English / Čeština
English / Čeština
GDS has become a really large event this year and that applies not only to the number of visitors or the size of the conference venue but mainly to the quality of the talks, workshops and speakers. It has been challenging for us to make it all happen and we are working every minute until the very last moment to deliver you the best of what we and the whole European game industry can offer. Luckily, everything went fine and we have finally released the program of this year’s GDS.
What can you look forward to? There is a lot! Big names, lots of guests from all around Europe, comebacks and appearances of famous game developers, interesting workshops and even fun competitions! So, let’s have a look on what this year’s GDS has to offer.
Speaking of appearances of famous game developers, surely one of the biggest surprises will be Marek Rabas, CEO of Madfinger Games, who, for the first time in the history of his studio, will have a talk in the Czech Republic about his philosophy of making games and what it took for him to become one of the world’s most successful mobile game developers.
Furthermore, our general partner, Pixel Federation, a very successful player on the market of Facebook and mobile games, will share their experience during their talk about the fields of game design and the processes they use to constantly learn and to improve their games. The speakers will be the lead designer of the studio - Martin Jurášek, accompanied by the producer of the studio’s most successful game TrainStation - Alexander Pavelka.
We should not forget to mention Václav Blín as well, who together with Adolf Lachman will talk about the highly anticipated game from their studio Amanita Design - Samorost 3. After five years of development it became the biggest project the studio ever made and it is almost ready to be released. You will have the opportunity to look behind the scenes of one of the most beautiful and astonishing games of the present day. It is really rare to see those two “Samorosts” come out of their designer slum so don't miss this wonderful opportunity to learn about their work!
If you are a fan of Arma 3 or DayZ, you can look forward to Filip Doksanský from Bohemia Interactive. He will talk about expected news from their games but also about the development of their engine. Also representing the BI studio will be Viktor Kostík who will talk about his experience with early access, Vojtěch Kovařič talking about quality assurance in game development and after many years, there will also be a comeback of a really famous and experienced writer and developer - Jarek Kolář with his very interesting talk about the story writing of the mobile game Dead Effect with a series of really handful recommendations about storytelling and character creation in games.
You have surely noticed the last update of Space Engineers, which with addition of automatically generated and completely destroyable planets got once again among the top of the best-selling rankings in the Steam service. How this huge update has been developed and what success it has, that will be the topic of the designer from the Keen Software House studio - Tomáš Rampas.
Great minds of the Czech and Slovak game development scene will be also represented by Marek Rosa, the founder of Keen Software House, who will talk about his new research project of general artificial intelligence called GoodAI and the way they use it in their own games as well as the pair of Warhorse riders - Daniel Vávra and Viktor Bocan from Warhorse studios, who will join with a traditional talk about game design in practice and a talk about game design of the medieval fencing from the first person perspective based on their experience with their game Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Expecting the guests from around the Europe, you can also look forward to Brian Davis, one of the first designers of Zynga studios, who has been there even in the days before it got so large and successful, now working at Wooga as a system designer. He will share his experiences with spreadsheets in game design and the best practices to use them to analyse and balance complex and complicated game systems and economics.
There will be also representatives of Epic Games studio, Aleksey Savchenko with his talk about the magic and endless possibilities of Unreal Engine 4, accompanied by a workshop prepared by Sjoerd De Jong, where you will create a game from the scratch showing all the aspects of development with UE4.
Speaking of workshops you can also participate in the famous game design workshop by Martin Vaňo, experienced game designer from Silicon Jelly, who will help you to create and pitch your own game very quickly while still making it interesting and fun.
The GDS program is really huge and epic this year and many names have not even been mentioned in this article. There is a lot more behind the doors of the conference so the best thing you can do is to just visit the related section of our website and check it out yourself. We will be releasing more details about each talk in the following days so make sure to follow us on our social networks and let us know which one you look forward to the most!
See you soon!
