12:30 – 13:00 Opening Notes: The Israeli Game Industry
Oded Sharon, Corbomite Games / IGDA Israel
About Oded Sharon
Oded Sharon, CEO of Corbomite Games is the Israeli chapter coordinator of the international game developers association (IGDA) and have been running events and meetups along with other leading member of GameIS for the past years.
Oded Sharon was part of the Majorem team that made the largest Israeli MMORTS game Ballerium.
In 2007 Oded started Corbomite Games and is in charge of producing a plethora of games for multiple platforms from the PC episodic adventure game Pizza Morgana, to producing songs for Rock Band, and recently Facebook and iPhone games as well.
http://corbomitegames.com
13:00 – 13:30 How Israel can take an active part in the video games market,
About Guy Bendov
Guy Bendov Sidekick Guy is CEO at Side-kick, a video game production house focusing on motion games. He is also the founder of GameIS, an association that promoted the Israeli interactive games market.
His 17 years of experience founding and leading interactive entertainment companies, include Double-fusion, Shidonni, Journeys, Cellular Magic and Click! online.
Guy was cited at CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and other media channels.
13:30 – 14:00 How to make a living out of games
Michal Rosen, Tacticsoft Ltd.
This lecture will cover the most common and easily accessible monetization techniques for earning revenue from your games.
What to do in order to generate an income from your indie-game development on your path to grow into a solid gaming studio
About Michael Rosen
Michael Rosen (27), Founder of Tacticsoft, Developers of Battle Dawn, an MMO game with 10,000 active users and counting!
14:00 – 14:30 20 years of experience in 30 minutes
Shai Newman, Compedia
Shai will talk about increasing your chances to develop a good game, choosing platforms, brands, technology, markets and partners, investments, and mistakes he made along the way.
About Shai Newman
Shai Newman is leading Compedia for two decades, working with world leaders like Nintendo, Microsoft, MGM, WORLDBOOK, National Geographic, and more. In this talk Shai will cover the history of Compedia and will share tips and trick on how they managed to go from a company of one room in his grandmother’s home to millions of units sold in 50 countries.
14:30 – 15:15 Lunch break
15:15 – 15:45 Casual game creation from prototype to finished product
Liran Egozi, Freelance Game Developer
This lecture will cover briefly all aspects of game design:
About Liran Egozi
coming up with an idea, creating a design document, what is the fun factor, prototype iteration, how to build a good tutorial, UI-guidelines, beta testing and launch
Liran Egozi (26) Freelance Game Developer for 4 years
15:45 – 16:00 Developing a game in 10 minutes
Ido Tal and Nikita Leshenko, We Create Stuff
Ido Tal and Nikita Leshenko have received a mysterious email, demanding them to develop a Flash game in under 10 minutes. Will they make it on time?
About Ido Tal and Nikita Leshenko
Ido is a game developer and founder at We Create Stuff. Previously co-created ‘Portal The Flash Version’ back in 2007 and is today leading the development of an action game series ‘Echoes’.
Nikita – Nikita has been involved in Flash since 2006. He’s especially interested in game development, and enjoys experimenting the boundaries of interactive development.
16:00 – 16:30 iPhone indie game development
Noam Abta, NItako
A talk about Nitako’s 1.5 years of experience in the iPhone market as a small indie game developer.
will be covering topics like market problems and opportunities, the development cycle, marketing techniques and the future of mobile game development.
About Noam Abta
* Graduate with honors from the animation department in Bezalel.
* Member of the founding team at Aniboom.com
* Co-Founder and owner at Nitako games.
16:30 – 17:00 Game development platforms and tools
Yaniv Peer Freelance Game Developer
There comes a time in any game development project when a very important question rises; “On which platform should I develop my game on?”. Whether it is going to be a mobile phone game, a Facebook application or if you are aiming for big shot AAA game consoles, you must always pick the development platform that will work best for your game requirements.
Different platforms and game engines fit for different projects. This lecture aims to describe the various available development tools, programming approaches and emerging new technologies that you can use. You will learn about the type of games that can be made on each platform, what set of tools are provided to help in game development and various ways to minimize your project’s costs. The speaker will give the audience examples as well as talk about the various reasons you should pick a specific platform for your next project.
About Yaniv Peer
Yaniv Peer is an experienced game developer currently working with Tacticsoft LTD on their successful Massive Multiplayer Online Game “Battle Dawn”. In the past Yaniv worked in the mobile phone gaming industry as well as did freelance and technical consulting work for various companies. In the IDF Yaniv served as a developer for in-house radar systems, data processing and field security technological projects.
17:00 – 17:30 The Global Game Jam
Yuval Sapir, IGDA Israel Chapter Co-Coordinator / IMBA Games
The Global Game Jam is an annual Worldwide event. During the event that lasts a weekend all participants gather and develop as many games as they can.
Last January we participated for the second year in this event.
We’ll see some of the games that came out of the event, a bit about what happened in the event itself and hand out prizes for outstanding games developed during this weekend.
