This year, at Vector, we are pleased to announce an incredible line up of speakers. Our schedule goes across two days, including talks from speakers from Epic, Google, and more! Check out the full schedule here.

For a full description of the talks, go along below:

A bunch of geometric shapes with white text that reads "Friday Schedule"

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM

Registration 

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM 

Room 229

From Game Crazed Child to Cloud Gaming Developer Advocate at Google: Jon Foust, Google

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could mix your passion with your job? It’s not, because now my life is a tire fire of anxiety and stress.

But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Join Jon in an open discussion/panel on his journey to working on Games at Google. You will learn about his success/failures, his lowest/highest moments, and how his outlook on life helps him succeed as a Developer Advocate.

Room 211 

Getting Started with Unreal: Christian Allen

An overview of getting started in game development with Unreal Engine.  Christian Allen, Unreal Evangelist at Epic Games, will touch on the high level points of getting started in Unreal Engine, including initial setup, licensing, and learning resources.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM 

Game Design Panel: Lisa Brown & JoAnna Lio Amos 

A casual, panel discussion with two game industry figures, Lisa Brown from Bungie (Destiny 2) and JoAnna Lio Amos from EA (The Sims). Both women have incredible experiences from their careers and will be happy to share that experience with the audience.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

From Redmon Rd to Redmond WA: Phil Profitt, Microsoft

A discussion between Phil Profitt of Microsoft and Dr. George Landon from EKU about Phil’s game design journey from Kentuckian to working at one of the largest software companies in the world. Phil Profitt is currently a developer account manager for Xbox at Microsoft, and has been working in the games industry for 10 years now. He grew up in the middle of nowhere in Bourbon County, KY. After graduating from University of Kentucky as an electrical engineering major he made his way to Tokyo, Japan to work in the games industry as a software engineer.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM 

Room 229 

Unity Introduction: John Meister 

An introduction to Unity with John Meister. John Meister has years in the industry working with Unity based games and education and will do a quick walk through of how to get started in Unity.

Room 211 

Rapid Prototyping using Unreal Marketplace

Christian Allen, game designer and Unreal Evangelist at Epic Games, will present the benefits and considerations of using ready available assets during game prototyping.  As part of the presentation, Christian will show examples from ParaChess, a playable title he built entirely with Unreal Marketplace assets.

3PM-6PM 

Local Games! 

Get a chance to play a bunch of local games, developed by different folks! Want to bring your own game! You can do that too! Seriously we just want a few chill hours of playing games together, and this is a great way to do it.

A geometric purple and blue background with white text that reads Saturday schedule. 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM

Registration 

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM 

Room 211

Building Successful Gaming Communities Using Universal Communication: Jon Foust 

Games are played worldwide, but it would be a bad assumption to say that all gamers speak one language in a country. When creating a game, there are many design choices that can make or break your game but there are design choices that aren’t considered. In this talk, we will look into common game communications and how we can break the language barriers to build a better user experience and a wider game community.

Room 221

Intellectual Property Law Primer – Things to consider BEFORE you start game design: Leanthony “AJ” Edwards Jr. 

Game designers can make several Intellectual Property Law sins right off the bat. Being aware of the legal implications of your design or business decisions before you start can save a ton of time, money, and heartache. This talk will help you navigate the legal issues without the legalese.

Room 229 

Intimate Design: Lessons from Fighting Games: Jason Li

Fighting games offer perhaps one of the most intimate experiences available in games: to know the opponent better than they know themselves. Designer Jason Li provides a guided dive into how fighting game design provides perhaps the ultimate example of the saying “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” A former competitive fighting game player himself, Jason breaks down how complex fighting game mechanics act as a palette for player expression, and how their systems push players to intimately engage with one another. With this understanding of fighting games in hand, the talk examines how this intimate design can be applied to both design new games and see existing games from a new lens.

Room 209 

VR/AR Meetup: Leonard Wedderburn 

A meetup of folks who are interested in engaging and talking about VR and AR. This is a casual meetup for people who are excited about the medium, and is open to folks of all skill levels.

10:45 AM – 11:30 AM 

Design Tips for Long Form Games: Lisa Brown 

A talk from Lisa Brown (Bungie) about game design as it specifically relates to long form games.

