Great first day at Develop with some excellent content shared in panels and sessions as well as our own standing room only panel on tips and insights on narrative design. Impeccably organised as always, Develop has attracted crowds from all over the World this year with lots of meetings happening alongside really good presentations, panels and roundtables on everything from funding to community management, from design to sustainable growth.
Games Growth
A big theme coming out of the talks and in chats with developers is a need to stabilise and provide more sustainable and inclusive business models, and that discussion will continue today at sessions “BAFTA Games: How We Can All Level the Playing Field” at 12 noon, as well as at the same time, “Accessible Communication and Managing a Neuro Diverse Studio” also ‘How to grow a Game Studio through Challenging Times’ with Johnny Hopper at 2pm, “No More Boom and Bust: How to Empower Inclusive, Sustainable businesses” with Gina Jackson, Sarah Brewster, Dom Shaw and Liz Prince.
“invest in people, uncertainty kills passion” Cinzia Musio
One of our favourite sessions yesterday came from from James Batchelor GamesIndustry.biz hosted session “The Games Industry 2024 Survival Guide” – literally too many insights to share here but the video will be well worth a watch. Caroline Marchal urged attendees to “use your advisory board, don’t do it alone!” Ella Romanos advising “Take time to look at what you’re doing, has the market moved on? Is there any exposed weakness in the strategy? Take advice.” Cinzia Musio from code coven urged the audience to “invest in people, uncertainty kills passion” and called for core funding for prototypes. Positive comments and outlooks included Nick Button Brown of Games Angels saying that 2024 is getting better, projects and deals being made.
Narrative Design Insights
And finally, from our own panel session on Narrative Design where panelists Judi Alston, Charles Cecil, Rhianna Pratchett and Paul Cornell, generously shared their experiences and learnings with the packed session on building character empathy, ways to create great stories on smaller budgets, the opportunities to tell stories through games and immersive experiences in different settings and the challenges across working in different media, Charles Cecil when asked how you know when a game is finished…“When you run out of time, when you run out of money or both.” And a great tip for writers wanting to write for games from Rhianna Pratchett “Play games! You need to play games and understand them if you want to write for games, even if you have written in other media.”
The session was videoed so you can catch up after Develop. We ran a similar session in January, so here are some highlights if you missed this one and that one!
If you are interested in discussing narrative design today, check out Narrative Design – Mistakes Were Made roundtable at 3pm today.
We also enjoyed good discussions with Ukie, a lovely gathering with GG Insurance and FORMAT at the Tempest bar and a special gathering with the amazing organisers Tandem Events of Develop at Hotel Du Vin. And managed to sneak a peek at the Expo setting up – catching up with Mastered and D3T, Games Aid to name a few, the expo will be well worth a visit today!
A perfect start minus the slight drizzle that will improve today and tomorrow too leading up to the End of Conference party in aid of Special Effect that always provides a perfect end to Develop.
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