#GDS2015 team
Take some time to relax because the eve before GDS will not let you sleep! Along the lines of last year events, we gladly continue to organize the legendary warm-up party for the most dedicated fans of the GDS. And there is a lot you can look forward to! A lot of fun, friends and mostly - entertaining and interesting presentations of indie game developers and their projects!
On the party you will be able to meet with other visitors before it all officially begins. And not only with the visitors! There will be journalists, your colleagues and other interesting people like our partners so definitely a great company of people to meet with! Last year’s party was packed up with people and this year we expect more than 150 guests as well, so you shouldn’t miss it either!
And if you have ever been on one of our warm-up parties, you definitely remember the fun and entertaining presentations of indie game developers. We are going to do it again! Anyone who participates will get his five minutes of glory to show what awesome projects is he or she working on. This way you will get really unique chance to stand out before the conference itself happens!
We believe this concept is really important to our visitors and has a huge impact so we are happy to continue with it. Who can participate, you ask? Practically anyone and it's for free! All you have to do is to fill in the registration form below and then just stop by when the party happens. No specific partnership or payment needed - we care about all of you and we want to give everyone a chance to show how awesome they are! :)
So remember - 26th November 20:00 at music bar Laloca (https://www.laloca.cz)!
We look forward to you!
Conferences are not just about interesting content, great and intriguing talks, inspiration and hilarious parties but mostly about you - the visitors. Networking is an important part of the GDS and we would like to help you make it happen! With such big number of visitors, different activities and busy schedule it might be really difficult to meet the right people in the right time and at the right place. That’s why we introduce the Pitch & Match application which provides you the almighty calendar and connects you with other people before the conference happens.
How does it work? It’s simple! Everyone registered to the GDS will automatically receive invitiation e-mail from us to the Pitch & Match application including the login instructions. If you’ll accept it, an account will be created for you and you can easily enter any details about you, your studio, projects, services or interests, just about anything you would like to share with others. Then you can schedule your calendar to fit your need, send invitation to others or just wait until someone else will request meeting with you.
Seems awesome right? But we would like to do even more. Our goal is to help you to connect with as many people as possible and make your calendars fully utilized. That’s why we step in! Our team is ready to monitor the situation and suggest you meetings with people we think you might want to meet! Easily within the application via voluntary suggestions in the applications dashboard. And if you, by any chance, will not fill up all of your free slots, don’t worry - Pitch & Match will be usable even once the conference will happen and you can schedule another meeting just about anytime!
We will launch the application on 28th October so get ready! Even though the conference schedule is not released yet and we understand it might be quite difficult for you to plan your free slots right now, we believe it is worth to take a look at it and see who is available. After all, the time and number of free slots of every visitor are limited and those who hesitates might lose a bit! :-)
So let’s join us in the Pitch & Match once it gets available! We wish you lot of successful presentations, new contacts and last but not least - pleasant and inspiring meetings!
GDS have always been here for all the enthusiastic game developers, who passionately pursued their dreams by making interesting and promising games. Weather it is a small independent studio, group of friends or large company, our goal is not only to provide enough space for anyone to present what they are doing, but also create an environment where you can get a valuable feedback from other professional developers, to engage with people and gather contacts and possibly even establish some interesting cooperation. While the conference is being moved to a new and larger space at hotel Olšanka, we are finally able to open the doors also to smaller developers like indie studios, individual developers, startups or students.
Every developer who joins our GDS 2015 Indie Showcase Program will receive a reservation for space at the conference in about 4 sq m in size where you can present your projects on any kind of devices you would like to, meet with the visitors of the conference and engage with them in various ways. In your booth, you will have a large table, electricity and internet access and there will be several volunteers to watch out the space and help you with anything you need.
Each year, our conference visit about 500 game developers including Daniel Vávra from Warhorse Studios, Jarek Kolář from Bohemia Interactive, Marek Rabas from Madfingers or Jakub Dvorský from Amanita Design. You will also get a chance to meet several journalists and receive feedback from developers, journalists or potential players as well as introduction on our website, in the printed information guide and maybe even in the media so it is definitely worth to participate!
