2008 Independent Games Summit Announces First Speakers

Author: by Staff

The organizers of the 2008 Independent Games Summit have announced a first set of speakers, with speakers representing IGF Grand Prize winner Aquaria, World Of Goo, PixelJunk Racers, fl0w/The Night Journey and more in the first batch of announced lectures for the February 2008 event. The 2008 Independent Games Summit (operated by CMP, as is Gamasutra) seeks to highlight the brightest and the best of indie development, with discussions ranging from indie game distribution methods through game design topics, detailed postmortems of independent titles, digital distribution-centric business concepts, and much more. Once again, the IGS is a sister event to the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Taking place on the Monday and Tuesday of Game Developers Conference 2008, February 18th and 19th, the event follows the successful Independent Games Summit in 2007, for which multiple videos have been posted on Gamasutra in the last few months. While the final event line-up will showcase many more lectures, the first set of four confirmed talks for the event are as follows: 'Evolving Aquaria' (Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, Bit Blot) "Indie game creators Alec Holowka and Derek Yu discuss their journey developing the IGF grand prize winning game Aquaria. From first prototype to final release, team Bit Blot share old builds and prototypes, mistakes and successes, design decisions and lessons learned demonstrating how Aquaria was grown, not planned." 'A Tale of Two Kyles' (Kyle Gabler, 2D Boy; Kyle Gray, Electronic Arts) "Ever wanted to quit your corporate gig and make your own game? What about pitch your game to the head of the company and have it made? Two alumni from the Experimental Gameplay Project compare their experiences in the indie and corporate scene. Kyle Gabler left EA in May 2006 to start his own company (currently creating World Of Goo), while Kyle Gray stayed behind to pitch his own title. Both made their own game. It’s unlimited resources vs. unlimited freedom in this, 'A Tale of Two Kyles.'" 'Postmortem: PixelJunk Series' (Dylan Cuthbert, Q Games) "Kyoto's Q Games was founded in 2001 by Dylan Cuthbert, a veteran developer who worked with Nintendo on the original version of Starfox. The company is now self-funding and creating PlayStation 3 titles in the Pixeljunk series, with Pixeljunk Racers completed and Pixeljunk Monsters due out soon. Cuthbert will discuss the process and reality of creating this 'small game' series, inspired by classic '80s Commodore 64 and Spectrum games." The Indies of Tomorrow (Tracy Fullerton, USC Interactive Media) "Game studies programs are rapidly becoming hotbeds of indie game development, a place for both students and researchers to innovate and take risks in low budget, high impact projects that explore strange new worlds of game design. The director of the USC Game Innovation Lab, the research unit behind projects like Cloud, flOw and The Night Journey, talks about how to create a culture of rampant experimentation and innovation, and make the games you can’t make anywhere else." The 2008 Independent Games Summit is available to attend by purchasing a GDC 2008 Summits Pass. In addition, other passes such as the GDC 2008 All Access Pass also allow entry to the Summit. More information on the line-up for the summit will be posted on the official IGS website in the near future.