Vector 2020 Speaker: Jonathan Hamel

This year we’re exceptionally pleased to announce one of our Keynote speakers for 2020, Ready at Dawn Studios Lead Designer Jonathan Hamel.

Jonathan is going to join us this year to discuss his talk “Between Jumping and Fighting: Puzzle Design Best Practices,” with a Q&A afterwards! Here’s his full talk description here:

Drawing from experience on Tomb Raider 2013, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and the 2017’s VR action/adventure Lone Echo, this talk examines that pace-breaking connective tissue of the action/adventure genre in detail: puzzles. What distinguishes a puzzle from a simple gate? How do you design good puzzle ingredients? What makes some puzzles feel boring and other puzzles rewarding to solve? How do you add difficulty to late game puzzles vs. early game puzzles? And what pitfalls can you expect (pun intended) during the level design process?

Jhamel_2019_reunionJonathan Hamel (Lead Designer, Ready at Dawn Studios) has been designing and programming games professionally since the mid-90s. Career highlights include What Remains of Edith Finch (winner of Best Game of at the 2018 BAFTAs and the Best Gameplay at Games for Change); Lone Echo (2017 Immersive Reality game of the Year at D.I.C.E.); the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider. He produced online games at Sesame Street Online and co-wrote The Postman Always Brings Mice and two other Stink Fink novels with Jennifer L. Holm.

 

We are so excited to bring you our entirely online Vector 2020! This years event will feature two days of speakers (April 24-25) from fantastic folks in the AAA and indie industries! Be sure to register online for our entirely free event at GoToWebinar.

Vector 2020 Speaker Chris Totten

Hello folks! We are continuing to roll out our speaker announcements for 2020! This year we’re once again pleased to have Christopher Totten speak with us! Chris is a phenomenal speaker (maybe last year you caught his talk on Architecture in Video Games) and we’re excited to once again have him joining us this year on Making Games with Public Domain Assets.

Here’s a look at Chris’s bio:

A white smiling man with a beard, standing in front of a bookshelf and wearing a shirt with the text SAAM Arcade repeating.Christopher Totten is an Assistant Professor of Game Design at Kent State University’s Animation Game Design program. He is also the founder of Pie For Breakfast Studios, an award-winning Northeast Ohio-area indie game company. He has done work as an artist, animator, level designer, and project manager in the game industry. He holds a Masters Degree in Architecture with a concentration in digital media from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Chris is an organizer for the Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade and lifetime member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).

Chris has written articles featured on Gamasutra, Game Career Guide, and other publications and is a frequent speaker at game industry conferences such as GDC, GDC China, East Coast Game Conference, GDEX, and others. He is the author of An Architectural Approach to Level Design, published with CRC Press/AK Peters in 2014 (2nd edition published in 2019) and Game Character Creation in Blender and Unity, released by Wiley Publishing in 2012. He is also the editor of the collected volume, Level Design: Processes and Experiences. 

Vector is moving online this year and we are excited to bring you an awesome line-up of talks for this years event! Be sure to check it out April 24-25, 2020! Register online here.

Vector 2020 Speaker: Jay Kidd

We here at Vector are excited to bring to you a vast array of speakers who are going to talk about their experience. That includes Jay Kidd of Wraith Games, who will be speaking about putting together a versatile and compact booth. If you’ve ever seen Jay or Wraith Games at a conference or convention you’ve probably been wowed by the way that their booths break down into tiny compact totes. In this talk, Jay is going to talk to you about that and about boothing at conventions!

A little bit about Jay:

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Jay Kidd is the creative director for Wraith Games, an award-winning indie game collective from Hamilton, OH. Their current project, Collapsus, has been featured at SAAM Arcade, PAX East Indie MEBABOOTH 2020, Game Masters: The Exhibition, and many others. Wraith Games has also won both an AbleGamers/GDEX award, and Can I Play That award for game accessibility, while Jay has spoken at GA Conf, the Games Accessibility Conference, hosted by IGDA.
When not making games, he is a part-time game development instructor, and Artspace Hamilton artist, and avid arcade collector.

 

If you’re interested in Vector, please be sure to register with us at GoToWebinar! We’re looking to bring you a great conference April 24-25! Register here.

 

Vector 2020 Speaker: Tim Fritz

Here at Vector we’re excited to keep bringing you the excellent quality of speakers that you’ve come to expect, even as we move online. This year, we’re proud to include Tim Fritz as one of our speakers for Vector 2020! Tim will be speaking about Hand Drawn Game Animation with Open Source Tools, and we’re super excited to have him onboard this year.

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A quick bio from Tim:

Tim Fritz is a contributing animator on the upcoming game Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends. He is also a Lecturer in the Computer Design and Animation program at Kent State University, with 15 years of technical experience. He earned his Master’s degree in Technology from Kent State University, and he helped build the program’s virtual reality labs, motion capture lab, and render farm. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking in state and national parks, and discussing rationality.

 

Vector is going to be moving online this year, with a full 2 day conference, for free, online at GoToWebinar. Be sure to register online now, and watch along with all of the talks on April 24-25, 2020. Register here.

 

Speaker Announcement Christopher Totten

This year we’re pleased to announce that Christopher Totten will be joining our speaker list! Christopher will be speaking on Level Design and Architecture, and we’re excited to have him this year.

