GCAP 2022: Ambition

Join a team of Talent Acquisition and Hiring Managers as they delve into the importance of candidate care, techniques for handling rejection, making a strong company value proposition, accessing senior talent and hiring outside of the game sector.

Many of us wear visible signifiers of our identities; we can't hide the culture on our skin, the genders we present, or the queerness of our bodies. As game devs, the unique experiences and perspectives we offer because of this may be specifically sought out to inform a project, help a character feel authentic, or make a world come alive in a wonderful way.

However, we are more than those identifiers, and more than the neat boxes into which we might neatly fit. Our identities and unique experiences are simply one of our arrows, not the whole quiver. There is a lot more to the creativity of game devs, especially those considered "diverse", than those signifiers might indicate.

In this Fireside Chat, three creatives explore their experiences in the game industry - Samra-Jade Sendek (narrative designer and writer; Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows, Lord of the Rings), Meena Shamaly (composer and session musician; Innchanted, Old World), and Starling Tan (composer and session musician; Loch Mess, Sinister Creative). These game devs dive into their complex relationships with who they are, how their identities inform their work, and those surprising things they beyond what you might see.

Listen and discuss with Gamelofters Catherine Booth, Bradley Hennessey, and Cass McDonnell; as they share their knowledge and understandings in the industry as neurodivergent game devs. Combining this with some takeaway culture and workflow tips, we hope to further conversations around building inclusive, accessible and productive game studios with neurodiversity in mind. This panellist will share their experience with Gameloft Brisbane's Studio Manager Dylan Miklashek.

Whether you have a daunting design decision to make, an organisational problem to solve, or your team just isn't singing from the same hymn sheet - finding the right way to have the right conversations with your team can feel overwhelming, and the idea of a "workshop" sounds like time you don't have.

Workshops can be powerful tools for harmonious and effective game development - but they can also be messy, "forced fun" rabbit holes. Getting the intention, design and execution just right is an art.

This talk will draw upon years of experience in creating workshops for development teams, stakeholders and external partners to suggest a system of modules for designing and facilitating the right session for your game team's needs. Covering design principles, tools and technology and facilitation techniques, this talk is all about helping you design the conversations your team needs.

There is a global battle for the best talent, and an evolution of what it means for people to be the best talent. This session will explore lessons learned in the transition from in office to remote first during Covid, and what it takes to retain global and local talent when there are more options and opportunities available than ever before.
We’ll also dive into the many challenges of leading a team in a Hybrid world where some are in office, some are overseas, and everyone has many calls for their time and attention.

Game Workers Australia (GWA) is a dedicated group that has been established in Professionals Australia, the union for Australian information technology and software development workers. The establishment of GWA is a vital first step in building a better industry – one which delivers higher wages, better working conditions and greater job security for game workers. In this session, you will hear why workers are organising both here in Australia and internationally, how GWA grew from a volunteer group into a union and how GWA will help to create a stronger, more inclusive and sustainable industry.

There is an irony that building a career in the game industry is much like starting the grand quest storyline of many games. There is often little guidance, the end goal is nebulous and it is hard to tell who might aid and who might prey on you. But like many games, success is often less about the tools you have stuffed in your pack and more about the knowledge and skills to get the best of those tools.

Ambition is a tool, wield it poorly and it is likely to cause more harm than good. There are far more aspects to growing and maintaining a successful career than simply getting a job. Recognizing and optimising potential opportunities is far more valuable to your future than an endless supply of plugins, instruments and toys which can distract us from what we should be focussing on.

This session will explore, explain and encourage attendees to use their ambition to focus their careers on longevity rather than getting lost on the side quests. This session will focus on building a career in game audio, but much of the advice will be applicable across all disciplines.

Decision making is hard, even though it’s something we experience every day. Often criticised, and rarely understood, a strong idea, when told poorly will struggle to gain traction. This talk dives into building strong justification for your ideas, using data to back up your assumptions, and building an overall narrative around your decisions. Mastering the Why will allow you to build strong visions for your games, and even greater buy in from your teams.

Making games is hard. Making a career in games is harder. This talk proposes an alternative approach: not making a career in games at all. If games are art, then it stands to reason that game developers are artists, and most artists support their art through other means. Why do we think games would be any different? Drawing from extensive research with Australian developers, as well as his own experience developing and releasing Brendan Keogh's Putting Challenge, Brendan Keogh argues that rush to turn game development into a day job can sometimes hinder, rather than enhance your ambition. He will outline the arguments for and against keeping game development as your side gig, and outline the benefits and challenges of doing so.

Growth is a difficult tightrope. Working out what your team should look like WHILE you’re growing? Virtually impossible.

How do you decide when to hire? What to hire for? How to hire? What should you prioritise?

Most importantly, how do you support all of your people, current and new, as you expand?

In this talk, we will discuss the question: Are we designing our teams as carefully as we’re designing our games?

You will leave this talk with a renewed understanding of how business strategy, game development and hiring intersect and how to balance risk, effort, and results.

Studio Drydock is a 3 year old studio that has developed and shipped their first game: Wylde Flowers for Nintendo Switch, Steam and Apple Arcade. The game was developed by a fully remote, international, asynchronous team of 25, including people working from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA and Costa Rica.

As the beginning of this work predates the rise of COVID, we needed to develop our own procedures, practices and culture to operate effectively.

This talk will cover some of the advantages and challenges to this structure and outline the solutions that have helped it to be successful.

There are many reasons having a diverse staff can help your studio to be more effective in making great games, but merely bringing a mix of people to the table won't guarantee you'll reap the benefits. If someone isn't comfortable sharing their criticisms, concerns and mistakes, they'll disengage and hold back, you won't get their best, and you run the risk of groupthink.

This talk will introduce the concept of psychological safety as one of the key things that can make the difference between polite conflict-avoidance and an engaging, inclusive, rich environment bursting with passionate creativity. A large body of research tells us how we might create an environment where people are able to take their mask off and bring their whole selves to work, including their experience, ideas and creativity. This talk will teach you how to cultivate this environment for your own studio.

A lot of valuable leadership advice exists. Like power-ups, these tools help as soon as we use them, but they have the biggest strategic impact if we understand the leadership meta-game.
When we boil it down, our ability to lead hinges on our credibility in the eye of the team. Do they trust that we are the right person to chart the course towards our ambitious goals?
In this talk, we dive into a framework to understand and analyse our credibility, find areas where we can improve, and make the best use of our management tools and tactics.