovenia Žiga pavlovič, games slovenia, slo

11:45 building a flourishing game industry ecosystem European perspectives - Jari-Pekka kaleva, EGDF, fin

15:20 croatian Games Industry ante Vrdelja, cgda, cro

12:45 Networking and cash! The key Ingredients of Germany’s support Infrastructure - michael liebe, Booster Space, ger 14:30 cEE: Games Industry and European policy maker maciej Hofman, European Commission, pol

polish Games association stan just, cd projekt, pol 16:15 piwag - The path to organizing chaos aurélien Nicoleau, Thibaud Durousset piwag, fra 17:00 working Groups

15:00 creative Europe – mEDIa support for videogame developers Pavlína kalandrová, Creative Europe media, cze 16:00 french Games Industry - Thierry Platon,SnJV,

fra

16:30 8 years of Dutch Game Garden: how Incubation helps Developers Eline muijres, Dutch Game Garden, ned 17:00 panel: what now? central European Games sector mariebeth Aquino - aut, Pavol Buday - cze/svk, Črtomir Drofenik Damir Durovic - cro, Zach Zebrowski - hun, ranko trifkoviĆ - srb

Aurélien Nicoleau, Thibaud Durousset Piwag, fra Wed. 17 16:15 - 17:00 cee++ Piwag - The path to organizing chaos Piwag is a chance for every video game to meet its target audience. Being the next generation of search and recommendation engine for video games, Piwag is made for developers and publishers who cannot compete with the marketing budget of the biggest ones, and for us, players, to find more easily games that correspond precisely to our needs.

slo,

Jari-Pekka Kaleva European Games Developer Federation, fin 11:45 - 12:45 cee++

Building a flourishing game industry ecosystem European perspectives Each member state in the European Union has their own approach on building and supporting a flourishing local games industry ecosystem. Unique characteristics of national industries also tell a story about the public support measures used to build themand point out those truly valuable and universal.

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CEE++ SUMMIT 2016

Maciej Hofman European Commission, Directorate-General for Education and Culture, pol 14:30 - 15:00 cee++ Games Industry and European Policy Maker What lies behind the term “Cultural and Creative Sectors” and what does the Commission do to support them? How do video games fit in this puzzle? Do EU officials play games? Facts and figures, studies and funding opportunities straight from the Eurobubble. Pavlína Kalandrová Creative Europe MEDIA, 15:00 - 15:30

Michael Liebe Booster Space, ger 12:45 - 13:45

cze

cee++

How to get your game funded with Creative Europe MEDIA Since 2014 the mEDIA sub-programme of Creative Europe has had a special scheme for support of narrative video games. What’s the idea behind it, what are the conditions and what kind of games have been supported so far?

Eline Muijres Dutch Game Garden, 16:30 - 17:00

Networking and Cash! The Key Ingredients of Germany’s Support Infrastructure The talk gives an overview of examples how the German games industry is supported by both, public institutions and industry networks. It shows different financing opportunities - from kickstarter to public funding and VC - and highlights the pros and cons of the different tools. Thierry Platon Syndicat National du Jeu Vidéo & Gloomywood, fra 16:00 - 16:30

ned

cee++

8 Years of Dutch Game Garden: How Incubation Helps Developers What are the benefits from being part of an incubation program? How does it compare to being part of a co-working space or collective? Dutch Game Garden’s incubation program helps promising game-startups develop into fully-functioning game companies. With 30+ game studios in one building, DGG offers individual coaching, events, team training and open office hours with experts in the field of law, marketing, Pr, monetization, publishing, accounting and Hr. Besides DGG’s history, statistics, and community, Eline also shares experiences and personal stories on what it is like for a studio in an incubation program like Dutch Game Garden’s, and in what ways it helps them start and mature.

French Games Industry France created video games for over 30 years and the creativity of their designs has been recognized for a long time. yet it is only a few years since almost all French studios and publishers gathered under the banner of the SnJV (Syndicat national du Jeu Video) which also brings together eight regional associations, as well as being a founding member of EGDF (European Association) and The Game (French export organization dedicated to videogames). The structuring of the sector has been slow, but today, the SnJV is acting in four main areas: finance, legal, training and communication. Thierry Platon, vice president of SnJV since its foundation, explains the benefits of this structuring, the actions of his association, with an overview of the actors and the market in France.

Stan Just R&D Manager CD Projekt, pol

Mariebeth Aquino Chairwoman Games Austria, aut

Pavol Buday Co-founder Game Dev Hub,

Ante Vrdelja Secretary General Croatian Game Developers Association,

Zach Zebrowski Head of Group Budapest Game Dev meetup Group,

Črtomir Drofenik Chairman Games Slovenia, slo

cro

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hun

svk

Damir Durovic Managing Director reboot Develop, cro

Žiga Pavlovič, Co-Founder & Operations Lead Games Slovenia, slo

CE WIG & DIVERSITY friday, february 19 14:30 - 17:00 ROOM 1

SUMMIT

The Central European Women in Games and Diversity Summit is a brand new event at CEGC. With this summit CEGC wants to encourage the acceptance and furtherance of diversity and women in games. For a continuous and successful growth and the strengthening of the games industry, equality in treatment is one of the key points. The CE WIG and Diversity Summit is the first activity of the CE WIG group to promote diversity in the Central European games sector. This field of our shared interests should be equal and comfortable for everyone, thus all attendants regardless of gender are invited to join the talks and discussions on the topics raised by our speakers After the summit we will host a WIG & Diversity rECEPTIOn at Schwarzberg Bar, starting 18:00. WIG & Diversity Reception friday, february 19 18:00 - 19:00 at schwarzberg bar

Mata Haggis Associate Professor of Entertainment & Creative Games nHTV University Breda matazone Games, ned 14:30 - 15:00 diversity You Don’t Have to Understand Patriarchy to Work Here, but It Helps: Diversity, Society, and Games Prof. mata Haggis explains the frequently misunderstood concept of ‘patriarchy’ and its relevance to modern video games development. This talk examines how video games compare to films and society in their representation of diversity groups, and briefly looks at one method for improving both the diversity in your game’s content and its quality at the same time. By understanding overarching social systems, developers can look outside of stereotypes for new inspiration, characters, and situations. This can lead to developers finding a unique position in the crowded games release market, with benefits for both the representation of diverse voices in society and their own business. Eric Jannot Creative Director waza! games, ger 15:30 - 16:00 diversity

Discussing Diversity through Newsgames newsgames, as a form of journalistic video games, can be powerful tools to promote a sensible debate about diversity. In this session, the audience will learn what newsgames are, how they work, and with examples like “September the 12th”, what defines good newsgames. The newsgame “no male Heroes” as commentary to the Gamergate debate will be presented as best practice for a newsgame about diversity. Finally, tools and methods will be shown to make one’s own newsgame without prior coding knowledge.

Martine Spaans Owner Tamalaki Games, ned 15:00 - 15:30 diversity

I Play 5 Hours a Day, but I’m Not a Gamer many games are intended for a female audience, but do we really understand what this target audience is all about? Do we understand what they are looking for, what they enjoy or even why they play games? Tamalaki has published more than 100 Android titles that are mainly popular among women 30+. We have listened carefully to what our audience has to say, and they are quite vocal! We’d like to share some of our stories.

