Today, I attended the Manchester Unreal Engine Meetup at Futureworks. This 3-hour event was hosted and organised by Pete Bottomley and several of the White Paper Games crew, and it consisted of a number of talks by industry professionals on topics such as games marketing, production, design processes and workflow, all with a focus on indie companies and Unreal Engine 4. This is the first event of its kind that I have attended, and I am really glad that I did - it has provided me with some very valuable insights into the inner workings of indie games development, while also allowing me to mingle with other like minded individuals from a variety of disciplines, from students to veteran indie devs. This event was primarily aimed at current indie developers. I am an MA Games Design student rather than a developer, so I do not find myself directly within the event's target audience, but it was still without doubt a very valuable experience, and I feel like I have had a glimpse of what the future may hold.
The first speaker of the evening was Jess Hider, who is the European Community Manager for Epic Games, creators of Unreal Engine 4. Jess gave a very in-depth talk about marketing for indie developers, which was packed with information and gave me a lot to think about. In the talk, Jess broke down the process of marketing an indie game into three stages: identifying "what you want to say" (the message of your marketing), how to say it (how to market and get the word out), and how to get others to say it for you (generating buzz and word-of-mouth marketing for your project).
Jess spoke about the importance of maintaining a positive tone to your marketing and how to subtly and gracefully instil interest in your project into your audience, via the use of various different social media platforms. She also presented a load of statistics and graphs about the past and current trends in such things as video game demographics and social media stats, and advised us to use these stats to make sure that we are hitting our target audiences effectively, both with games themselves and with the marketing of those games. Jess presented a lot of very interesting points on how to use different online social media platforms to their fullest potential when marketing games. She spoke about the different strengths and weaknesses of different platforms and how developers should consider them when marketing.
Overall, Jess' talk on indie game marketing was an incredibly insightful and useful talk from someone who obviously is very knowledgeable on the subject. While I am not exactly an indie dev just yet, and I may never end up being one, I have no doubt that this advice will come in handy in the future. I will surely be able to apply these skills to the way in which I market myself to potential employers, my portfolio and any future games that I may work on.
The second talk was from Ben Hill, who is the creative director at ADVECT Productions, and who has worked as a producer, designer and writer on a variety of indie games including White Paper Game's own Ether One. Ben talked about production for indies in UE4, and how good production management can help get an indie game to release.
Ben started by defining what production and production management actually are - which was useful for me because it is something I had not researched or really heard about prior to this talk. Production management is the practice of co-ordinating all areas of a games development and production cycle, with a view to making sure that everything runs smoothly, all the milestones are reached and the game is released on time and with minimal disruption or issues. Though I had not really put much consideration into the importance of this before, it does all make sense - when it comes down to it, a game is a product, and the creation of it is a project, so it makes sense to allocate people and resources to ensuring that it is done right and runs smoothly!
As a production manager, Ben is required to take a very meticulous, grounded and thorough approach the to the production cycle, and I think that this rang true with his presentation style. He spoke in a very confidently and thoroughly about indie production in a way that seemed to display that he has those skills and works in this way. Ben talked about how to break down the work that is required and identifying deliverables, which were then further broken down into deliverables and key tasks. Once the deliverables and tasks are identified, and tasks allocated, then an indie company can begin to set milestones and schedules. By doing this, an indie company can streamline the production process from the very beginning, maximising efficiency and minimising the risk of running into issues down the line.
Ben also talked about the importance of pre-production - which is the period of researching, pitching and developing skills and so on before the production of a game actually begins. Other topics that Ben covered included the importance of budgeting, allocating contingency time and money, task management and delegation, communication, keeping the indie team happy and up-to-date and the different methodology softwares that companies can use during production. Ben's talk was absolutely packed with useful information. Again, while I am still just a student and not part of an indie company, the points made in this talk are easily transferable to my own practice. This talk got me thinking about how larger companies operate and work towards shipping on time. It also made me think about how I can apply these production management techniques and theories to my own projects, both in Uni and personal pursuits.
The final talk was from Nathan Winfield, who is one member of the small indie start-up, Freesphere. Freesphere are working on a first-person horror game called Tether, and Nathan's talk was all about the development and design process of this game, and the company's experiences in indie development thus far. This talk was shorter and somewhat less in-depth than the other two talks, but it was still interesting because Nathan talked about his personal experiences on the hands-on frontline of indie development. Nathan is a UCLan games graduate, and his situation and place as a relatively new developer within the industry was quite easily relatable - it felt like a position that I could see myself in in the future.
Nathan's talk spanned topics such as the goals that they set out to achieve with their game, the limitations and issues that they faced in indie development, their design choices, how they communicate as a team and how they have sought out feedback from various sources. While Jess and Ben's talks addressed marketing and production respectively, Nathan's was more development focused. It was very much about the practical fundamentals of indie development. This helped to contextualise the indie development process itself.
The Unreal Engine Meetup provided some valuable insights into indie development from a varied trio of industry professionals. The wide variety of topics that the speakers covered have helped me to gain a more well-rounded view of indie development. Though I am not an indie developer myself as of yet, I feel like this event has given me a sneak-peak into what may in store for me in the future. I will aim to put the lessons that the speakers gave about marketing, production and development into practice with my own work - whether it is using Jess' marketing tips to gain exposure online, Ben's production advice to help me to complete projects and ship games effectively, or Nathan's first-hand experiences in indie development to inform my own approach. As well as gaining knowledge, this event also allowed me to "show my face" in the Unreal Engine and indie development community for the first time - and as any games student knows, networking and meeting other developers can be very valuable! I hope to attend more events like this in the future.
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