October is always a busy time for game developers, with heaps of events happening for developers and gamers to celebrate this wonderful medium. Here’s a little summary of what the Noble Steed Team was up to!
Games 4 Change: Insightful talks about games making an impact
G4CAP was a day full of incredible devs, researchers and educators coming together to share their work. Hearing from so many people of different backgrounds, and how games could make an impact in our lives, was incredibly inspiring.
For example, Jessica Wilson spoke about the almost unseen issue of children’s play spaces shrinking with increased urbanisation, leading to a lack of personal space and autonomy in early development. Child Nation is a project addressing this, encouraging children to interact with the world around them in their own imaginative way, in essence: “permission to be themselves.”
Some other highlights were hearing from Hailey Cooperrider and Ben Pederick from Amble Studios, and how their tabletop game empowered local communities to take actionable steps towards climate readiness. The Adaptation Game showcased how powerful games could be at the local level, with play sessions organised with local councils throughout Victoria. It was fascinating to have a game simulate future climate crises at such a familiar level, and inspire its players into taking action.
GCAP: Making new friends and meeting old ones
Over the course of GCAP, we met up with friends old and new, as well as attended several insightful talks. This year, the gaming lounge was packed with several Screen Australia funded games that were a delight to try out! There was even a mini games showcase on the second day, where we helped Shawn showcase Omochapon at the GCAP foyer alongside some small bites.
AGDAs: Celebrating incredible games!
Every year, incredible games get nominated for the Australian Game Developer Awards, and this year was no different. It’s heartening to see the industry grow and change, and we’re proud to celebrate fellow developers’ achievements! There was an incredible showing of Sydney-made games, and Crab God, one of the first games to be a part of our WIP Nights, won Excellence in Impact and was nominated for Excellence in Sound Design. Chaos Theory Games went on to win Studio of the Year too! Congratulations everyone!
Picnic Break!
In the middle of MIGW, we stretched our legs a little bit and hung out at the Royal Botanic Gardens! With a great spread by Christine, some sun and chill vibes, it was a little breather from games events before PAX!
PAX: Surviving a hectic game jam
Survivor Game Jam made its 4th annual run this year! This time round, we were joined by James Lockrey and Nico King from Chaos Theory Games, Nick Cellini and Sydney Liao from Turtle Flip Studio, and Pat Naoum (alongside Reuben!) making up “Team Jesus-look-alikes”. The three teams made some impressive games under an hour for the theme “Endlessness”.
From Chaos Theory was an endless clicker game that expanded Pesto the penguin into enormous proportions. From Turtle Flip Studios was a game about endless obnoxious popup advertisements you had to close.
The winner for this year however, was Team Jesus Lookalikes, with their silly game about a Jesus-lookalike and his disciples. In the game, “Jesus” had to endlessly collect food and find new disciples to trail behind him, otherwise human sacrifices would be necessary for survival! The game even featured members of the audience, which likely helped the team score the win.
With devs doing jumping jacks, having last-minute additions of physical media and skeletons, switching to light mode in Unity, and many other shenanigans, Survivor Game Jam was chaotic fun. On top of all that were the more serious questions about the devs’ processes, backgrounds and experience, to which we hope brought more insight into the game development process! If you’d like to have a peek at all the other suggestions, check out #survivorgamejam on the bird app.
For the rest of PAX, we had a grand time trying out the variety of indie games this year. Special shoutouts to Which Way Up and Anticitizen:Red, who were both a part of our past WIP Nights. It’s wonderful to have such incredible games from Sydney showcasing in Melbourne!
Waypoint Constellations: A celebration of Sydney Gamedevs and their games
After a week full of activity, we went ahead with our anticipated celebration of Sydney-made games and their developers. Working alongside Waypoint and Serenade games, we ran our first-ever Constellations event at Miscreants/Workit Coworking Space. With talks focused on dev’s journeys, games showcases that showed the behind-the-scenes work of making games, alongside a DJ and cool merch, it was a wonderful night celebrating the local gamedev community!
SXSW: Panels!
For SXSW, we ran our panel “The Ins and Outs of your Favourite Games” alongside Pat Naoum, Dom De Re and Nick Cellini, chatting through how popular games worked! The remainder of SXSW was spent checking out games and having fun with the variety of games involved. Essentially, taking it easy after a hectic MIGW!
October is always a wonderful time to reconnect with fellow game devs and their games, crafting lasting memories and inspiring us to do more. We hope everyone had a great games fortnight as well! We’re definitely looking forward to next year, and seeing how the games industry and its community continues growing and changing.
We hope you enjoyed reading this! Have a question or want to chat more about game development? Reach out to us!
Other places you can find us:
- Our other game development resources
- Join our Discord server
