Slides and photos from Israeli Game Development Day conference 2013

Thanks for attending the conference! It was a great success.

You can find selected slides from the event here:

http://www.slideshare.net/soundguy/gun-n-blade-oded-sharon-israeli-game-day-2013
http://www.slideshare.net/soundguy/game-dev-israel-working-w-publishers
http://www.slideshare.net/soundguy/unity-democratising-game-development
http://www.slideshare.net/soundguy/how-ui-impacts-engagement-and-monetization-in-f2-p-mobile-games-final

And Photos here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.463128930432011.1073741838.373203209424584&type=3

Israeli Game Development Day 2013 – Speakers and Agenda

Corbomite Games are proud to announce the third Israeli Game Development Day in April 29th 2013. Details:

http://gameday2013.eventbrite.com/

Here is the list of confirmed speakers and info about their talks (Subject to changes):

12:00-12:30 Registration

Workshop: All you need is law – how to keep your rights close, and your partners closer. (room 163)
Open Office Hours about Game Laws with Adv. Eyal Bar-Zvi

IP, TM, T&C, TS, NDA, SHA, JDA and other abbreviations in the lifespan of company
During the lifespan of an idea into a successful gaming company, many subjects need to be tackled. How to contract with a co-founder? How to make sure all the IP developed by the UX expert belongs to me? Is my idea protectable as a patent? Is the gfx protected? When to draft the T&C and how should they differ between iTunes and Play? What should my privacy policy look like when monetizing is based upon ads? Is crowd-funding legal in Israel? Should I incorporate as a company?
It is hard to cover all those in 30 minutes, but will try to answer all your Qs, as fast as they come.

Eyal Bar-Zvi is recommended by the Legal 500 international guide in the fields of hi-tech, start-ups and venture capital, and has more than 10 years of experience in advising entrepreneurs and start-ups in various fields, including web, cellular, and gaming. Eyal serves as a pro-bono counsel to StarTau, Tel-Aviv University’s Entrepreneurship Center, and teaches M&A in the Haifa university law school. In his youth, Eyal was a member of a hackers group, and later a gaming correspondent for Captain Internet.

12:30-13:00 How licensed premium rights enhance free2play games (Room 162)
Ze’ev Rozov – CEO, Iconicfuture
As the gaming industry moves from pre-packaged products to an economy of virtual items, new ways have arisen for the integration of licensed rights into games. Especially with free2play games,
rights have proven a great way to connect with users, build their trust and to improve the game’s marketing value. Innovative gaming companies seize these opportunities and find ways to use
licensed items in order to improve monetization and drive in-game events. Examples range from a football management game (goalunited), where players could add a licensed stadium, to a farming
simulation game (Farmerama), where characters from Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep improved conversion rates and helped gain new users. Ze’ev Rozov will address how these opportunities
develop and highlight some of the challenges of using IPs. Furthermore, he will speak about the keys to success when developers use IPs as virtual branded items.


About Ze’ev Rozov

Ze’ev Rozov is CEO and Co-Founder of Iconicfuture GmbH, a leading marketplace for licensing rights
as premium virtual items in online and mobile games. Ze’ev is a veteran of the digital world having
started his career in 1993 as a pioneer of sport digital media with S.EA Multimedia; he then moved
on to develop projects with IOC, NBA, ESPN, BBC, English Football League, Discovery Channel,
Bigpoint, Jagex, Intel, Getty Images, Panasonic and Amdocs. In 1997, he launched one of the first
online multi-player games on the Mpath network. Having founded and successfully sold several
companies, one of which is Sportingo, Ze’ev lastly worked for Conduit being responsible for its
expansion into the European Market. Ze’ev Rozov is Israeli national and holds a BA in History and
Political Science from Tel-Aviv University. He is an avid player of Risk, Civilization and Angry Birds.

