[Event] Cape Town Community Night - 29 March
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!
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
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
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.
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 :)
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.)