Blizzard, Guerilla Games, Humble Bundle and Fig.co professionals join the roster of speakers for the Digital Dragons
With just six weeks to go before the 2017 Digital Dragons conference in Poland, the Kraków Technology Park organizing team announced further names of the speakers invited to give their presentations at this largest B2B games industry event in Central Europe. Ever since the first edition in 2012, the conference inspires digital entertainment professionals to share their technical insight, development and design experience, as well as business know-how. Everything one needs to know about gamedev – from the game making basics, through secrets of crowdfunding success, to global distribution, and venture capital involvement – is delivered to the attendees in a distilled form over the course of a two-day event. Here’s what to expect from the newly-announced speakers!
What does it exactly mean to be a game designer and what does game design stand for in 2017? Is there a better person to answer such questions than someone hailing from the team developing such hallmarks of playability as World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade and Legion or Diablo III: Reaper of Souls? Luis Barriga is a Game Director at Blizzard Entertainment. The focus of his Digital Dragons 2017 talk will be the collaborative process of video games design in a team as sprawling with ideas as the one in which he works in at Blizzard.
Similarly celebrated and praised for creating one of the richest, most original, and vivid open game worlds in the history of gaming, Guerilla games is certainly on its roll after the release of Horizon: Zero Dawn. Paul van Grinsven is a gameplay programmer responsible for the fluent and natural way that Aloy, Horizons heroine, traverses this incredible scenery giving a new meaning to the word “post-apocalyptic”.
Justin Bailey is the CEO of Fig Publishing, Inc, operating Fig.co, the equity-based crowdfunding platform that’s been quickly gaining on Kickstarter in game project financing to surpass the figures achieved by this crowdfunding giant in 2017. The USA-based company is following the European gaming market closely. “Poland has become one of the most exciting places on the global gaming industry map. It will be an exciting opportunity to see it all up close”, says Bailey. He will update the audience on the latest crowdfunding trends and explain the best available options to those looking into community financing of their projects.
On the other end of the gaming business machine – the sales – John Graham, a Humble Bundle Co-Founder, who can weigh in on the state of games industry economics, as well as the importance of having your own distinctive identity as a way of gaining your marketing momentum needed to go from a charity-based one-off event to a fully-fledged multimillion business model.
All four gentlemen, not unlike all the other big industry names attending the event , such as Brenda Romero, Raimi Ismail, and Sam Lake, will stick around after their talks to chat with the attendees, honoring Digital Dragons long running tradition of being a fantastic networking opportunity.