13:00-13:30 Games in Japan (Room 162)
Levi Shapiro


About Levi Shapiro

Levi Shapiro is a Partner in the JIMMI (Japan-Israel Mobile, Media & IT) Fund, working with the corporate venture arms of Japanese media and tech companies to invest in Israeli start-ups. Concurrently, Mr. Shapiro provides strategic advisory to global technology, media and telecom companies as a Partner at TMT Strategic Advisors. Current clients include NTT DoCoMo and SK Group. In addition, Mr. Shapiro is an Adjunct Professor in the Media Innovation Lab (http://milab.idc.ac.il) at IDC Herzliya, teaching Digital Media Entrepreneurship, Mobile Marketing and other courses. His bi-monthly “Unleavened Media” (http://blogs.jpost.com/content/unleavened-media) column in the Jerusalem Post, about technology and digital media, reaches a global audience, including syndication across other tech industry publications. Mr. Shapiro organizes the Ad & Social Tech Summit (www.adtechsummit), Israel’s most prestigious ad:tech event, scheduled for October 8th. He is an active contributor to the Israeli start-up community, both as a Board Member and as a mentor for several accelerator programs. He can be reached at LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/levishapiro), Twitter (https://twitter.com/levshapiro) or via email: levi.shapiro@gmail.com

13:30-14:00 Coffee Break + Pastries / Snacks
(Lectures after coffee break will take place in Mitchell Auditorium)

14:00-14:30 Unity – Democratising Game Development
Alex McCredie, Unity3D, EMEA Account Manager

The session will mainly focus on Unity’s beliefs as a company and our vision to democratise the gaming industry. Providing great tools to all walks of life in the world of development, from large AAA studios to indie developers.

About Alex McCredie
Alex McCredie | EMEA Account Manager – Alex brings a wealth of experience built up in enterprise level IT sales & marketing. His passion and enthusiasm for the gaming industry supports a lethal drive to get Unity into the hands of developers around the world. Over the past year Alex has supported the Unity developer community across Europe, the Middle East and Australia. Aside from all things Unity, Alex has been known to appear in the form of a lucha libre vampire armed with a bass guitar.

14:30-15:00 Gun N’ Blade – A first look on how to publish a Korean game worldwide from Israel
Oded Sharon, Executive Producer, Dragonplay / CEO, Corbomite Games
Gun N’ Blade, Dragonlpay’s new game is being developed in Korea, published here in Israel, and distributed world wide.
In this talk Oded will cover aspects of publishing a game that’s being developed overseas by a 3rd party developer, design issues with adapting an Asian to the western market, challenges in working with a company from a different culture, and of course, a sneak preview of the game itself.
The talk will also include personal notes on the transition from being an independent game developer to a being a publisher.

About Oded Sharon
Oded Sharon, Founder and CEO of Corbomite Games, is a veteran game maker with years of experience developing and publishing games on multiple platforms. He has led the Israeli chapter of the IGDA for several years, and has been one of the organizers of the majority of Israel’s game developer conferences, meetups, social gathering, and other events.
Oded has been involved in large scale game projects including the MMORTS Ballerium, and has worked for game publishers in Taiwan. In 2006, Oded founded Corbomite Games and that made two episodic adventure game series: Zbang and Pizza Morgana, as well as games like Star Shipping Inc. Later on founded Adventure Mob, a company that developed several games, including the beginning of the remake for Leisure Suit Larry, which helped in a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign of over $650k .
Today, Oded works for Dragonplay, one of the worlds top grossing Android publishers on the new game Gun N’ Balde.
Oded holds a BSC degree in computer science and physics from Tel-Aviv University, and an MBA from the Technion.

15:00-15:30 How UI impacts engagement and monetization in free-to-play games
JV Chardon, Tapjoy
Focusing on the core of the game is necessary but in a free-to-play environment, the new user flow is one of the most important parts of a successful game. Did you know that in mobile you have about 30 seconds to hook a new user on the first open and less than 5 minutes to teach them before they go and never return? This talk will show how to avoid the most common pitfalls when it comes to welcoming new users and give some valuable tips on how to maximise retention through established UI best practices.