About Yuval Sapir
Yuval is working as the Chief Architect in Imba Games, a newly found games studio.
He’s been working on games on and off for the last 17 years.
Yuval us very passionate about the Israeli games industry.
17:30 – 18:00 TBA
18:001 – 8:15 coffee break
18:15 – 19:00 Pivoting to Social Media
Lloyd Melnick, Playdom
Lloyd will discuss the opportunities in the social media space and how developers can capitalize on them. The lecture will include information on the size and growth of the space, the revenue potential from successful social media games and background on the M&A activity in social. It will also cover how a developer can pivot to social from the core or casual businesses.
About Lloyd Melnick
Lloyd Melnick, is the General Manager, European Operations for Playdom, Inc., the second largest social game company. Lloyd is responsible for finding great developers to bring into Playdom’s publishing program and for building international sales for Playdom’s content.
Previously, Lloyd was co-founder, Chief Customer Officer and Chief Economist, at Merscom, where he helped initiated and brokered the sale of the company to Playdom. Lloyd was responsible for marketing, business development and managing relationships with domestic and international channel and monetization partners. Lloyd has been involved with publishing and licensing computer and video games for over 16 years. As a co-founder of Merscom, Lloyd has marketed, produced and published over 150 games for the casual, core and social gamer market. Lloyd was also responsible for building Merscom’s relationships with NBC Universal, Paramount, CBS, Starz Media, National Geographic, CAA, Showtime Networks, AETN Lifetime Networks and Granada Ventures.
Playdom, Inc (www.playdom.com)
Playdom is a top game developer on Facebook and MySpace with popular titles including Social City, Sorority Life, Mobsters, Tiki Resort and Big City Life. To date, over 100 million Playdom games have been installed on leading platforms including Facebook, MySpace, iPhone and Hi5. Playdom is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with studios in San Francisco, Calif.; Seattle, Wash.; Eugene, Ore.; Chapel Hill, NC; Buenos Aires, Argentina and in South Asia.
19:00 – 20:00 The pitfalls of running an independent studio
Chris Taylor, CEO Gas Powered Games
About Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor began his career in the video games business at Distinctive Software in Canada. His first titles included Hardball II, 4D Boxing and the original Triple Play Baseball at Electronic Arts. After completing yet another baseball game, this time for the unfortunate 3DO system, Chris moved to Washington to create the innovative RTS, Total Annihilation while at Cavedog Entertainment. Chris founded Gas Powered Games in May of 1998 and released its first title, Dungeon Siege for the PC in April of 2002. Since then GPG has released Dungeon Siege 2, Supreme Commander, Space Siege, Demigod, and Supreme Commander 2. Chris is now busy working on Kings and Castles and an unannounced title. Game industry veteran Chris Taylor discusses the upsides and downsides of independent development, from the need to focus your vision to how to secure financing and promote your products.
20:00 – 21:00 Marketing for indies
Sean Kauppinen
Sean Kauppinen is the founder and CEO of the International Digital Entertainment Agency. He has more than 15 years of management, strategic communications and business development expertise in the digital entertainment industry. His ability to bring companies together and provide strategic guidance has led to business growth for industry giants as well as start-ups. During this time, Kauppinen has launched more than 450 titles on all major gaming platforms, ranging from big budget blockbusters to value games.
He has consulted governments on creating and growing their digital entertainment industries and has served in senior management roles with start-ups and going concerns. Kauppinen has held communications and marketing management positions with Sony Online Entertainment, Ubi Soft, bleem!, and 3dfx.
Kauppinen currently holds advisory board positions with GDC Europe, SXSW, NLGD, and multiple early stage companies. He is a former board member of GCDC and the GC Asia Conference. Kauppinen is also an advisor to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.
Kauppinen is a sought-after speaker at high-profile industry events around the world, where he has delivered keynote speeches, taught master classes and led more than 30 interactive sessions on topics including marketing, strategic communications, community development, business development, the future of the games industry, funding and bringing original IP to market.
Kauppinen has spoken at events including GC Developers Conference (2005-08), PR for Games Conference (2004-06), Games Marketing Conference (2006), Making Games Conference (2006), Austin Games Conference (2006), GSTAR (2006), Game Developers Conference (2007), GDC Europe (2009), International eSports Conference (2007) and GC Asia Conference (2007-09), X|Media Lab (Wellington 2008), Festival of Games (2008-09), GameON: Finance (2008), AFCI Cineposium (2008), Free Gaming Business (2008), FilmARC (2009), AnimfxNZ (2009), and DELF (2010).
Specialties:
Start-up Management, Business Development, Corporate Strategy, Business Model Consulting, Funding, Monetization, Communications Strategy, Self-Publishing Services, Pre-Publisher Awareness, Branding, Corporate Image, Messaging, Exit Strategy, Valuation Maximization, Videogame PR, Interactive Entertainment, Digital Media, Content Culturalization, Online Gaming, Game Monetization
Uncategorized | SoundGuy | 
May 13, 2013 3:11 pm | 
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