A white smiling man with a beard, standing in front of a bookshelf and wearing a shirt with the text SAAM Arcade repeating.

Christopher Totten is an Assistant Professor in the Modeling, Animation, and Game Creation program at Kent State University. He is the founder of Pie For Breakfast Studios, an award-winning Northeast Ohio independent game company, and has done work as an artist, animator, level designer, and project manager in the game industry. He holds a Masters Degree in Architecture with a concentration in Digital Media from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Chris is an executive organizer for the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Arcade and lifetime member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Chris has written articles featured on Gamasutra, Game Career Guide, and other publications and is a frequent speaker at game industry conferences such as GDC, East Coast Game Conference, GDEX, and others. He is the author of An Architectural Approach to Level Design, published in its second edition in 2019 and Game Character Creation in Blender and Unity, released by Wiley Publishing in 2012. He is also the editor of the collected volume, Level Design: Processes and Experiences.

Interested in this talk and others like it? Be sure to check out our ticket page and pick up your tickets for this years event! Vector 2019 is April 26-27!

Speaker Announcement 2019: Christian Allen

This year we’re pleased to announced the involvement of Epic Games, and specifically Unreal Engine Evangelist Christian Allen! Christian will continue with the fantastic workshops and talks about the Unreal Engine.

Allen_headshot_FNChristian’s bio:

Christian Allen is an experienced and BAFTA award winning AAA game designer and creative director. Prior to joining Epic Games as the Unreal Engine Evangelist for North America, Christian served as Lead Designer, Creative Director, and Design Director of several AAA game projects for Ubisoft, Red Storm Entertainment, Microsoft, Bungie, and Warner Bros. Games; as well as running his own indie development studio, Serellan LLC, which shipped multiple titles on console, PC, and VR.

Interested in this talk and others like it? Be sure to check out our ticket page and pick up your tickets for this years event! Vector 2019 is April 26-27!

Speaker Announcement 2019: Jon Foust

This year we’re really excited to announce the attendance of Google Cloud Developer Advocate Jon Foust! Jon is a talented member of the Google team and will be attending for his first year this year to give some talks on subjects on how the cloud can benefit game developers.

A young African American man in a black pullover, smiling towards camera.

His bio: Jon is a Google Cloud Developer Advocate focused on Cloud Gaming. He enjoys helping developers use Google Cloud APIs easily within Unity. In his spare time, you can find Jon playing Volleyball, Baseball/Softball, and as you probably have guessed… Games! His passions are using the cloud to break barriers that divide gamers.

We are super happy to have Jon attend this years event and look forward to what he’s going to bring to Vector 2018!

If you’re interested in attending Vector this year, don’t forget to grab your ticket today!

Speaker Announcement 2019: Lisa Brown

Hello folks! This year we’re pleased to announce the return of one of our favorite previous speakers: Lisa Brown! Lisa Brown has given some of our best talks over the year, on subjects like putting more juice in your game and long term planning for game designers. Lisa has worked for years in AAA and indie development and we are super pleased that she will be joining us for our 2019 event!

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Lisa’s bio:

Lisa Brown is a senior game designer, currently on the Sandbox team at Bungie. She was formally a designer at Insomniac Games and a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, and also worked as a level designer with Heart Machine on Hyper Light Drifter. As an indie, she released several experimental personal games, livestreamed game development and game design analysis, and did an academic residency at Harrisburg University. Lisa loves advising students, participating in game jams, and deep diving on design analysis.

If you’re also pretty pumped to see Lisa at this years event, be sure to grab your ticket here! Contact us for more information on group rates, educational and diversity discounts!

Speaker Announcement 2019: JoAnna Lio Amos

For this years Vector conference we are incredibly excited to announce one of our keynote speakers as EA Producer JoAnna Lio Amos! JoAnna is an exceptionally talented producer and has worked at EA for 15 years across many incarnations of the Blockbuster Sims Franchise!

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JoAnna’s bio:

JoAnna Lio Amos is a producer of The Sims™. In her 15 years at EA, she has developed a dozen games for the franchise across multiple platforms. Her roles have included being a game designer on The Sims 2, lead producer of The Sims 3, live producer of The Sims 4, and lead producer of The Sims Mobile.

Outside of work, she is a member of the advisory board for the University of Kentucky’s Computer Science department.

If you’re psyched to see JoAnna at this years event, be sure to grab your ticket here! Contact us for more information on group rates, educational and diversity discounts!

Speaker Announcement 2019: Rami Ismail

For 2019’s Vector Conference, we are incredibly pleased to have independent guru and business & development guy at indie studio Vlambeer (Nuclear Throne, Luftrausers). Rami is an important figure in independent game development and we’re incredibly excited that he will be joining us for this years event April 26-27, 2019!

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Rami’s bio:

Rami Ismail is the Business & Development Guy at Vlambeer, a Dutch independent game studio known best for Nuclear Throne, Ridiculous Fishing, LUFTRAUSERS, Super Crate Box, GUN GODZ and Serious Sam: The Random Encounter.

We are so incredibly excited that Rami will be joining us for this years event! If you’re equally as psyched, please be sure to grab tickets here! In addition, if you need more information on our group rates, pricing for educational institutions or diversity scholarships (if you’re not sure if you apply, ask!) please email us for more information at vector (at) runjumpdev.org.

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