About JV Chardon

From an ad-serving and online advertising background, JV has worked for Keljob.com in Paris before moving to London in 2004 to join Microsoft Advertising where he took an early interest in emerging media. Particularly keen on exploring gaming advertising opportunities since then, he’s been involved with in-game advertising platform JOGO media and sports game publisher Greentube before joining Tapjoy in 2011 to develop relationships with apps developers across EMEA, helping them acquire, retain and monetize mobile users.
Twitter Handle: @JVChardon
Email: JV@Tapjoy.com

15:30-16:00 Smartphone & Tablet Apps: By the Numbers
Simon Podd, Flurry
Leveraging its data-set of more than 95,000 companies and using its analytics and advertising services across more than 275,000 apps, Flurry shares the latest consumer behavior and business trends for iOS and Android apps. This session will additionally focus on key usage difference between smartphone and tablet apps.

About Simon Podd
Flurry is a leading data-driven mobile app advertising platform and analytics provider, used by over 100,000 companies across more than 300,000 apps. At Flurry, Simon is the commercial director for the EMEA region. Prior to Flurry, Simon was most recently head of sales at Zodiak Active, the branded content division of Zodiak Media, a multi-national independent television production company. Prior to Zodiak, Simon was head of sales for Bebo UK & Ireland, working as part of the team that pioneered and developed new social media advertising revenue models in which products and services are offered in a sophisticated blend of plot integration, traditional product placement and on-network online advertising. Bebo was acquired by AOL in 2008. Prior to Bebo, Simon spent 10 years in advertising sales within the publishing sector at Associated Media and the London Evening Standard.

16:00-16:30 Intoduction to PlayLab

PlayLab is the incubation program housed at Shenkar College for engineering and design and is part of collaboration between the college program for Games Design and Development and industry partners. Our goal is to continue our interest at shenkar in the development of engaging and innovative playable media and to provide the support and resources required for their conceptualization and commercial success. We offer a unique sponsorship program for small studios that wish to grow their companies in a supportive eco-system of education and entrepreneurship by connecting with mentors, customers and each other.

Dr. Vered Pnueli
Co- Founder of PlayLab ; Head of digital media at the Further Education at Shenkar.

Vered is a researcher, a writer and a lecturer on the subjects of media, design and digital games culture. The founder and head of the ‘Game design and development program’ and of the’ Digital books and magazines program at the further education at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. Co-founder and Head of Development at PlayLab Shenkar game center.

16:30-17:00 Working with publishers
Guy Bendov, Sidekick
Details coming soon.


Speaker’s bios coming soon

17:00-17:30 Coffee Break

17:30-18:00 Developing for OUYA console
Doron Kanaan
OUYA is a great option for independent game developers, but it comes with its own set
of limitations. In this session I will discuss my game – a 1st person, previously point and click, episodic
adventure game, and the trials and tribulations I went through while attempting to adapt it to OUYA. Using
the 5 stages of denial, I will describe the states the game went through, before becoming one which
delivers a satisfying experience.


Abour Doron Knaan
Doron Kanaan, 34, has graduated from the Tel-aviv university film and television department, and has
since then took part in numerous films and Television programs as a director, and editor and content
writer. In 2007 he established, along with his wife Liron, a video production company which provides high
quality imaging and internal marketing videos for some of the biggest corporations in Israel including
Coca-Cola, Phillip Morris, Ness technologies etc. Being a video gamer ever since his early childhood, in
2011 Doron decided to make a career transition to game development, and enrolled to the Video game
design and development program in Shenkar. His 1st game, Rose, is currently being developed for PC,
tablets and OUYA.

