IGB Sessions: Water 2021
2021-03-02..2021-03-04
-- online --
who it's for
indie developers, game producers, game marketers, publishers, freelancers, audio designers, localization testers, game AI programmers
topics
diverse developer grant programs; localization QA workflows; release discoverability tactics; outsourcing cultural management; competitive analysis with steamdb; pitching games to publishers; character IP valuation; behavior tree and utility AI; harassment policy and reporting; audio budgeting and middleware; kickstarter crowdfunding best practices; unit sales financial modeling
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| IGDA Foundation Diverse Game Developer Fund - What You Need To Know | Nika Nour, Sarah Spiers | 01h 09m |
Overview of the program and practical rules: the IGDA Foundation channels $300,000 Diverse Game Developers Fund into prototype grants, student scholarships… | ||
| Localization QA: Yay of Nay? Localization QA: Yay of Nay? | Alexis Biro | 01h 00m |
Walks through concrete LQA steps: build-in internationalization for UI to handle 20–30% text expansion, plan for ~15 target languages, and double estimated… | ||
| Marketing and Video Games: WTF | Chris Faylor | 55m |
Claims that market saturation exploded are backed by Steam data: about 27 releases a month in 2010 versus roughly 840 a month in 2020 and over 10,000 total… | ||
| Culture: The Key To Outsourcing Success | Shehriyar Kamal | 40m |
Eighty-six percent of game studios outsource work in a $160 billion market, yet projects still lose hundreds of thousands or millions because of organizational… | ||
| How to spy on your competition to build your marketing plan | Chris Zukowski | 57m |
Shows concrete surveillance steps: use gamestats.com to pick low/medium/high comparable games, pull historical follower charts from steamdb.info, download the… | ||
| How to Pitch Your Game to Publishers | Julia Kenny | 59m |
Publishers evaluate three concrete things: team competence (capacity to finish, core discipline bios, runway and man‑month rates), game design (clear gameplay… | ||
| Passion is Good but Passion+IP is better | Christian Claes Fonnesbech | 59m |
Independent studios learn that character IP often becomes the majority of company value — io interactive’s Hitman rights represent about 65% of company value —… | ||
| Game AI 4N00bz | Stephanie Bouchard | 59m |
Covers concrete tricks: uses stims (broadcast stimulus packets), raycasts, cone vision and navmesh heatmaps to fake sensing; composes behavior from reusable… | ||
| How Can You Navigate The Business And Work Environment In A Post #MeToo Era | Bobbi Bidochka | 55m |
Offers a practical framework: cites 646 million viewers in esports (1.5 billion by 2023), and workplace romance data — 15% meet at work, 56% date at work and… | ||
| A Structured Process for Planning Game Audio in Production | Chase Bethea | 56m |
Advocates budgeting audio in pre-production with concrete deliverables: build an audio asset list (SFX counts, durations, UI, themes), shop rates, and use a… | ||
| Panel Discussion - There Is Life After Funding Denial | Elena Linaire | 57m |
Indie teams report concrete pivots: they reuse assets for vignettes to sell short games that fund a larger title, a community of ~200 playtests and backs… | ||
| Unit Sales Estimations and Understanding If Your Budget Is Actually Viable | Kimberly Rodatos | 57m |
A practical method for checking whether a budget is viable using Google Sheet templates that combine a backlog, timeline/milestones and a P&L-style model… | ||
| Panel Discussion - The Business of Building a Business in Gaming | heather awida | 56m |
Company launches in one year, builds a Discord-first community, and makes revenue via brand partnerships plus an active capital raise, citing <3% of women… | ||
| Kickstarter Best Practices for Indies (or Kicking Bad Crowdfunding Habits) | Cory Trese | 58m |
Three indie Kickstarter campaigns inform a practical playbook: plan 20 weeks pre-launch, expect a 30‑day funding sprint that doubles team hours, and budget… | ||
| Panel Discussion - How to Make it as a Freelancer in the Games Industry During a Pandemic | Chow Wong | 54m |
Practical, tactical steps for freelancing in a pandemic era: spend about an hour a day scanning Kickstarters, studio Twitter and job lists and do cold… | ||
| Fireside Chat - - - No Imposter Here! Community Building with Among Us. | Victoria Tran | 55m |
Community manager joins Among Us at its viral peak and faces scale problems: 700,000-member Discord where moderation bots break, server overloads during… | ||
| My First Indie Paycheck | Nathan Wulf | 01h 00m |
A small Ludum Dare prototype expands into Goop Loop, sells 20 copies day one then settles to about two copies daily, grosses ~$378 before Valve cut, and… | ||
| Monetization: Skills as Motivation | Diego Ricchiuti | 51m |
Compares intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation with self-determination theory and behavioral biases, then prototypes a change: a start-of-run ad with 33% chance… | ||
| Building Your Indie Life Raft. | Ericka Evans | 55m |
Company describes a pragmatic cooperative model: a nine‑person indie that survives 12 years without a breakout hit by running two project teams, hiring other… | ||
| What Do You Want To Know About Kickstarter? | Anya Combs | 01h 01m |
Requires 30 seconds of gameplay up front, a page with video, images and 5–7 diverse rewards, and updates every other day for games. Community building of 3–6… | ||
| GameDev and Post Trauma | Elad Ayzen | 57m |
Combat memories become the game's core: a PC side‑scroll shooter called Phantom Beasts Redemption ties narrative and mechanics by forcing a mercenary to merge… | ||
| M&A and Investments Landscape in 2021 | Elena Egorova | 50m |
Claims that 2020 sees $21.2B in deals and that many acquisitions close entirely over Zoom, with cultural fit judged remotely, set the frame; due diligence… | ||
| Finding the right method of funding for your game | Maximilian Seeburg | 01h 00m |
Compares four concrete funding routes—banks, credit cards, venture capital and user‑acquisition (UA) funds—and gives actionable thresholds: banks suit… | ||
| How Bitcoin's Assets Tokenization and Microrewards Will Shape The Gaming Industry | Alfredo Bárcena | 59m |
Argues that tokenizing in‑game items on the Liquid sidechain and paying tiny sats via the Lightning Network turns items into scarce, provable assets and… | ||
| Maximize video game sales in China region w/o ISBN | Logan Liu | 54m |
Claim: PC and console titles sell in China without an ISBN by using international stores (Steam, Epic, Switch, PSN) plus local paths for discovery; mobile… | ||
| nothing matches | ||