Game Conference: Zurich – Milan

The Ludicious – Zurich Game Festival invited me to be part of the delegation for the Game Conference Zurich – Milan.
That sounded like a great adventure! I gladly accepted the offer.
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Time jump!
When stepping out of the cool, climated train from Zurich to Milan a wave of heat washed over us. What a hot day!
First impression when entering the Expo: O my god this is HUGE! I never would have thought it would be this big.

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We made it to the Swiss Pavillion without melting (but it was close) just in time for the opening presentation.

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After the introduction the GameJam teams presented their works. Last but not least different studios and developers from Switzerland and Italy gave an overview of their projects. I talked about the ZHdK, Niche, Elarooh, Tower Offense and my work for the SGDA.

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After lunch we had a panel discussion about the Swiss & Italien games industry.

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The conference was over at around 15:00 and we had time to explore the Expo afterwards.

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Dominiks top priority: Ice cream!

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Silly David!

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Adventures on the shaky bridge at the Brasilian pavillion *shake*

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And LOTS of other cool attractions / pavillions

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After a very enteraining trainride back to Zurich with Martin and Jan, I got home around 1 am.

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It was a super fun day and I got to meet lots of nice people. Thank you very much for having me!

Fantasy Basel

During the last few months the SGDA (mostly Matthias and me) prepared the indie game exhibition at Fantasy Basel.
I want to thank the Fantasy Basel at this point for providing us with 20 great booth spaces!
On Wednesday evening the setup began. Most of the exhibiting studios were from Zurich, but I’m happy some peps from the Romandie joined us as well. You can find a full list of the exhibiting studios + links to their websites here.
We also welcomed two special guest from Germany who are part of our fellow organisation Indie Arena.
(If you are a game developer from Switzerland and you are not part of the Indie Arena community yet: Go join NOW)

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During all three days of the festival our booth was full of people, trying out all the games :D

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Niche, Tower Offense and Koboldgames were part of the exhibition.
There was a teenage boy who literally never stopped playing Tower Offense. We almost had to drag him away to allow other people to try the game :D

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On Thursday evening Markus Rossé and me had the honor to join the panel discussion with Simon Otto (Lead Animator of How to train your dragon 2).

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And on Friday evening: Game Talks! About 200 people came to listen to the various talks from Swiss game developers :)

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Thanks to my team members who took over my place at the exhibition for a while, I got to wander around at the festival. Here are some impressions :D

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The three days were over in a blink of the eye. We all had a great time and are super happy with the event! We really hope to be back next year.
Also: Thanks to everyone who helped dismanteling! You guys rock :)

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Press coverage about the festival, mentioning our booth:
indiegames.ch
games.ch
telebasel.ch
watson.ch

Let me know if you find more :D

PS: Personal lesson learned for organizing festivals: Don’t forget to gather information about parking slots early xD

A Maze.

After my pitch at Quo Vadis I headed over to A MAZE., happy to have the business part of the journey behind me.
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The festival welcomed me with colorful lights and lots of happy game people. Every few steps I met another familiar face. It was great to see all my friends again!

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The next day (Thursday) I attended the Indie Arena Meetup. I really enjoy this kind of community, were every member can openly say their opinion and suggest things to improve. We need more Swiss people in this community!
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On Friday I got up “early” to attend the talks taking place at “Neue Heimat”.

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In the evening the ZHdK people showed what they had been working on the past two days: Multiplayer Games that could be played with a bar scanner. It was quite a show xD
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The same evening I watched a “Interactive theater performance” by the group Extraleben. It was really great, I can only recommend it :D
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On Saturday I wanted to play ALL the games. Unfortunately, half of them were gone already :(

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Oh look, it’s David Stark showning his game Airships ;)
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After playing comes resting! ZHdK peps chilling together.
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We had the idea to maybe rent one of the festival sheds together next year. A nice space for Swiss Games!

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Also: Some people started game jamming together :D
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After saying goodbye to all the awesome people at A MAZE. I walked trough Berlin for a bit.
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On Sunday morning the ZHdK people met up to journey back to Zurich together, by BUS! I was afraid to get sick (14h trip ahoi!), but it was quite alright. We even stopped in Munich and drank a hell load of beer in a beer garden xD
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A MAZE. and Quo Vadis were both great! I will be back next year :D