Israeli Game Development Day 2011 – Speakers

Corbomite Games in collaboration with the International Game Developers Association and GameIS are proud to announce the second Israeli Game Development Day in May 29th 2011. Details:

http://gameday2011.eventbrite.com/

Here is the list of confirmed speakers and info about their talks (Subject to changes):

12:30-12:45 Opening Notes
Oded Sharon, CEO Corbomite Games / IGDA Israel

About Oded Sharon
Oded Sharon, Founder and CEO of Corbomite Games, is a veteran game programmer and designer with years of experience making games, recently for PC and iPhone/iPad. He has led the Israeli chapter of the IGDA for several years, and has been one of the organizers of the majority of Israel’s game developer conferences, meetups, social gathering, and other events. Oded has been involved in large scale game projects including the MMORTS Ballerium, and has worked for game publishers in Taiwan. In 2006, Oded founded Corbomite Games and he currently leads an immensely creative team of developers while they make two new episodic adventure game series: Zbang and Pizza Morgana, as well as games like Star Shipping Inc. Oded holds a BSC degree in computer science and physics from Tel-Aviv University, and an MBA from the Technion.

 

 

12:45-13:30 How we became Ninjas (Skype Session)
Duncan Curtis, Halfbrick
The story of how Halfbrick grew from a quality work-for-hire studio into a hit indie developer, working
solely on their own IP. The session will include information about Halfbrick’s original IP prototyping process,
their philosophy for game design, the guerrilla marketing which helped Fruit Ninja become the success it is and
the journey Fruit Ninja is currently taking to be released on Facebook as a free-to-play game.
About Duncan Curtis
Executive Producer for Fruit Ninja Frenzy, Duncan Curtis heads up the Facebook/social development team at Halfbrick.
Before joining Halfbrick in mid 2010, Duncan was previously CEO and co-founder of 3 Blokes Studios where he took
the company from casual games into social games. Even though he is a team leader, Duncan enjoys programming
and designing on a day-to-day basis.”

 

 

13:30-14:00 “Spiky Who? The story of the Israeli IGF nominee you’ve never heard about….”
Niv Fisher Spiky Snail
“This talk introduces SpikySnail, an independent game development studio, and our first title “”Confetti Carnival””.
Initial vision, design methodology, art style and tools are all explored using real-time demonstrations of several early prototypes leading up to the current build. I’ll also be talking about our IGF and “”Indie Game Challenge”” nominations and my impressions of both. “
About Niv Fisher
As an avid gamer I’ve always wanted to develop video games, from a very young age. I’ve done little game development for NetGames and SEA Multimedia for a few years but didn’t get to release any titles. I then joined Israeli startup Simbionix – a developer of medical simulations for physician training, where I still hold the part-time position of CTO. After 12 fruitful and challenging years developing several 3D real-time, physics based surgical simulators and with strong technical a business background I decided to go back and pursue my childhood dream and develop video games professionally, “Indie” style.

14:00-14:30 From Casual to Facebook: the migration of a hit game Mahjongg Dimensions

Julia Detar, Arkadium

Julia will talk about the transition of casual web games to Facebook.  She will discuss about design, technical, and team challenges that faced Arkadium’s hit title Mahjongg Dimensions in its transition and what to consider when making the leap from casual online to Facebook with your game.

About Julia Detar
Julia is a New York based senior game artist and programmer. She has been working for several years at Arkadium making casual and social games, including the hit Facebook game Mahjongg Dimensions.  Before that she graduated from the Cleveland institute of Art, where she created an educational game for a public school system for her thesis.

14:30-15:00 “Show me the Ropes” – The making of Rope Racket

Itay Keren, Untame

Right before his mobile game debut hits the market, Itay Keren talks about design, technical and platform challenges he faced while working on award winning game “Rope Racket”. He will talk about experimenting with game mechanics, design ideas, storylines, platform and porting, and even cover what was needed to independently produce such project.

About Itay Keren
Itay Keren is a game designer and developer, founder of Untame Games.

