In this lecture I will cover what it takes to create the highest quality art in current AAA game development. Specifically I will talk about some of the processes and developments that we experienced creating God of War. We will discuss the current art quality standard, and what it takes to achieve it, as well as how to break into the industry or survive if you are already a game developer.

Presentation of vehicle production pipeline with focus on visual asset creation. Description of each production phase with examples of challenges in their solutions.

Specular reflection plays a major role in overall visuals. Many methods exist to compute indirect specular (reflection), however all of the currently used techniques have many issues with image stability, floating reflections, missing reflection anisotropy, etc. This session will share how we implemented a hybrid screen-space and cube-map array tracing for 'Mafia III'. This method combined importance sampling with large screen-space blur. It addressed floating reflections and image stability as SSR/CM blend was seamless but didn't produce proper material response and introduced leaking on high-roughness materials. This talk will present an improved version that eliminates the large screen-space blur with smart sample distribution, spatio-temporal filter, screen and CM pre-filtering. This method works well on whole roughness range and achieves full-res reflections in about 3 ms on PS4 at 1080p.

Join Paul Barnett as he takes you on a journey through game making from a western point of view. Detailing his history in game making, observations, insights and sharing view on the ‘trade craft’ of game making. He will explain his views on design, commercial game making and the seven things he believes all great game makers share. You will learn about the golden age of gaming, how to make games with limited resources and how all game making is secretly a love affair unlike anything else.

Inspired by a billiards game, Jan talks us through the journey of creating their latest PvP mobile strategy game and reaching the Top 250 Grossing in USA. What were the biggest pitfalls? Is it wise to rush your game to the market? What role did analytics play and how did they use it? Learn how Prague, good coffee, and a steep learning curve shaped their latest hit.

Five years is what they give us - five years to live the dream many of us chased since we were children, five years to make the magic we first discovered in arcades, on the Apple II, on the earliest game consoles. Five years to get in, get excited, get shipped, get tired, get laid off and get out. Five years. While much has been said about the reasons we come and we go, not nearly enough has been said about the reasons to stay. Across the industry, there are people with 10, 20, 30 and even 40 years experience for whom game dev has become a way of life, a passionate calling that leaves us more energised than empty. What can we learn from them? In this talk, Brenda Romero explores the reasons we stay.

After years of recruiting for his team, Guerrilla Lead Writer Ben McCaw has made it his personal mission to promote a better understanding of the hiring process. He will identify common mistakes, relate anecdotes from colleagues, and share insights not only for aspiring writers and designers, but also for developers responsible for future hires.

Youtube can teach you how to use software, so I will show you the values, the Dos and don'ts and the mentality to achieve a bright future as a character artist.

The strory of development of Kingdom Come, which was six years in the making.

The number one source of one-star reviews in App Store is out of memory crashes. iOS is very strict in this regard, terminating any app failing to fit into the memory limit. In this session you will learn low-level details about iOS memory management, how to interpret the numbers shown by Unity Profiler, Xcode, and Instruments, as well as, how to use these tools to find out what data in your game consumes much memory.

There will be a very special panel discussion featuring some of our best speakers! Be sure to book your time for this one, it will be exceptional!

We'll discuss how to plan for your freemium mobile game around your monetisation, what revenue streams are available - what works, what doesn't and even introduce you to some out-of-the-box ideas that could help add an uplift. Plus give you some insight from publishers and investors.

The ceremony celebrates all of the dozens indie developers that has presented their games at Indie Showcase, rewarding the very best of them in three categories.