Recap of Winter4ever: A Gamedev Gathering 2022~
Last winter, a member of the Rad Magpie community and dear friend of ours, Amila Nuhodžić, approached us with an idea for an event. Amila, like the whole RM team, was feeling isolated in the depths of COVID winter and wanted to host an event that would bring together the gamedev community and reignite our creative fires. We jumped at the opportunity, and it went so well that we wanted to host it again this year!
This conference is traditionally hosted online in the middle of March, the longest stretch of winter for those based in Vermont and Montreal like Amila and our team. The event consists of a keynote speaker, a panel, various micro-talks, and portfolio reviews. Our goals with the event are to support marginalized voices, share knowledge, and bring visibility to the game dev community around Vermont and beyond in order to inspire and empower game developers.
All of the presentations recorded are captioned thanks to the generous financial support of event attendees — check them out below or over on our YouTube channel.
Keynote: Surviving Unsustainability
🌟 Ryan Huggins 🌟 | He/They
🌟 Isobel Shasha 🌟 @toxicaliengf | They/Them
Ryan and Isobel postmortem Sundae Month's dog photography game. The story of Pupperazzi is also the story of big changes at a small studio, lucky breaks, and decisions both brilliant and otherwise.
Panel: Quality Assurance
The Unsung Heroes of the Game Industry
🌟 Laurent Andrew-Ruest 🌟 @kingmasturbin | He/Him
🌟 Raquel Maestre 🌟 | She/Her
🌟 Lenny Gingello 🌟 @LennyGingello | He/Him
A Q&A Panel on quality assurance (QA) in game development that covers topics like what the QA professional’s day-to-day work process is like, how the QA process changes over the lifetime of a project, common misconceptions about QA, the stresses or pressures QA professionals face, and what we can do as an industry to better support these unsung heroes.
Microtalk: Don’t Listen to Business Indies!
(They will betray you!)
🌟Eric Merz 🌟 @ErnstMOKKA | They/Them
Most of the advice on selling and marketing independent videogames you find doesn’t really take into account the material differences that various commercial game developers are operating under.
This talk will show where and how the majority of business advice for commercial game developers falls short in that regard, and how developers themselves can potentially find ways to differentiate between useful and useless information.
Microtalk: Bitwise Autotiling for Games
🌟 Eleanor Jaques Morel 🌟 @eleanorjmorel | She/Her
Eleanor explains the difference between tiles and autotiles and discusses Wang tiles, Blob tiles and Eleanor tiles!
Microtalk: “Thank You for Being My Son”
What parenting my neurodiverse son taught me about making games
🌟 Lexi Whitman 🌟 @aliceelite | She/Her
A single mom for most of her child’s life, Lexi has learned a lot about parenting, people, and herself. She fully believes that this part of her identity has made her a better person and a better producer. In this talk, she will examine how parenting a very small human taught her how to collaborate with, and organize, many larger humans.
Microtalk: The Life of a Generalist in a Specialist World
🌟 Quinn Viau 🌟 @penawn | pronouns
As the industry ages, there is more and more of a push toward hyper-specialization in the art fields, but I believe at its heart that games need generalists. It can be hard though, to feel like you are making progress at all when your supposed career path just doesn't feel right. Just a little bit of perspective from someone 11 years in the industry who has never specialized. :)
Microtalk: Forming the First Certified Union in Games
🌟 Carolyn Jong 🌟 @ckjong | pronouns
Carolyn talks about her experience forming the first certified union for digital game workers with her coworkers at Vodeo Games, why it was especially important for her as a marginalized worker in games, and some quick tips on how folks can start organizing their own workplaces.
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This blog was written by Megan McAvoy & Amila Nuhodzic