11:45 AM – 12:30 PM 

Room 211

Open Match: Open-Source Matchmaking Framework built on Kubernetes : Jon Foust 

Do you want to build a multiplayer game but building out your matchmaking service taking too long? Wish you had more time to spend on making your game better? What happens when your player pools grow and you need to scale for the surge in new users?

In this talk we will discuss an open-source project called Open Match. A scalable matchmaking framework for multiplayer games. We look into the solution many studios and developers are coming together to build to allow creators to only worry about the matchmaking logic and spend more time on their next big game.

Room 221

“It’s Showtime: Confessions of a First-Time PAX Exhibitor: Jay Kidd

This talk is all about finding events, filing for a booth, what you need to bring, contacting pre-show press, making a stellar, booth-ready demo, not catching the Nerd Flu and more (including some of my craziest event stories)! Whether you’re an expo veteran looking to make your event experience better, or a first-timer wondering how you can get your game shown at a convention, this talk’s got you covered!

Room 209 

Games and Education Meetup: John Meister 

John Meister (Super Soul) is running a meetup for people who are interested in the intersection between games and education. John has years of experience working with educators across the spectrum and incorporating games and gamification into curriculum. This meetup is open to all skill levels.

Room 229 

ParaChess: UE4 Blueprint Overview & Q&A

Christian Allen, game designer and  Unreal Evangelist at Epic Games, will present a deep dive into the Blueprint scripting used to create the demonstration title, ParaChess, as well as a follow up Q&A into UE4 Blueprint scripting.

1:30 PM – 2:15 PM 

Informational Game Design Talk: Rami Ismail 

An informational design talk with Rami Ismail from Vlambeer (Ridiculous Fishing, Nuclear Throne).

2:30 PM – 3:15 PM 

Room 211 

Mancala-Bot: How I Taught my Computer to Beat Me at a Board Game: Stephen Abrams 

Mancala is a two-player, turn-based board game. This presentation is a high-level description of how to use a genetic algorithm to automate the search for a good strategy to play it.

Room 221

A World in Shades of Grey: An Intro to Accessible Game Design: Jay Kidd

I want to go over what accessibility means (and a little of what it doesn’t mean), what your options as a developer are, and what you can do to holistically design for disability in mind. Using a systematic and methodological approach from the earliest phases of the design process, how you can (with little to no additional time, effort, or budget) make your games more inclusive to those who need it most!

Room 209

Unity Developer Meetup: John Meister

John Meister (Super Soul) is a long time Unity developer. He will be facilitating a meetup with other Unity developers. The meetup is open to developers of all levels.

Room 229

Game Designer Q&A

Christian Allen, who has a long background as a game designer working in both the AAA and independent space, will hold a free-form Q&A regarding the game designer role in the industry.

3:15 PM – 4:00 PM 

The Sims: A Unique Medium for Interactive Storytelling : JoAnna Lio Amos

Stories are a fundamental part of who we are as humans. Meaningful play in digital games can generate a broad spectrum of dynamic stories. See how The Sims enables players to bring their stories to life in beautiful, emergent, unexpected ways.

4:15 PM – 5:00 PM 

Room 211 

Optimized, Cross Platform Barf: A Pig Eat Ball Technical Postmortem: John Meister

This talk will cover the technical history of Pig Eat Ball, a multiplatform game developed in Unity. The team at Super Soul was able to port the game over to Unity from a code base with roots in XNA. John Meister will share some uncommon approaches to using the Unity game engine and the challenges with making a globally released game work on the multiple platforms. Attendees will also come away with practical advice on optimizing their Unity games and approaching cross platform development.

 

Room 229

Level Design and Architecture: Chris Totten 

Christoper Totten, an instructor at Kent State University, talks about level design and architecture.

Room 209

Unreal Developer Meetup: Cory M. Brown

An Unreal developer meetup with Cory M. Brown, an instructor at Mountwest Community Technical College. This is open to developers and hobbyists of all skill levels.

5:00 PM – 6:45 PM

Pitch Contest

A pitch contest! Bring your best game ideas and our professional panel of judges will decide which idea is the best! With prizes!

 

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If you’re looking at this schedule and are like “well that sounds awesome!” it is! We are super excited about this schedule and bringing all these incredible speakers to you. Be sure to check out our ticket page and pick up your tickets for this years event! Vector 2019 is April 26-27!