IMGD Celebrity Speaker Series

The developers at Demiurge Studios talked about how to integrate gameplay and mechanic technologies with the characters and story of a game. They also emphasized the importance of involving individual developers who are innovative and bring a fresh perspective within their discipline or the game industry as a whole.

Monty Sharma hosted an advice session where student development teams could ask him questions about what to do once they have created a game and how to market it. After presenting their pitch, each team received critique and advice on how to better explain their work with the correct industry language. He also worked with them to find their project’s hook in order to show how their project differs from similar projects as their selling point. 

Ben Schneider spoke about how stories play an integral role within interactive media and gameplay, and how it can be difficult for these to work together. Game writing is not the same as writing for traditional media, so Schneider focused his explanation on how game development breaks conventional approaches. Writers have to be able to adapt to new media forms in order to best convey their stories and messages by looking at the design theory and constraints used in the project.

Ruberg presented their research and first book, which discussed how queer people have always been members of the gaming community. Though a dominant portion of the community have made it a hostile environment to queer individuals, that did not stop them from becoming developers, storytellers, and players. Having Queer characters, stories, and developers in the industry are not just a new era for gaming, it has been a part of the industry for almost 50 years through interpretation, how they are played, and designed.