Olga Afanasjeva COO GoodAI, cze 16:00 - 17:00 diversity

General Artificial Intelligence: the Future of Humankind & the Future of Gaming This talk is all about general artificial intelligence: its advantages, effects on jobs in the future, implications for human safety, and impact on the game industry. Want to see AI in games that is not pre-programmed, but can learn, adapt, and respond to motivation given by a human player who trains it? Olga Afanasjeva, COO of GoodAI, introduces how general artificial intelligence could fundamentally change the nature of game AI. Her talk provides an overview of how one Prague-based indie development studio is working to implement a truly general and adaptive AI in its titles – meaning that the AI can learn from human players, build upon its knowledge, and adapt to unfamiliar situations in order to make gameplay more fun.

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EDUCATION SUMMIT

friday, february 19, 2016 10:00 - 13:45 cET ROOM 3 With the very first Education Summit, CEGC wants to provide a platform to strengthen the communication between educational institutions teaching game development in Central Europe. They will share their experience in educating the next generation of games industry professionals. - presentation of existing academic institutions teaching game development - Discussion of problems and challenges and possible improvements in educating the next generation of games industry professionals

University of Vienna Helmut Hlavacs, aut

University of Technology Vienna michael Wimmer, aut

UAS Upper Austria michael lankes, aut

UAS Salzburg markus Tatzgern,

UAS Technikum Wien Alexander Hofmann, aut

University of Ljubljana Peter Peer, slo

Charles University Jakub Gemrot, cze

Masaryk University JiĹ&#x2122;Ă Chmelik, cze

Comenius University michal Ferko, svk

UCM Trnava Zdenko mago,

ITU Copenhagen martin Pichlmair, den

NHTV University Breda mata Haggis, ned

svk

13:15 - WORKING LUNCH: Games Education in central Europe De Montfort University Simon Coupland, uk

Computer Camp for Kids Teodor Sandel-konjevic, srb

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aut

UNREAL ENGINE TRACK AT CEGC 2016 wednesday, february 17, 2016 14:30 - 18:00 cET ROOM 2

The Unreal Engine Track is another new addition to cEGc 2016, focusing on development with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. after an introduction by aleksey savchenko (Epic Games) there will be talks on different aspects of game development with UE4, followed by an overview on the Unreal Engine marketplace. with support from Epic Games and the Unreal User Group Vienna, we are happy to present the Unreal Engine Track at cEGc 2016.

Aleksey Savchenko Epic Games, ukr 14:30 - 15:20 unreal

unreal

Why Unreal Engine 4? An introductory session to Unreal Engine 4, covering a brief breakdown of its major advantages, toolset and opportunities for collaboration with Epic it gives to your team. We will also touch on subjects of how and why the tech can be implemented into the studio pipeline and become a cornerstone of further success stories, what are the best practices of using it and reverse engineer the creation of a small prototype to exemplify an effective and fast way of achieving development goals with UE4.

Jiří Dočkal Bohemia Interactive, 16:15 - 17:00

cze

unreal

Developing Mobile Games in Unreal Engine 4 This talk goes through experience gained during the development of Airmageddon, a mobile game in Unreal Engine.It will cover the arguments for choosing UE4 for mobile development, proven workflow and debugging practices, build pipeline and scaling the game for multiple devices among others.

Rene Czachs Unreal Engine User Group Vienna, aut 17:10 - 17:40 unreal

Publishing to the Unreal Engine Marketplace Thinking of submitting something to the Unreal Engine marketplace? Get an insight on the whole process from rene Czachs (indygoof) who went through it a few times already. receive tips and tricks for a successful submission and how to keep things going after your assets hit the market. Powered by Epic Games

Martin Pernica Grip Digital, cze 15:20 - 16:05

Two Years with Unreal Engine 4 After two years the Unreal Engine 4 has changed, in a good way, I promise! Unreal Engine 4 has a big community around it which helps to build useful engine features, thanks to the full source code being available and also Epic itself having a big focus on engine development. So you do not have to worry about the lack of new features, as there are plenty, which help you to create more breathtaking games and increase the productivity of your team! In this talk we will go through big new features from mobile to rendering techniques.

Marko Kaćanski Studio Don Quixote / minotaurproduction, srb 17:00 - 17:10 unreal

Rest House Presentation of the “rest House” game development process. It is a first person puzzle mystery adventure in the pre-alpha stage of development. UE4 creative process is taken from the movie making experience.

After the Unreal Engine Track, attendees are invited to join the Unreal Engine reception: Unreal Engine Reception Wednesday, February 17, 2016 18:30 to 19:30 CET Vrei, Lindengasse 53, 1070 Vienna Following this reception, the CEGC Welcome reception will take place at the same location.

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GAMES MADE IN POLAND friday, february 19 10:00 - 13:45 ROOM 1 On Friday, February 19, from 10:00 a special Polish track will take place at the Central European Games Conference with talks from Polish game developers. Additionally, at the CEGC Indie Expo in the main Ceremonial Chamber, guests can experience and their games by Polish development studios in the special exhibition “Games made in Poland“. We are very happy to have support from the Polish Institute Vienna, which generously supports CEGC and the Polish attendees.

Michal Staniszewski Creative Director and Founder Plastic, pol 10:10 - 11:00, Thu poland

Kornel Kisielewicz Founder & Studio Lead ChaosForge, pol 11:00 - 11:30, Thu

highlight

A Diversity of Ideas In current times it is really hard to invent a new type of gameplay, or to create a new setting for video games. The fundamental question remains do we need to check all existing games and try to find the one that hasn’t been created yet? Or maybe we are all constrained in a box of games and we just need to get out of it. With the use of simple paradigms of number theory, I will try to sort and order all existing ideas and point out those truly valuable and universal.

poland

Randomness vs. Difficulty randomness and procedural generation in games is the new hype. However, it clearly goes against the traditional QA process, where we want to test every situation and every possibility. This makes balancing a game with significant randomness a lot more difficult than the traditional game with predictable setups. moreover, overzealous balancing can destroy the benefits that more chaotic randomness gives. To make things worse, if a game has difficulty levels, things get a level worse (pun intended). We will discuss how to handle this chaos without losing what is most important - the fun factor.

Lukasz Hacura CEO Anshar Studios, pol 11:45 - 12:45, Thu

Agnieszka Mulak & Hubert Sobecki Writers moaCube, pol 12:45 - 13:15, Thu

poland

diversity

How to Pitch Your Game Pitching your game idea in a right way is often a be or not to be for the project. It doesn’t matter if you pitch the idea to an investor, publisher, studio head, a fellow designer or your friend - if you can’t do it right, the chances of project moving forward will drop. In this session you will learn both how to pitch your game via a document and in a face-to-face presentation. All types of pitches will be covered, from a pdf sent via an email, through 2 minutes flash face to face pitching session to a full blown, one hour, game presentation to a publisher.

Problems with Diversity. Between Tokenism and Absence many people want to play games with a diverse, unique cast of characters. Who could be more suited to oblige than us, two somewhat discriminated writers, fed up with sexist and homophobic content, as well as both lack of representation and overt tokenism? Soon enough feedback about our game forced us to realize how difficult the task actually is. Our creation definitely was not as transparent and self-aware as we imagined. now we would like to share our experiences with you so that the next time you try to create a diverse world in your game, you have it just a little easier. And when you fall in yet another stereotype trap of your culture (and you will!) you’ll be better prepared for it.

Another session by a Polish speaker takes place at the CEE++ Summit:

after the special polish track, everyone is invited to the polish reception, which takes place at the polish corner at the Indie Expo.

