AGDC Day 1

Day 1 at the Austin Game Developer Conference (AGDC).

The exhibit floor isn’t open yet, but there were some interesting lectures. Many of the talked focused on iPhone development and indie games.

Tiger style studios presented a case study on their iPhone game Spider. The developers came from AAA companies and after being laid off decided to start their own indie game. They went with the iPhone because of convenience. There game was well revived, even though they weren’t prepared to market it. They stated that possible reasons could due to players quickly posting reviews of the game.

Another talk was presented by Ninjabee studio. This indie studio had little success with iPhone and PC games. Through they have been able to make profit producing Xbox Live Arcade(XLA) games. They said they didn’t give up after several publishers turned them down. They also said asking the publishers before pitching ideas, what games they were looking to fund, helped them with their pitch. They also mentioned that publishers don’t know anything about games, that is why you have to visually show them. Producing a two to three minute trailer of the game can really help you get the deal. The trail doesn’t have to be of the gameplay, it can be of concept art, sketches and even possible interface designs. Although they’ve had little success on other platforms they are not writing them off yet. Finally on a side note, I got to speak with the speaker and asked what should students have in their portfolio, he said sketches and models of people. If they can capture people the they can capture other objects as well.

Well, those were the highlights for the day.