After years of experience as a server developer in ICQ, Itay has made the switch and realized his childhood dream of making video games. He joined Oberon Media, where he and his team developed dozens of casual online games.
Recently he joined forces with another gaming veteran, Uri Golan, and founded Untame Games where they worked on numerous gaming projects, online, social and mobile.
Untame Games is now working on its two biggest titles, Rope Racket and BblWorld, both coming out very soon.

15:00-15:30 Coffee Break

15:30-16:00 Copyright Primer in Game Development: How to avoid the Oooops moments

Yoram Lichtenstien

The session reviews the basics of copyright issues as related specifically to digital game development and tries to give some tools on how to avoid copyright breaches and protect your own copyright

About Yoram Lichtenstien

Adv. Yoram Lichtenstein practices Commercial and Intellectual Property Law and specializes in Internet and digital games laws.

 

 

 

 

16:00-16:45 Introduction to Unity 3 & Hand’s on demo on creating games for multi platform distribution.

Carl Callewaert, Unity 3D

Unity 3.0 is a huge step forward for Unity with major new features like lightmapping, occlusion culling, and audio zones. Get a birds eye view of the big improvements, as well as some tips and tricks for minor changes you may not have noticed. This session is intended for users who are reasonably new to Unity.

About Carl Callewaert

Carl is Unity evangelist at the award wining company Unity Technologies. Carl has 10 years experience working in game development and game education around the world.

 

 

 

 

16:45- 17:30 Unleash online 3D games with Flash
Tom Krcha Adobe
Learn what’s possible with new GPU accelerated 3D in Adobe Flash Player. With more than 70% of online games developed in Flash, the latest iteration of this cross platform runtime brings a new exciting era for web games. Come to this session to see realtime multiplayer games built with this new technology, and understand how to start developing for the 3D web.

About Tom Krcha
Tom Krcha works as a Gaming Evangelist in Adobe and speaks at conferences in USA, Europe and Asia. He started with Flash almost 12 years ago and worked for interactive studios, streaming companies and telco providers. Right now he is specializing in games development.

blog:
http://flashrealtime.com/
twitter:

17:30-18:00 Pizza break

18:00 18:30 From idea to community – building engagement
Julien Fourgeaud Rovio (Angry Birds)
The “”App Rush”” is living its last days and the stores are starting to be overloaded by apps & games.
New stores are popping up, fragmenting the market even more.
With so much choice, consumers can pick and choose.
How can you still make it?

About Julien Fourgeaud

Julien is Rovio’s Bad Piggy Bank Manager & Magician. Julien is driving Rovio’s Virtual Goods/Currency as well as the NFC productization.
Before joining Rovio, Julien has established his own Mobile Strategy consulting company, working with the likes of Vodafone and Nokia. He has also worked at the Symbian Foundation, as a Technology Catalyst, helping shaping and communicate the value proposition and the future of the Symbian platform. Prior to to take up this position, he worked at Nokia, contributing to key projects such as the transition from keypad to touch interface, and leading the major effort behind third-party integration for the N97 in 2009

18:30-18:50 Pah! from 0 to 200,000 downloads in 1 month
Yosi Taguri Lucky7 Labs
How we started, got hacked, made some good money and what we’ve learned. All the numbers (including $$$) and best of all – what is planned for us next.

About Yosi Taguri
Yosi Taguri is the co founder of fiddme, shidurey and Lucky7 Labs. Have been coding since the age of 11 and uses most of his time to create fun projects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18:45-19:15 Creative; Beyond 1’s and 0’s in the Gaming Industry

Erez Yerushalmi, Smite Entertinment

The creative pipeline is seldom mismanaged within the game development process, underestimating the resources and planning required for the deployment of a full fledged game. The session will explore work methodologies for running a Game-oriented creative pipeline; How to manage creative talents, the conception process, Art, Narrative, concept-art, modeling, animation and packaging.