Stan Just CD Projekt, pol 15:20 - 16:05, Wed poland

Polish Games Association The Session is aimed at presenting the new association that has been established in Poland last year. This organization is composed out of the best game developing companies including Techland, CD Projekt, CI Games, People Can Fly, Flying Wild Hogs, 11 bit studios and many more. Despite its short history, it succeeds in creating a governmental grant programme to support r&D activities in Polish gamedev companies for years until 2023. We will talk about our current situation and development plans for the nearest future. 14 /// central european games conference

Polish Reception fri, feb 19, 2016 13:45 to 14:30

polish corner at Indie Expo in main ceremonial chamber University of Vienna

The Indie Expo will include a special dedicated ‘’Games made in Poland’’ corner exhibition with a lineup of four Polish studios.

Low Poly Dreams Wings of Fire, pol

Monster Couch Die for Valhalla!, pol

Plastic Bound pol Bound,

Vile Monarch Crush Your Enemies,

low Poly Dreams is a small indie game studio based in Poland. They are about to release their first game - Wings of Fire, an arcade flight shooter set in Pacific theater of WW2.

monster Couch is a new indie studio from Poznań. They make games that can be played together with friends, sitting on one couch, playing on a single phone, staring at one screen. They want more such games and this pushes them to create those.

Plastic is a small studio in Poland with demoscene roots. Since 2008 they have been collaborating with Sony Santa monica Studio and are currently working on “Bound”, an experimental 3D platformer that wants to connect not-games with games.

Vile monarch was founded by two former employees of 11 bit studios in may 2015. Its goal is to create multiplatform, diverse games filled with personality and unusual ideas. They like beer and hard rock, but are generally a friendly gang.

pol

We would like to thank the Polish Institute Vienna for their support of the growing Polish games industry by organizing and sponsoring a free bus from Warsaw to Vienna (and back) available to all CEGC attendees. Furthermore, the accommodation for Polish attendees is also covered by the Polish Institute Vienna.

CEGC 2016 SCHEDULE wEDNEsDay, fEbrUary 17, 2016

DAY 1

room 2

room 3

UNREAL ENGINE TRACK 14:30 15:20

15:2016:05

why Unreal Engine 4? aleksey savchenko, epic

cEE++ sUmmIT unreal

games, ukr

Two years with Unreal Engine 4? martin pernica, grip digital, cze

unreal

creating opportunities in central Europe mariebeth aquino, games austria, aut

cee++

starting from scratch: building a Game Dev community in slovenia Žiga pavlovi č, games slovenia, slo pavlovič,

cee++

croatian Games Industry ante Vrdelja, cgda, cro

cee++

polish Games association stan just, cd projekt, pol

cee++

COFFEE BrEAk

16:05

COFFEE BrEAk

Developing mobile games in Unreal Engine 4 jiří Dočkal , bohemia interactive, cze

unreal

piwag - The path to organizing chaos aurélien Nicoleau, Thibaud Durousset piwag, fra

cee++

17:0017:10

rest house marko kaćanski,

unreal

working Groups

cee++

17:1017:40

publishing to the Unreal Engine marketplace rene czachs, unreal engine ugv, aut

17:4018:00

Questions & answers

16:1517:00

studio don Quixote,

minotaurproduction, srb

unreal

18:30 19:30

EPIC Games RECEPTION @VREI

19:30

CEGC RECEPTION @VREI 15 /// central european games conference

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18 2016

DAY 2

room 1

room 2

10:1510:30

Mariebeth Aquino, central

highlight

11:30 11:45

12:45 13:45

Growing Strong Through Ups and Downs Tamara Milenković mad head games, srb

Story of Pixel Federation Simon Sicko, pixel federation, highlight

svk

slovakia

diversity

CEE++ Summit opening & summary day1 cee++

panel:

How to Fail Successfully In The Games Industry Jan Wagner cliffhanger productions, aut Eline Muijres dutch game garden, ned Peter Nagy games farm, svk Mirko Božović mad head games, srb

Building a flourishing game industry ecosystem - European perspectives Jari-Pekka Kaleva european games developer federation, fin cee++

Creating 3D experiences using WebGL, Web Audio and Babylon.js David Rousset, microsoft austria, fra

Networking and Cash! The Key Ingredients of Germany’s Support Infrastructure Michael Liebe, Booster Space, ger cee++

sponsored

12:45 13:15

Univ. of Vienna H. Hlavacs, aut, Vienna Univ. of Tech. M. Wimmer , aut UAS Upper Austria M. Lankes , aut UAS Salzburg M. Tatzgern, aut UAS Technikum Wien A. Hofmann, aut Univ. of Ljublana P. Peer, slo

Lunch break

You don’t have to understand patriarchy to work here, but it helps: diversity, society, and games Mata Haggis nhtv university, matazone games, ned

This @#$!% is broken!!! Pinpointing hidden player frustration in games Al Yang bigpoint gmbh, ger

Lunch break Seriously Funny: Designing & Producing Serious Games Michael Heiml ovos, aut

diversity

15:00 15:30

I Play 5 Hours a Day, but I’m Not a Gamer Martine Spaans, tamalaki

Teaching Players without Words Yacine Salmi salmi games, ger

games, ned

diversity

15:30 16:00

Discussing Diversity through Newsgames Eric Jannot, waza! games, ger diversity

16:00 17:00

General Artificial Intelligence: the Future of Humankind & the Future of Gaming Olga Afanasjeva, goodai, cze

In-house Versus Third Party Engine. A Retrospective View on the Development of Two Mobile Games Gabriele Hebart, Christian Stocker bongfish, aut

Rise of the Israeli Game Industry Success Models Tsahi Liberman, eduads, isr

The T Word That Everybody Skips Nicolae Berbece those awesome guys, rou

The History of Music in Video Games Alon Kaplan alon kaplan, isr

diversity

17:00 17:30 18:00 19:00 19:00

CLOSING & AWARD CEREMONY - Room 1 Women In Games and Diversity Reception Official CEGC 2016 Party

Austria Game Jam Start @Microsoft Offices Vienna

17 /// central european games conference

Speaker Directory Tina Merry Senior Director & World Wide Core QA Electronic Arts (EA), rou Marek Rabas CEO & Co-founder MADFINGER Games,

cze

Marek Rosa CEO, CTO & Founder Keen Software House, Simon Sicko CEO & Founder Pixel Federation,

cze

svk

Michal Staniszewski Creative Director & Founder Plastic, pol Lukasz Hacura CEO Anshar Studios, pol

Yacine Salmi CEO Salmi Games, ger

Mata Haggis Associate Professor of Entertainment & Creative Games NHTV University Breda & Matazone Games, ned

Christian Stocker Lead Gameplay Programer & Producer - Bongfish, aut Al Yang Lead Designer Bigpoint, ger Mariebeth Aquino Chairwoman Games Austria, aut Pavol Buday Co-founder Game Dev Hub,

svk

Damir Durovic Managing Director Reboot Develop, cro

Agnieszka Mulak Writer MoaCube, pol

Maciej Hofman Policy Officer, Culture - Cultural and Creative Industries European Commission, Directorate - General for Education and Culture, pol

Hubert Sobecki Writer MoaCube, pol

rou

Radu Danciu Founder, Senior Entertainment Engineer - Sprocket Inc., rou Catharina Due Bøhler CEO and Founder Sarepta Studio, nor Christian Freude Research Assistant - Vienna University of Technology, aut Michael Liebe Founder & CEO Booster Space, ger Tadej Gregorčič Creative and Technical Director, Co-founder - Motiviti, slo Sabine Hahn CEO - Sabine Hahn Training & Coaching, ger Gabriele Hebart Lead Graphics Programmer Bongfish, aut Michael Heiml Game Production & Design ovos, aut Peter Nagy CEO Games Farm, svk

