[Event] Cape Town Community Night - 29 March

edited in Events
This event happens monthly, is free to attend, and anyone may speak at the meetup - just comment beneath to let us know! This is for anyone and everyone interested in making games of any shape, size or type. Come join us!

Test games! Talk games! Make games!

When: 18:30 until around 21:30, Last Wednesday of the month

Where: Bandwidth Barn - 68 Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 7925

If you have a demo you want played, bring a station on which people can play it, and set it up before the meetup begins!


Agenda
- 6:30 - 7:00 - Meet and greet
- Rapid fire intros (10 min)
- Community News (5 min)

Talks - 2 x 20 min slots:
- Game dev legal needs? by Kevin Hoole
- A GDC recorded talk

Focused Feedback - 2 x 10 min slots
- TBD (this could be you!)

Open Demo Floor


Facebook Event: https://web.facebook.com/events/1254315044622224/

If you'd like to give a talk or show something to get some feedback, please post below!
Thanked by 1pieter

Comments

  • So I haven't received any content for the meetup tonight yet. Is there anyone that wants to give a talk or show something?

    If not, then maybe we should watch one of the talks from GDC 2017? Does anyone want to watch a specific talk maybe? I have Vault access so anything from GDC 2017 goes: http://www.gdcvault.com/browse/gdc-17
  • I'd be keen to watch "Efficient Texture Streaming in Titanfall 2" or "D3D12 and Vulkan: Lessons Learned"
  • edited
    I am in for watching a GDC video. Both of the videos suggested by ChristopherM sound interesting. I'd probably choose Texture streaming if I had to choose.
  • Hm... I think that a very technical talk about graphical pipelines might not be the most interesting for everyone. I went through the list and this is what stood out, mostly from watching the talks myself or what people told me:

    Failure Workshop by Adriaan de Jongh, Michael Molinari, Tim Rogers
    Experimental Gameplay Workshop by various
    Managing Conflict on Small Teams by Rebekah Saltsman
    Put a Face on It: The Aesthetics of Cute by Jenny Jiao Hsia
    Finding 'Duskers': Innovation Through Better Design Pillars by Tim Keenan
    'Hyper Light Drifter': Secrets of Kickstarter, Design, & Pizza by Teddy Dief, Alx Preston
    #1ReasonToBe by various

    Personally I think the Experimental Gameplay Workshop or Failure Workshop will be really interesting for everyone, but the EGW is like 2 hours long, so that might be a bit much. The Failure Workshop was really good though, and Tim Rogers was particularly funny. I think it has a lot of takeaways for everyone.
    Thanked by 2pieter Elyaradine
  • I'd be happy to watch the Failure Workshop, sounds good.
  • Hm... I think that a very technical talk about graphical pipelines might not be the most interesting for everyone.
    This is why I never go to Community Night anymore. Nothing technical is ever covered.
  • @ChristopherM: the majority of people that do attend are not very technical, or if they are (like me) they are not necessarily interested in listening to a very niche technical talk at a meetup. You are very welcome to present a talk about a technical subject, we've certainly had those in the past and they've been well received. We've had talks about programming, process, sound, art, communication and design, just off the top of my head. Interesting talks on any subject are always welcome!

    My plan was to have a list of suggested talks up on a slide and have people quickly take a vote on what they'd like to watch. That said, considering the make-up of the attendees at the meetups for the past year or so, I don't think they will be excited to watch those 2 technical talks, hence my comment and alternative suggestions - I'm just being realistic.

    Honestly, if you want to have a stronger thread of conversation around technical game dev, the easiest and quickest way is to stand up and present a short talk or two yourself. This has worked well in the past with other subjects. That said, it won't be possible to have a technical subject being talked about at every meetup, as the meetups are community-driven (I just facilitate, I don't dictate what happens, and I can't provide all the content myself). I'm sorry that you don't see the other value you might get out of a meetup, but you're always welcome :)
    Thanked by 1pieter
  • Hm... I think that a very technical talk about graphical pipelines might not be the most interesting for everyone.
    This is why I never go to Community Night anymore. Nothing technical is ever covered.
    fyi, when the community nights first started, there were about 10-15 people each night, and the topics were literally pure programming/technical topics. No creatives of any other type would attend (art, audio, narrative, etc.).

    I wanted to change that, so I started volunteering art talks, even though I was a crap artist. But art talks to an audience that's primarily not artists had to be pitched at a level that the audience would still find useful; that they'd still have good takeaways for a very wide variety of games, or be inspired to try different things. It might've been interesting, but it would've been almost useless for me to talk about a AAA art pipeline when literally nobody there could even afford one artist, never mind an art team. I could be wrong, but I get the same sort of impression from the talks you suggested, and I don't think it's wrong to push talks that have broader applications.

    As I got more experience, to the point where, to be honest, I was barely learning anything at community meetups, I'd still go. Because I remembered how cool it was to have Luke and Matt and other people who'd "made it" being there for me to talk to and learn from, and how I wanted to be present to teach others who were interested. So that when I had insight to offer, I'd offer it. When I didn't, then I'd absorb, or offer support and encouragement.

    You don't change things by not participating. And that's your choice, but imo it's terribly short-sighted. If you see value in technical topics for the sorts of developers and teams that are likely to attend the CT meetups, then you can be an advocate for that by showing them why it'd be useful using your first-hand examples. (And if they're unconvinced, that's fine. It may well be a test for how these ideas might be received in a broader audience too, which might simply mean that more iteration is required.)
  • Quick update: we've had a request from Kevin Hoole to ask the community what they want from the legal side of things (via twitter), so I've added that to the agenda. If you have legal needs, come tell Kevin about them :)
    Thanked by 2dammit pieter
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