About Erez Yerushalmi

Gaming & New-Media executive, with rich experience in media product-development. CEO of Smite Entertainment, an innovative online gaming company. Founder of several companies in the new media and product arenas (Inter-Canel, Momento, BundlZ). Lecturer and consultant for Business Design, Product Marketing and Gamification

 

 

 

 

 

 

19:20-19:50 Ten do’s and dont’s of Motion Game Development

Asaf Sela, SideKick

Motion-controlled games are a new, exciting and fast-catching medium. However, relatively little experience has been accumelated that can guide the aspiring developer to enter this lucrative field. This lecture is an opportunity to meet one of the experienced veterans who has been there from the very start.The lecture will focus on the process of developing a motion-controlled game, with ten main Do’s and Dont’s as overall guides. The presentation will touch on issues such as the interface man-space-screen, calculating movement structure that would be comfortable to different ages and players capabilities, planning specific gestures, introducing the medium to a novice player and more. Demonstation and audience participation included.

About Asaf Sela
Asaf Sela creative director at side kick. Asaf has 10 years of video game development, animation, TV commercials and  broadcast media experience. Lead a team of 40 artists in the Animation studio  “Animation Lab”.

19:50-20:15 coffee break

20:15-21:00 International Business Development and Positioning for Game Companies

Sean Kauppinen, International Digital Entertainment Agency

International business development is crucial to building business and growing within the games industry. Many companies fail because of their approach, lack of contacts, and poor positioning that sometimes close the doors before the pitch is even made. This session will cover how to position your game company and provide information on the outreach tools used at IDEA to make contact and present the best possible image to potential partners.

About Sean Kauppinen

Sean Kauppinen is founder and CEO of the International Digital Entertainment Agency. He has more than 16 years of management, strategic communications and business development expertise in the digital entertainment industry. Kauppinen has launched more than 500 titles, consulted governments on digital entertainment industries and served in senior management roles with multiple start-ups.

21:00-22:00 (Skype Talk subject to be announced soon)
Dan Scherlis.
About Dan Scherlis
Dan Scherlis www.scherlis.com is a consulting executive producer with 15-years experience with social media and electronic entertainment. Dan was CEO of massively-multiplayer developer Turbine during its initial five years, serving as producer of the Microsoft-published Asheron’s Call. He was then founding Content Director of a new mobile-games venture within telecom giant Comverse.

Before joining Turbine, Dan proposed and led a new game-publishing initiative for Papyrus Design Group, where he produced IndyCar Racing. Dan has been an advisor to Floodgate Entertainment and other online-content and online-community ventures. Dan holds AB, AM (Linguistics), and MBA degrees from Harvard.

Games UNConference 2010 – Dec 31st

Fellow game devs.

In two weeks, On December 31st we are having our annual games UNConference.

It’s a full day of sessions, workshops, and discussions that are ran by YOU, the participants.

Registration is free, but for the event to work, you have be active, suggest a topic for discussion. Give a lecure. Make a workshop.

To sign up and more details  use one of these links:

http://gameis.co.il/unconf2010.php

http://apps.facebook.com/gameunconf/

and please fill in an activity suggestion.

Link Facebook event:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=169014186454748&index=1

See you all there!

Oded

GameIS at Contech2010 – November 9th 2010

Hey,

We wanted to remind you that the GameIS at Contech2010 conference is next Monday.
Day event registration :
www.contech2010.com (290 for GameIS members)

Night event – TOTALLY FREE !
Please RSVP at the facbeook event so we can plan
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=131940676838958

Agenda for both Day and Night events.
http://www.gameisawards.com/?p=68

A few of the sessions require per-event registration.
Still a few spots in the Counter Strike contest, and the Poker event.
http://www.gameisawards.com/?p=344

And don’t forget the Elevator Pitch Contest, in which you can win a prize of $1500 (in consulting hours) for the best pitch.
Sign up at
http://www.gameisawards.com/?p=334

See you all at the event!

Oded

להודעה בעברית אנא בקרו בעמוד הקבוצה או באתרים
http://www.gameisawards.com/

http://gameis.co.il

IGDA Game Day Speakers

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

IGDA Game Day 2010 Agenda

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