Olga Afanasjeva COO GoodAI, cze

Črtomir Drofenik Chairman Games Slovenia, slo

Kornel Kisielewicz Founder & Studio Lead ChaosForge, pol

Nicolae Berbece Founder & Designer Those Awesome Guys,

Thomas Reisenegger German PR Executive & PR Consultant - ICO Partners, gbr

Stan Just R&D Manager CD Projekt, pol Pavlína Kalandrová National Film Archive Creative Europe, cze Jari-Pekka Kaleva COO - European Games Developer Federation, fin Eline Muijres Communications Manager Dutch Game Garden, ned Aurélien Nicoleau Co-founder Piwag, fra

Eric Jannot Creative Director waza!, ger

Jiří Dočkal Senior Game Developer Bohemia Interactive, cze

cze

Simon Coupland Research Fellow De Montfort University, Michal Ferko PhD Student Comenius University,

gbr

svk

Martin Pernica Team Leader Grip Digital, cze Aleksey Savchenko Evangelist Epic Games, ukr

Helmut Hlavacs University Professor University of Vienna,

Frank Naggies Field Engineer Unity Technologies,

aut

ger

Alexander Hofmann FH Professor - University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, aut

David Rousset HTML5 & MS Edge Senior Program Manager Microsoft, fra

Michael Lankes FH Professor University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, aut

Alon Kaplan Composer & Sound Designer Alon Kaplan, isr

Zdenko Mago Assistant Professor The University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, svk Peter Peer Associate Professor University of Ljubljana,

slo

Martin Pichlmair Head of Program, Co-Founder & Assistant Professor CEGC, Broken Rules & ITU Copenhagen, aut / den

Ante Vrdelja Secretary General - Croatian Game Developers Assoc., cro

Teodor Sandel-Konjevic Co-Founder and Teacher Computer Camp for Kids, srb

Marianne Lerdahl Zach Zebrowski Project Manager / Founder, Head of Group - Budapest Game Sarepta Studio, nor Dev Meetup Group, hun

18 /// central european games conference

Marko Kaćanski Director and CEO Studio Don Quixote / Minotaurproduction, srb

Jakub Gemrot Game Development Lecturer Charles University, cze

Thierry Platon Vice-President & Production Director - Syndicat National du Jeu Vidéo & Gloomywood, fra

Tsahi Liberman CEO - EduAds, isr

Michael Wimmer Associate Professor - Vienna University of Technology, aut Rene Czachs Developer / Code Artist - Unreal Engine User Group Vienna, aut

Martine Spaans Owner Tamalaki Games, ned Jiří Chmelik Assistant Professor Masaryk University,

Markus Tatzgern Senior Lecturer & Researcher, Head of Game Development & Mixed Reality University of Applied Sciences Salzburg, aut

Fares Kayali Senior Researcher TU Wien, aut Jan Wagner Founder - Cliffhanger Productions Games, aut Mirko Božović Producer / Technical Artist Mad Head Games, srb Tamara Milenković HR Manager Mad Head Games, srb Thibaud Durousset Co-founder & CEO Piwag, fra Wojciech Więckowski Director Polish Institute Vienna, aut Žiga Pavlovič Co-Founder & Operations Lead Games Slovenia, slo

session directory Thursday, February 18 Career Development in the Games Industry Tina Merry Electronic Arts, rou 10:30 - 11:30, Room 1 highlight

diversity

“I love this industry!” - This session will explore the concept of career development, as Tina describes some of her experiences working in the video game industry. A helpful framework and tips from others who work in gaming will be part of the agenda. Growing Strong through Ups and Downs Tamara Milenković Mad Head Games, srb 11:45-12:45, Room 1 conference

Every game development studio, as a work organization, has to go through certain phases of growth and development. Success and failure both follow this path, and our ups and downs helped us become better developers with deeper understanding of our true wishes: are we going to develop games or quit? The path to achieving dreams is rough, but if you truly want something you will find a way to make it happen. Growing in numbers results in new challenges every studio has to overcome: problems related to team management, communication, organization, skill gaps, physical space (office), and teamwork. How not to fall apart? How to create new structure and develop a better team? We learned how to listen to each other, heavily relying on diversity in approaches in game development, and diversity in team structures. Diversity helped us find what we really need – the right balance between what we want to do, with a team of people we enjoy working with. Story of Pixel Federation Simon Sicko Pixel Federation, svk 12:45 - 13:45, Room 1 highlight

The ups and downs of the game studio from Slovakia, or how we became independent developer and self-publisher.

Creating 3D experiences using WebGL, Web Audio and Babylon.js David Rousset Microsoft, thu 12:45 - 13:45, Room 2 sponsored

During this session, we will review how to create 3d experiences using Babylon.js, a free & open-source gaming framework for the web. For instance, we’ll see how to load 3D models exported from Blender or Unity and how to add interactivity such as calling a physics engine. We’ll see also how to create an even more immersive experience using Web Audio. MADFINGER Games: The Story of Independence and Survival Marek Rabas MADFINGER Games, cze 14:30 - 15:30, Room 1 highlight

Marek Rabas, CEO at MADFINGER Games, will describe the exciting journey from a small indie studio of four individuals to a full-fledged business with 85 employees. Marek will share the core values, that everyone at MADFINGER Games honors since the beginning and which have led to more than 120M downloads. Why We Need Diversity in Games Industry Sabine Hahn - Sabine Hahn Training & Coaching, ger 14:30 - 15:30, Room 2 diversity

According to research, more diverse teams have been found to be more effective and productive than others. (i.e. McKinsey, Catalyst) At the same time research reflects what you might expect – a vast majority of game developers are white men, aged between 20 and 35 typically, and very few have children. The session wants to examine the status quo of the games industry with regards to it’s diversity, elaborate on academic findings as well as empirical data regarding the games industry as much as introduce the basic concept of diversity and diversity management in corporate settings and discuss some proposals which are typically suggested to achieve more diversity. The session will benefit from personal case studies and examples from the audience and

therefore aims to have time for Q&A and dialogue. Space Engineers: Game Dev Success through Early Access Marek Rosa Keen Software House, cze 16:00 - 17:00, Room 1 highlight

Early Access is becoming more and more popular, with indie developers adopting community driven development as a way to kickstart their projects. Many have tried but failed to deliver or sustain the quality of their titles. In this talk you will learn how a small group of developers boldly went to a place where everything they did fell under the watchful eye of fans and created one of the most successful Early Access titles to date – Space Engineers, with sales exceeding 1.6 million copies.

gathered from my own and my team’s experience building scalable tools and systems, integrating them into products in various stages of production and mutating them to better fit each project’s vision. Some examples covered – deploying Unit/ Integration/Regression testing into a project after pre-production, enabling non-technical team members to interact with core lower-level systems, leveraging tool programmers’ knowledge to reduce QA, art or LD workload. Avoiding the “Tagalong Trap” - Designing an Asymmetric Co-Op Game Catharina Due Bøhler / Marianne Lerdahl Sarepta Studio, nor 17:30 - 18:00, Room 2 conference

