IndieCade Festival 2016

In this talk, Sean Bouchard will discuss his recent experience writing grants for the USC Game Innovation Lab, including one for a project that was successfully funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The session will provide a high-level overview of the anatomy of a grant proposal, and basic strategies for approaching grant-writing for academic research and for independent game makers.

Want to talk with a real, live lawyer about legal decisions for your game and not have to pay? Wondering which corporate form is right for your business and why?  What can you do to protect your IP?  What are the options? These questions and more will be answered during this presentation.  

Paper prototyping is the core of traditional game design, and it is still extremely useful when developing digital games. Jeremy Bond will discuss ways in which paper prototypes can help you hone ideas for your own games and lead you through a workshop where you'll work with a group to quickly craft a paper prototype.

This session will explore the process of working with composers and sound designers to produce awesome music and sound for indie games! We’ll talk about exploiting AAA audio techniques using interactivity and audio middleware, workflows for remote collaboration, and and the business of working with remote contractors. We’ll also show a live integration demo using Unity and discuss how to protect your self when working with Work for Hire and license agreement deals.

This workshop takes you through the design process of creating a game that’s played in the real world with real people. Whether your game is an augmented experience where you walk around looking through your phone, or it’s a team based sport using pool noodles and balloons, there are certain constraints and consideration that are always in play when you ask people to use their bodies with other people in real space. Nick Fortugno will introduce you to some of his work with the Come Out & Play street game festival, talk about how the games were created, and give guiding principles to how to make successful real world games.

Most developer meetups bring together game makers to network while discussing their outside projects. This works great for advanced developers but can have a high barrier to entry for newcomers or intermediate developers. There's another, different pattern that helps more people get started on teams: a practice club. Instead of being focused on external development efforts these organizations support internal games, with processes in place to pitch, develop, and release games created collectively by members.

Hundreds of practice games have been created by teams of beginning game developers in the Game Creation Society (est. 2004 at Carnegie Mellon), VGDev (est. 2010 at Georgia Tech), and Gamkedo Club (est. 2015, independent, members worldwide online). These teams range in size from 3-20, with each game's schedule between 1 to 5 months. Chris will break down the process and logistics he developed for these three game development practice clubs.

At the end of the session attendees will be equipped to begin growing and leading developer practice communities of their own, or prepared to adapt new patterns to their existing clubs or practice collectives.