The price for the participation is set for 200 EUR and it includes:
For companies and larger studios we offer a individual extended partnership. In case you are interested, please contact us directly via e-mail partners@gdsession.com.
To participate, please complete the registration form at http://bit.ly/GDS-DEVELOPERS. We will contact you with further details about the cooperation afterwards.
So don’t think twice and hit that button now! We can’t wait to see all the awesome games you are making!
Would you like to be a part of our team and help us to prepare and realize the indie game development conference with the longest tradition in Europe? We have good news for you! We have prepared interesting volunteering program.
There are plenty of opportunities to participate: the conference venue preparation, helping the game developers at their kiosks, operating the cameras, taking pictures or helping with the networking parties. We hope that everyone who’s willing to help will find something enjoyable to do so!
What will you get for your help in return? Even though the participation itself is a priceless experience and we want to cooperate with those, whose biggest motivation is to help and support the event, we gladly provide all the participants the following benefits:
In order to participate you need to have a good knowledge of English and be at least 18 years old.
If you are interested in joining the volunteering program, please fill in the following form to participate: http://bit.ly/GDS-VOLUNTEERS.
Once you submit the form, we will contact you in a few days with the detail information to agree on the conditions of our cooperation.
In case of any questions feel free to contact us at volunteers@gdsession.com.
Thank you for your interest and we are looking forward to see you at GDS 2015 in Prague!
České Hry o. s. team
Fire up your gaming consoles, thoroughly go through your stock of ideas and get ready for your regular dose of inspiration. The end of the year is nearly here and that means the oldest European indie game developers conference - Game Developers Session - is going to happen again.
For the thirteenth time we will celebrate, enjoy and learn about the beauty of indie game development on the 27th and 28th of November in Hotel Olšanka, Prague, Czech Republic. As always, you can expect two grandiose days full of talks, presentations, workshops and inspiration from some of the greatest indie game developers accompanied by friendly networking evening parties, game-dev related kiosks, many other developers and of course - great food and delicious coffee. :-)
And even more - this year, we have prepared several changes and surprises. The biggest one is the event being moved into the spacious Hotel Olšanka, which provides vaster conference hall as well as common areas for kiosks, refreshment, relaxation and networking. This allows us to provide you even more presentations of game development studios, but also the special fun&relax and networking zones for you to have enough entertaining opportunities to meet each other as well as to relax and spent your free time comfortably.
If you wish to be part of our conference as a partner company or presenting game development studio, please contact us at partners@gdsession.com.
Do you have an interesting idea for a talk, presentation or workshop? Then we are ready to listen and give you whatever support you need! As a source of inspiration, you should try to fit in one of the topics of indie game development we have marked as interesting and relevant, although these areas are not mandatory and rather than pre-selected topics we care more about the real value to our attendees.
27th November is couple months ahead and we still have a lot of work to do but we have also good news for those who wish to help us. This year, we (for the first time) are launching also a prestigious volunteer program we will tell you more about on our website in a couple of days. But if you are already interested, feel free to contact us at volunteers@gdsession.com and we will make sure to send you all the information you need as soon as possible.
The tickets available now and you can purchase them with a special early-bird discount for a limited amount of time. Every week we will also release new interesting content regarding the conference, speakers and program so it’s definitely worth to follow us. You can find us on social networks like Facebook and Twitter and if you wish to let us know your opinion, feel free to get in touch with us through the hashtag #GDS2015.
So don’t forget to check your calendar for the best indie game-dev event of the year on 27th and 28th November and make sure to visit us when it happens. We are looking forward to you and will be more than happy to meet you! :-)
Conference is organized by an industry organization of Czech game developers. Its main goal is to support the communication and cooperation between developers, educate and motivate the game creators and disseminate the Czech and Slovak game development in Czech Republic, Slovakia and abroad.
České hry o. s., Smrčensko 1, Světlá nad Sázavou, IČO: 22736107 / info@ceske-hry.cz / @ceskehry / facebook