While many games claim to support two players, in reality, they are optimized for just one. In these these games, it is only Adventure Games and The the first player who gets the full Interplay of Narrative and gameplay experience, while Design the second simply “tags along.” Tadej Gregorčič In this presentation, Catharina Motiviti, slo Bøhler, CEO of Sarepta Studio, 16:00 - 17:00, Room 2 and Marianne Lerdahl, project manager of Sarepta Studio, will conference use their experience developing This session will explore what Shadow Puppeteer - an award makes a compelling story and winning-local co-op adventure focus on the complex interplay of to identify the major challenges narrative and design. Narrative of designing an asymmetric and design should support each co-op game, as well as specific other, rather than get in each methods for avoiding the “Tagother’s way – but getting this along Trap”. right is a challenge. Knowing the available tools, structures Friday, February 19 and formal frameworks can be a great start. We will cover things A Diversity of Ideas like story structure, dialogue, Michal Staniszewski puzzles design, puzzle depenPlastic, pol dency charts, and the MDA* 10:10 - 11:00, Room 1 framework. Finally, we will look at how all these elements work to- highlight poland gether and affect the production In current times it is really hard to pipeline – especially for a small invent a new type of gameplay, indie team. or to create a new setting for Tooling for the Future of video games. The fundamental Production question remains - do we need to Radu Danciu check all existing games and try Sprocket Inc., rou to find the one that hasn’t been 17:00 - 17:30, Room 3 created yet? Or maybe we are conference all constrained in a box of games and we just need to get out of it. With the continuous progress to With the use of simple paradigms architectures and performance of number theory, I will try to sort with each subsequent hardware and order all existing ideas and generation, it is imperative point out those truly valuable and to both build reusable and universal. expandable tools and to consider leveraging mature technologies to speed up production. The session will deliver key insights 19 /// central european games conference

YourTurn! Designing for Diversity Fares Kayali - Vienna University of Technology, aut 10:00 - 11:00, Room 2 conference

This talk explores how game design can shape social interaction using the case of the social impact game “YourTurn! The Video-Game”. YourTurn is a social network game about creating video mash-ups with other players to foster social interaction and the reflection of cultural identity among juvenile minority groups in Vienna, Austria. The game and its desired impact will be presented before detailing how game mechanics are shaped to achieve that impact. Preceding studies show that youth in Vienna tend to segregate into closed ethnic groups. To answer the central research question “Can an online social music game allow Viennese teenagers to change their understanding of cultural diversity in order to overcome cultural and ethnical boundaries?”, a game has been developed. The evaluation of the game builds on social network analysis and 48 media interviews with teenagers living in Vienna. The session further gives a post mortem from a design perspective. Randomness vs. Difficulty Kornel Kisielewicz ChaosForge, pol 11:00 - 11:30, Room 1

cent materials, such as skin, plant leaves, marble and milk, which need under 0.5 milliseconds per frame to execute. The intuition behind our techniques is easy to understand, and as this work was done together with Activision Blizzard, we are confident that this technique will see widespread adoption in the AAA games of the future. How to Pitch Your Game Lukasz Hacura Anshar Studios, pol 11:45 - 12:45, Room 1 poland

Pitching your game idea in a right way is often a be or not to be for the project. It doesn’t matter if you pitch the idea to an investor, publisher, studio head, a fellow designer or your friend - if you can’t do it right, the chances of project moving forward are dropping. In this session you will learn both how to pitch your game via a document and in a face to face presentation. All types of pitches will be covered, from a pdf sent via an email, through 2 minutes flash face to face pitching session to a full blown, one hour, game presentation to a publisher. 10 Insane Unity Secrets You Did Not Know! Frank Naggies Unity Technologies, ger 11:45-12:45, Room 2 sponsored

poland

us, two somewhat discriminated writers, fed up with sexist and homophobic content as well as both lack of representation and overt tokenism? Soon enough feedback about our game forced us to realize, how difficult the task actually is. Our creation definitely was not as transparent and self-aware as we imagined. Now we would like to share our experiences with you so that the next time you try to create a diverse world in your game, you have it just a little easier. And when you fall in yet another stereotype trap of your culture (and you will!) you’ll be better prepared for it.

games development. This talk examines how video games compare to films and society in their representation of diversity groups, and briefly looks at one method for improving both the diversity in your game’s content and its quality at the same time. By understanding overarching social systems, developers can look outside of stereotypes for new inspiration, characters, and situations. This can lead to developers finding a unique position in a crowded games release market, with benefits for both the representation of diverse voices in society and their own business.

Guerrilla Marketing - Promote Your Game with Little Money, Much Insanity and Maximum Impact Thomas Reisenegger ICO Partners, gbr 12:45 - 13:45, Room 2

I Play 5 Hours a Day, but I’m Not a Gamer Martine Spaans Tamalaki Games, ned 15:00 - 15:30, Room 1

conference

The crowded video game market sees hundreds of releases each month, meaning that being overlooked is a huge threat for games, particularly smaller titles. In other words, making a good game is often not good enough. Guerrilla marketing - also known as PR stunts - is a relatively untouched field, which gives a game a strong PR boost and additional visibility, all with a small budget and occurring outside of the regular press communication cycle. However, successful PR stunts are hard to perform and to replicate. The session starts with an in-depth examination of how and why Guerilla marketing works. This includes some of the best/worst examples from the industry, and the subsequent impact of their marketing on PR coverage and sales. The second section looks at the ways that other industries work with Guerilla Marketing, and how these ideas can be utilised for video games PR. The final section describes the practical tools that will help companies to develop PR stunts on their own.

You think you know Unity Randomness and procedural inside-out? Think again, because generation in games is the new Frank, Field Engineer from Unity hype. However it clearly goes Technologies, will be revealing against the traditional QA proseveral highly interesting tricks cess, where we want to test every and secrets about the Unity situation and every possibility. engine that you have probably This makes balancing a game not heard before. Through with significant randomness lot working across the spectrum of more difficult than the traditional developers, from students to the game with predictable setups. largest enterprise customers in EuMoreover, overzealous balancing rope, Frank has seen many teams can destroy the benefits that doing crazy things in Unity. Learn more chaotic randomness gives. from this knowledge, and find out To make things worse, if a game new tricks how to optimize your has difficulty levels, things get a games! The new GPU Instancing level worse (pun intended). We feature will be presented as well. You Don’t Have to Underwill discuss how to handle this stand Patriarchy to Work chaos without losing what is most Problems with diversity. Here, but It Helps: Diversity, important - the fun factor. Between tokenism and Society, and Games absence. Mata Haggis Photorealistic Skin Agnieszka Mulak / Hubert NHTV University Breda & for AAA Games Sobecki - MoaCube, pol Matazone Games, ned Christian Freude - Vienna 12:45 - 13:45, Room 1 14:30 - 15:00, Room 1 University of Technology, aut 11:00 - 11:30, Room 2 conference

We present two real-time models for simulating subsurface scattering for a large variety of translu-

poland

Many people want to play games with a diverse, unique cast of characters. Who could be more suited to oblige than

20 /// central european games conference

diversity

Prof. Mata Haggis explains the frequently misunderstood concept of ‘patriarchy’ and its relevance to modern video

diversity

Many games are intended for a female audience, but do we really understand what this target audience is all about? Do we understand what they are looking for, what they enjoy or even why they play games? Tamalaki has published more than 100 Android titles that are mainly popular among women 30+. We have listened carefully to what our audience has to say, and they are quite vocal! We’d like to share some of our stories. This @#$!% Is Broken!!! Pinpointing Hidden Player Frustration in Games Al Yang Bigpoint, ger 14:30 - 15:00, Room 2 conference

A healthy population is key for any gaming community, from matchmaking to marketing virality. However, many extremely engaged players will suddenly quit out of frustration when just a week before they were your strongest advocates and fervent players. This talk explores the concept of normalization of deviance as it applies to game design and breaks down the components of the retention killing “”brick wall”” that is feared by so many developers. We will discuss the culture of negligence that has become the norm and how we can intentionally build this into our games to lessen frustration through player education.

