Game Narrative Summit: Devising Stories as an Ensemble
Monday 20 March
Alison Lührs (Associate Narrative Director, Bungie)
Creating stories for games is a team effort—but what happens when we stop thinking as a team, and start thinking as an ensemble? How can we tell stories across not just dialogue, but art, audio, even design? Even more radically, how can we foster shared ownership as creators?
UX Summit: Accessibility by Design: Finding Our Way on the Path Less Traveled
Monday 20 March
Aderyn Thompson (Ubisoft)
Creating a more immersive and equitable player experiences. Using examples from real life and tech, Aderyn will demonstrate how to mature approaches by avoiding more process, playing catchup, providing “assists,” or making accommodations to players.
Future Realities Summit: Building Better Digital Ethics and Laws: Meatspace meets Metaverse, Monday 20 March
How will the metaverse deal with ethics and laws, and what will it take to make sure there is an equitable, fair, safe, consistent, and workable digital reality?
Game Narrative Summit: AAA-TYPICAL: Character and Story Arcs in Open Gameplay
Tuesday 21 March
Brendan Hennessy & Heli Kennedy (Ubisoft Toronto)
Writing AAA open world games can make you question everything you know about basic storytelling techniques: How do you write a compelling protagonist when you don’t know their identity or backstory? This session will share practical tools and strategies for building compelling characters and story arcs around gameplay constraints.
Implementing a Mental Health and Wellbeing Research Study in Games
Tuesday 21 March – 3pm
James Butlin (Generalist Unity Developer, FuturLab Ltd)
Insight from his experience and describe how other developers could work with research scientists to help further this field of research.
Navigating Gender-Based Discrimination in the Industry Roundtable: You’re Not Alone (Presented by the IGDA)
Dana Ware (Creative Director, The VOID)
Wednesday, March 22
The roundtable will also offer the opportunity to generate ideas on what the industry can do as a whole to create a supportive work environment.
Mentorship Cheat Code: Raising Diverse Talent in the Games Industry
Thursday 23 March
Jim Huntley (USC Games), Jenn Panattoni (Xbox, Microsoft)…
In this panel, a diverse group of industry professionals will share their experiences with mentorship, whether as mentor or mentee, on how it has helped shape their career in the games industry—as well as how mentorship can be an important factor to create a more diverse space.