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5th Meeting of IGDA Kiev Chapter
27 April 2006
Continuing the good tradition, the IGDA Kiev gathered on last Saturday of April - April 27th.
This time we did our best to deliver interesting content to the audience on time and avoid anything that could prevent the audience from hearing the yummiest info while refreshing their brains with coffee.
So, as usual, we started at 3 pm and gathered around 40 guys from gamedev and press reps. The agenda included 2 topics: one from Maxim Novikov, Software Engineer from EA Canada and other was presented by Evgeniy Zhukov, President of Abyss Lights Studios. The topics were named correspondingly as "Creating the Game: From Idea to Market" and "What is More Important: Tanks or People".
Maxim had a 30-mins session on the gamedev pipeline that is being used in the business-driven gamedev society (the very look from the other side, because in Ukraine we have the idea-driven society, the main motto of which very often is "we have the idea, we have some resources - let's do SOMETHING", and that is not much applicable for making money within the industry).
Maxim has a vast background as a game developer and manager, and his career might be an example on how a person can develop within gamedev and accumulate experience with different companies.
The main idea of Maxim's presentation on game development pipeline was prototyping - the technical and gameplay field testing of the game model with small group of resources and larger group of marketers. If the game passes the tests ok, it is being promoted into further massive development, if no - the losses from frozen project are minimal. I guess this idea will be handy to local guys : Let's think money!
After a short break for coffee and communication, we had the pleasure to listen to Evgeniy Zhukov. Evgeniy presented the idea, which is currently vital to the game developers all over the Ukraine: human resources or personalities. He mentioned the old war story of his grandpa, when a small team of soldiers with limited ammo overcame the tank division with only strategy and team playing. The idea is that a strong team wins. And how to get to the result together with the team? Evgeniy classified the types of employees that happened to be with Abyss Lights, the types of problems they had and the methods he motivated his team and the ways out of HR crisis.
What went right:
The presenters were great and the coffee break at least was civilized :
We had Taras Korol with camera and we had our own pictures!
The place of the meeting was comfortable and presentation-oriented.
What went wrong:
The place of the meeting was a bit too distant from the nearest subway.
We forgot to place our banner during first presentation - ooops, it wasn't on purpose, really! Some guys brought beer and that didn't make the presenters (and myself :) more happy.
Special thanks to:
- 5th meeting organizers and volunteers:
Slava Bogrov - BTE Soft
Igor Karev - Action Forms
Svetlana Kravtsova - Rostok Games
Yuri Likhota - Crazy House & IGDA Ukraine
Irina Lokshina - Persha Studia & IGDA Ukraine
Taras Korol - Abducted Artists & IGDA Ukraine
Nadia Matukhno -IGDA Ukraine
- our guest speakers:
Maxim Novikov, Electronic Arts Canada
Evgeniy Zhukov, Abyss Lights Studio
- our sponsor Crazy House
- our media sponsor My Computer publishing house
And all the friendly audience we had the pleasure to meet on the Event!
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