Seriously Funny: Designing & Producing Serious Games Michael Heiml ovos, aut 14:30 - 15:00, Room 3 conference

Can Serious Games be fun? Can they be successful? What difficulties arise when a game has to be not only designed from a perspective of mechanics and play, but also in terms of learning content and ethnic considerations? Can Serious Games grow beyond dry didactic content through fun? How do we have to define success in a niche like Serious Games? What are good examples and why do they work? What are their key differences compared to unsuccessful attempts? This talk raises some of the major questions that are involved when designing and developing Serious Games and tries to give answers from the developers’ perspective. The speaker will present good and bad game examples along with figures, production insights and analyses of design choices and why they were more or less helpful. Teaching Players without Words Yacine Salmi Salmi Games, ger 15:00 - 15:30, Room 3 conference

The rise of minimalist games with no text has opened new design challenges. Yacine Salmi, designer of Ellipsis, will explore how such games can teach players their mechanics without using words. He will walk you through eight new mechanics adapted from classic design principles to better teach gameplay rules and illustrate these using specific examples from games like Blek, Circadia and Ellipsis. He will also draw larger design lessons that can be applied to all types of games. Discussing Diversity through Newsgames Eric Jannot waza!, ger 15:30 - 16:00, Room 1 diversity

Newsgames, as a form of journalistic videogames, can be powerful tools to promote a sensible debate about diversity. In this session, the audience will learn what newsgames are, how they work and with examples like “”September the 12th””, what defines good newsgames. The

newsgame “”No Male Heroes”” as commentary to the Gamergate debate will be presented as best practice for a newsgame about diversity. Finally, tools and methods shown to make an own newsgame without prior coding knowledge.

and impact on the game industry. Want to see AI in games that is not pre-programmed, but can learn, adapt, and respond to motivation given by a human player who trains it? Olga Afanasjeva, COO of GoodAI, introduces how general artificial intelligence could fundamentally change In-House Versus Third Party the nature of game AI. Her talk provides an overview of how one Engine. A Retrospective Prague-based indie development View on the Development studio is working to implement a of Two Mobile Games truly general and adaptive AI in Gabriele Hebart / Christian its titles – meaning that the AI can Stocker - Bongfish, aut learn from human players, build 15:00 - 15:30, Room 2 upon its knowledge, and adapt conference to unfamiliar situations in order to make game play more fun. Based on two mobile games developed by Bongfish, this session compares the use of The T Word That Unity as a third-party engine and Everybody Skips the combination of SOMA, the Nicolae Berbece in-house engine of Bongfish, and Those Awesome Guys, rou Marmalade, a third-party engine, 16:00 - 17:00, Room 2 with for mobile game developconference ment. The topics will include a detailed overview of pros and This talk is about tutorials and if cons for both engine choices as it doesn’t teach you what we are well as an idea about the actual doing wrong, it means I shouldn’t workload and problems that talk about tutorials. Annoying came along with the adaption of pop-ups, walls of text, images of the in-house engine during the controllers with a bajillion little development phase. lines coming out of them leading to actions that the player is Rise of the Israeli Game supposed to magically remember Industry - Success Models before even playing the game. Tsahi Liberman Seriously, these things need to EduAds, isr be fixed. Let’s talk about how to 15:30 - 16:00, Room 3 make a good tutorial without the player even realizing that he is conference going through one. The Israeli game industry has been here for years, but in the The History of Music in last 5 years we can see a huge Video Games leap in either small studios Alon Kaplan or growing massive game Alon Kaplan, isr companies showing their control 16:00 - 17:00, Room 3 on various parts of this exciting conference market. Examples like Tabtale, Sidekick, Tacticsoft, Plarium & The history of music in video Playtika are names that paint for games: From the beginning of us Israelis, the taste of success the chips era, through the 8 bit to and hard work. There are more the world of MIDI, synthesizers, of course, but what drives those streaming and finally to today’s companies to the top? What are wonderful and unlimited era, the models they use to overcome the music in video games opponents? And how GameIS, have come a long way while the Israeli game industry assoadapting the new technologies ciation, is a crucial part of this and platforms of each decade. success and future? In this talk we will travel through time and watch the journey of General Artificial Intelthe soundtrack for video games ligence: the Future of while hearing examples from Humankind & the Future of known milestones and while Gaming collecting new technologies and Olga Afanasjeva music elements. Pac-Man, Space GoodAI, cze Invaders, Day of the Tentacle, 16:00 - 17:00, Room 1 Fifa and Rayman Legends are diversity only a few of the examples that will be discussed. This talk is all about general artificial intelligence: its advantages, effects on jobs in the future, implications for human safety, 21 /// central european games conference

INDIE EXHIBITORS

Bytewood mutantfall / cloudwire,

aut

Acting as a dedicated hot spot, the CEGC Indie Expo lets developers showcase their latest projects allows attendees to experience what they have up their sleeves. meet and connect with like-minded people, play Central Europe’s latest creations from independent developers and students alike.

Low Poly Dreams Wings of Fire, pol

projectZOOM Clayburger VEmpire - The Kings of Darkness, Hopply, cze aut

Impetus Games Glow, aut

Interstellar Game Studio Mad Squad, aut

ISGinnovations GmbH / Game Gestalt Aquamorra, aut

sIPXgames StreetJustice, aut

TheGameSpecies Undercover Missions: Operation Kursk K-141, aut

Plasma Platypus Sweet Escape, Ulfberht Saga, Rack Your Brain, can

Klemens Strasser Asymmetric / Elementary Minute, aut

Noizoo Games Dungenious, aut

Charged Monkey Summoner’s Tale, cze

Gungrounds Rocking Pilot, Spitfire Inferno,

22 /// central european games conference

Monster Couch Die for Valhalla!, pol

Causa Creations Burn The Boards, ger

Plastic Bound, pol

Technisches Atelier Dr. Bühling A Room Beyond, ger

Vile Monarch Crush Your Enemies,

Nemesys Games Air Control Simulator 2,

Pine Studio SEUM, cro

The Rogues Rogues with Benefits,

Kubat Software Aggressors, cze

Guz Games Dark Day L.A. Wii U, cro

Nachobeard Cerulean Moon, ned

esp

pol

Doublequote Studio Blood will be Spilled, svk hun

Team Red Panda Fur Fight, slo ned

Tiny Colossus / Team ERROR Slybots: Frantic Zone, esp

CinnoMan Games MODSORK, che

N-Dream AG Silly Run Valley, AirConsole platform in general, che

DrDavient Blockships, gbr

James Patton Games Masques and Murder!, gbr

Team Kerfuffle Kerfuffle, aut / usa

FH Salzburg Evergreen, aut

Team Niche Niche - a genetics survival game, sui

Fractal Box Cubikolor, fra

FH Salzburg Hunters, aut

STUDENT TEAM EXHIBITORS

FH Technikum EDU/ Team Louie & LOOP Louie & LOOP, aut

3100 games Spaceland, aut

Die Graphische EDU / Circuit IntroVideo for CEGC 2016,

Kreis Games Kreis, slo

couch developers Sam the Sumbot, Fairy King, Madlife, che

aut

showcasE The Showcase is a new addition to CEGC where people can present their project in a new way! Visit the Showcase in the main Ceremonial Chamber and interact with the speakers, to gain valuable insights in what they’ve learned. Check out this schedule, to see when it’s your favorite presenter’s turn: real world but with imaginary, virtual objects and creatures that you could interact with. Imagine that you could play a FPS “lasertag” kind of game in the real world. Imagine that you are Thursday, February 18 in a raid with your friends and 10:30 - 11:45 you could fight together against monsters, dragons and other Ranko Trifkovic mystical creatures in a real forest. Head of Development new technologies of Vr and Ar red Viking, srb will make this dream become a reality. There are projects that Partisans: When Niche they are right now working on. Game Stirs Spirits They will talk about Ar and how First Offensive is an example gaming could look through Ar, of an attempt to bring diversity and in which part of the realiinto games in general and zation this technology stands. to the Visual novel genre in particular. not only it is a recount What are the obstacles and of lesser-known historical events, opportunities of Ar and possible applications of this technology. it represents local content that Applications are limitless, all you could spark interest of a global need is little imagination. audience.

Thursday, February 18 11:45 - 13:45

Thursday, February 18 14:30 - 17:30

Nikola Poljanec & Viktorija Filipasic Unity developer & 3D modeler Project Wonderland, cro

Yevgeniya Drovossekova Graphic artist Freelancer, cze

New Frontiers in Gaming AR and Project Wonderland Interested in new ideas, and whole new perspectives in gaming? Imagine that you could see

Fine Art As a Form of Promotion Fine arts and videogames are brought together to a mix, where games are being embodied into

aUsTrIa GamE jam

paintings, carried out by physical materials such as oil on canvas. It is a presentation of a new art project, made for Game Developer Session held in Prague, an invitation for the artists and developers to join in and drag to the next level.

Friday, February 19 10:30 - 13:15 Martin Nerurkar Creative Director Sharkbomb Studios,

ger

Shooting Stars! Lessons Learned While Trying to Save Mobile Games A Bloodirony Games Post mortem: from all things needed before you start a company to how you deal with the financial truth after the release. How to work with a small team and what they have done to be as loud and noticeable as possible. How they found their publishers and how they worked with them. He compares what he thought would happened and what actually happened and gives deep insights in where the money went and where it came back. He also wants to share all the good things that happened only because they created something.

Nowhere Prophet - Building a Better Post-Apocalypse nowhere Prophet is a roguelike deck-building game developed for desktop and tablets. The player leads an exodus across a hostile, post-apocalyptic planet, Friday, February 19 looking for a fabled place of 15:30 - 17:30 safety. Karel Vik Owner & Director keenGamer, cze

Friday, 19 Feb 13:15 - 15:30 Michael Hartinger CEO Bloodirony Game, aut

What does KeenGamer, ultimate social website, offer to gamers and developers? If you’re a developer, keenGamer can help you promote your titles and studio. And if you’re a gamer, you can enjoy all the social features and follow our gaming news and reviews. We have something for everyone!

friday, february 19 to sunday february 21 @ MICROSOFT OFFICE VIENNA The 7th Austria Game Jam is part of CEGC this year again. It is the longest running game jam in Austria. The jam starts on Friday, right after the closing ceremony of the main conference and it is hosted by microsoft in their Vienna HQ. The jam is open to all Game Jam ticket holders, but we invite everybody to the final presentations of the games on sunday, february 21, starting at 16:00. A Game Jam is the ideal place to get together with new people of different skills and background, form new teams, and work on fresh and innovative game ideas. It is an intense experience to create a game prototype only within 2 days, but it is rewarding to see with what you come up at the end. A jam is also always a good chance to get together, learn new skills, or try out new fields. Fo r more details and directions on how to get to the location got to our website: cegconf.com/gamejam.html

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UNIVErsITy of VIENNa Founded in 1365, the University of Vienna is the oldest university in Austria, and one of the oldest in the German-speaking countries. With its long and rich history, the University of Vienna has developed into one of the biggest universities in Europe, and also one of the most renowned, especially in the Humanities. It is associated with 15 nobel prize winners and has been the academic home of a large number of figures both of historical and academic importance. The building where the university is currently located was finished in 1884 and is one of the famous buildings along the Vienna ringstraße. remarkable is the ceiling of the “main Ceremonial Chamber” which shows allegories of the four main departments of a European university of the 19th century in pictures: Philosophy, medicine, law, and Theology. Except for Theology, they were initially to be painted by Gustav klimt, but after an eventful history, nowadays grayscale photographs of those paintings are on the ceiling.

address: Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna

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parTNEr awarD wINNErs Through close cooperation with our international event partners, we are able to provide exhibit space to some of the most celebrated indie developers in Europe.

Indigo Award Winners ROGUES WITH BENEFITS by The rogues - rogueswithbenefits.com The Rogues’ presence at CEGC is a result of the amazing collaboration with the Dutch Game Garden.

Slovenian Games Conference Award Winners ELROY AND THE ALIENS by motoviti - elroythegame.com Motiviti can join CEGC due to our institutional supporter Games Slovenia.

EIGD Award Winners (European Indie Game Days) CUBIKOLOR by Fractal Box - fractalbox.fr/cubikolor.php Fractal Box’s trip to Vienna was made possible with the help of our partners from Syndicat National du Jeu Vidéo.

cEGc awarD All of our exhibitors automatically take part in a contest for the “CEGC Audience Choice Award”, which will be determined by you and all the other visitors! When you receive your badge, you’ll also be given a small cEGc award voting card, on which you can write the name of your favourite CEGC 2016 Indie Expo Project. Simply drop this card into one of the CEGC Award boxes either at the registration desk or the wardrobe to vote. The winner of the CEGC Award will be announced at the closing ceremony of the conference.

scholarshIps For this year’s conference, Games Slovenia was given scholarships for CEGC to support game developers and enthusiasts from Slovenia, who don’t have the financial resources to be able to buy tickets themselves. Furthermore, a bus from Slovenia to Vienna was provided to enable traveling to CEGC for free. The cooperation between CEGC and Games Slovenia is exemplary of what can be achieved in the Central European region. This is in line with our goal to support not only established game developers, but also upcoming talents, who would not have the chance to visit a conference abroad otherwise, and to connect to new people in the games industry. For the scholars it is a great experience and the possibility to grow personally. We hope to be able to extend the number of partnering associations for scholarships and increase the number of scholars in the upcoming years, to give more people the chance to visit CEGC.

cEGc TraVEl

At this year’s edition of the Central European Games Conference we made getting to Vienna a little easier through our two CEGC buses from Poland and Croatia, which are free of charge! These buses are not only a quick and fun way to travel to and from CEGC, they also provide on-board refreshments so that everyone who joins this road trip arrives at the conference fully energized. Our aim was and will always be to enable everyone from Central and Eastern Europe to experience CEGC. In the upcoming years we are looking forward to expand our portfolio on travel arrangements

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THE CEGC 2016 TEAM Mariebeth Aquino Executive Director, aut mariebeth is an opportunity maker and community-driven entrepreneur, who chairs Games Austria. She has instigated the Central European Games Conference and has dedicated herself to support and evolve the Central European area. Matthias Maschek Finance Director, aut matthias is building strange games with whatever he finds lying around to make people smile. nowadays he is the co-founder of lost in the Garden creating crazy games without the borders of gravity. Thomas Müller Tech and Website Coordinator, aut Thomas is co-founder and CEO of Fire Sword Studios. Beside that he studies business informatics at the Fernuniversität in Hagen.

Simon Wallner Deputy & Tech Director, aut Simon grew up with the ever evolving Viennese game dev scene. He is currently working on the next big thing in fancy racing games with his newly co-founded studio “lost in the Garden” Michael Tisler Location Director, aut michael is a Viennese Game Designer who is currently working for the dynamic games start-up Charged monkey after working at Cliffhanger Productions on titles like “Shadowrun Chronicles” and “Ærena - Clash of Champions”. Feeling the need to help the local game dev community, he joined the team who organizes the Central European Games Conference.

Vanessa Bosch Project Coordinator, ger Vanny is a media art student from Germany. She is a video game lover since childhood, hence her favorite part of Martha Kholodylo studies is the Gamelab at her University in karlsruhe. There she found her passion in Project creating games. Coordinator, uKr martha is a Business Črtomir Drofenik Administration stuSpeaker dent from Ukraine who studies in Vienna and Coordinator, sLo dreams to become a game project manager UI developer at Bongone day. Aside from her hobby to order fish and Co-Founder/ people around, like her profession implies, Chairman of Slovenian game developers martha also likes drawing, travelling, readassociation Games Slovenia. ing, and occasionally record random ideas.

Rares Cinteza Art Director, rou rares is an Art Director and Designer based in Bucharest, romania. With over 4 years of experience in advertising, he specialises in identity design and marketing. more often than not, he dips into the video game industry with various concept art and design projects. Vlad Calu Communications Director / Ambassador, rou In the past couple of years, Vlad has acted as a freelance communication and events specialist within the gaming industry. His most recent contributions include curatorial duties for events such as romanian Design Week and Internetics Festival, as well as Pr activities for CEGC’s first two editions. He most recently co-founded an indie game events agency called Thieves Wolves & Whores. Michael Ziermair Project Coordinator, aut michael grew up fascinated by computer games. He has studied business administration in Austria and moved on specialising in project management, which he studied at Warwick University. After finishing his studies he has joined A1, where he took on the role of project manager.

Melanie Freilinger Accommodation Coordinator, aut melanie is a game Silvia Gaetano enthusiast since Claus Scheiblauer Social Media she could handle a gameboy. Through her News Coordinator, ita technical education at Hagenberg, she was Coordinator, aut Silvia grew up with able to set her basement for a further career Claus studied comvideo games from all in the games industry. She is really motivated puter science at the genres and platforms and is often found post- to bring gaming people closer to each Vienna University of Technology. He has a other. Currently she is working as a mobile PhD in computer science for developing new ing on social media (most assume her right algorithms and data structures for interacting hand and phone have merged). She studied developer in Vienna. Computer Science and paused her current with gigantic point clouds. After finishing his languages degree to work at the IAEA. With Chen Li studies, he joined Greentube, where he is her ninja multilingual abilities, she hopes to PR Coordinator, ger working as a web developer. overcome all cultural barriers to engage and Chen is a prounite the gaming community. grammer with a Markus Redl passion for game Exhibition David development. Having grown up bilingual, he Coordinator, ger Schwingenschlögl currently supports the team in the Pr departmarkus is a level Austria Game ment. In his spare time, he likes to draw and Designer from Vienna Jam, ger work on his own little games. who has studied Game Design and neuroDavid has been biology. He spent two years in Vancouver, breathing games since he was a little kid. Ramon Huidobro Canada launching a career in game develOn his struggle to create games on his Tech Support, aut opment. At the moment, markus is working own, he drifted into the world of computers. Fun loving freelance for the Czech start-up studio Charged monnowadays, he works full-time as software software developer key and is also handling the Indie Exhibition engineer, and part-time as indie game and game coding of CEGC. He enjoys long walks along the developer. He has been co-organizing game instructor for kids. Currently teaching in Donau and a good Schnitzel. jams over the past 6 years in Austria Stencyl and Unity!

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Roland Moritz Austria Game Jam, aut roland is one of the co-founders of the Austria Game Jam, being part of the orga team since 2009. He always had a strong interest in game development, starting as a hobbyist back in his early youth and worked on various gaming related projects over the time, among others for Broken rules and Sproing. He was an indie developer before indie games really were a thing and co-developed the post-apocalyptic platformer “Atomic Butcher” back in 2004, to which a sequel is in the works at the moment. Katharina Krösl Volunteer Coordinator, aut kathi is a soon to be Visual Computing mSc, and a herder of students, university tutors and conference volunteers. She has been passionate about games ever since her childhood, and her 10 console rack speaks for itself. She also enjoys shader programming, volleyball, and beating her friends at Tekken.

Andranik Ghalustians GameStage Retro Expo, aut Collector of video and computer games related artifacts for more than 20 years and owner of one of the greatest collections of the world with over 50.000 games. Co-founder of Gamestage Austria and host of the Gamestage Expo. Artist of the Ars Electronica Festival 2013 and 2014 with video game related exhibitions. Blogger for Bildschirmspruenge.net and writer for several publications (lotek64, Vice, Consol.at, etc.) Benjamin Schwalb Support, aut Benjamin is a passionate game developer and game designer currently studying computer science.

Matthias Brandstetter Founder Impetus Games & Unreal User Group Vienna, aut Coder and tech guy at Impetus Games. One Christoph Thurner of his favorite nerd topics is artificial intelligence – its practical application to games, Founder Impetus Games & Unreal User as well as the theory and ideas behind it. Group Vienna, aut The thinker and tinker at Impetus Games. Give him something – anything – and he’ll spend hours to find out how it works and how to modify it ... thereby hopefully improving it.

ambassaDors

Ante Vrdelja,

cro

Pavel Barak,

cZe

Zach Zebrowski,

Hun

Tom Tomasvzewski,

Vlad Calu,

poL

rou

VolUNTEEr DrIVEN

Kristina Antić,

Pavol Buday,

The Central European Games Conference is entirely volunteer-driven and only possible thanks to every single team member and our on-site volunteers. If you are interested in working together with us on creating next year’s CEGC, then simply drop us a mail via volunteer@cegconf.com! Explain to us why you would like to help and then we can figure out together how you will best fit into our CEGC family.

Črtomir Drofenik,

srB

sVK

sLo

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PLATINUM SPONSORS

GOLD SPONSORS

EXHIBITION SPONSORS

FRIENDS OF CEGC

INSTITUTIONAL, IDEATIONAL, MEDIA AND EVENT PARTNERS

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CEGC 2017 CALL FOR SPONSORS ArE yOU lOOkInG FOr nEW BUSInESS OPPOrTUnITIES Or SCOUTInG FOr TAlEnT In CEnTrAl EUrOPE? ThE cENTral EUropEaN GamEs coNfErENcE Is ThE placE To Go! The conference gathers individual developers and small and medium-sized game companies. more than 50% of our attendees are developers.

opporTUNITIEs for spoNsorING caN INclUDE • • • • • • • • •

PrEmIErE ExhIbITIoN spacE SPOnSOrED sEssIoN job posTs On CEGC’s On-SITE JOB BOArD & nEWSlETTEr COlOr ADVErT In PrOGrAm yOUr VIDEo InClUDED In THE lIVE STrEAmS ADDITIOnAl STATISTICAl InFOrmATIOn ABOUT CEGC ATTEnDEES yOUr loGo & lINk InClUDED On WEBSITE & OTHEr mATErIAlS yOUr flyEr ADDED In THE COnFErEnCE BAG COmPlImEnTAry TIckETs for additional information, please write us to partner@cegconf.com

Games Austria is a non-proft organization and our goals are to connect, to inform, to promote and to support Austriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s games sector. Through our work, the many cooperations, activities and events we organise, we show that a volunteer driven non-profit can have a significant impact on the local games sector and beyond. We are dedicated to further contribute to help make it a better, healthier, and more open environment in the future.

gamesaustria.com

@GamesAustria

/gamesaustria.at