Iain Lobb,

Managing Creative Director, Dull Dude Ltd. 

Iain Lobb is a Flash games developer and founder of Dull Dude Ltd, a two-person games studio based in Cornwall, UK. A professional Flash developer since 2001, Iain is behind many of Flash's early gaming hits, including Stackopolis, Zwok, Pop Pirates and the pioneering interactive BBC TV show Meta4orce. Iain currently acts as a consultant game developer for many of London's top interactive agencies, as well as developing games as an indie and lecturing on game development at Plymouth University. The Dull Dude team are currently hard at work on upcoming release Super Gun Kids - their most ambitious game to date. You can hear Iain ranting about Flash every few weeks as co-host of The Creative Coding Podcast. 

Super Gun Kids: The Making Of...

A detailed look at the creative and technical decisions behind forthcoming shooter-platformer-RPG Super Gun Kids. Topics include: path-finding in platform games, creating art as a non-artist, collision detection, bones animation and much more!

Tom Vian,

Co-founder, SFB Games

Tom started out making bad Flash animations in Flash 4, but quickly moved on to OK Flash games with the advent of Flash 5. This can be partially excused due to being 15 at the time. After a short break to go to university, he started making games full time with his artist brother Adam. Then part time while holding down a 'real' game development job, and now full time again, in amongst freelance work. For the last year and a half, he has been working tirelessly on a detective mystery game for tablets and phones. Recently, Tom and Adam founded SFB Games, and are starting to look beyond the browser and mobile. When not tinkering with game mechanics or endlessly browsing Reddit, Tom can be found learning Japanese, playing thoughtful and interesting games under the guise of 'research', and wishing for more hours in the day to work on his upcoming game. 

Screenplay

Write once, run everywhere' is a great concept. One codebase and one set of art and audio assets, and your game will work on any device! However, building a multi-screen game in Flash can be slightly trickier: your code will run differently, your graphics will render differently, features aren’t always supported, and there are more screen sizes and resolutions than you can shake a stick at. This session will cover how to get your game running smoothly on some of the most popular devices and how to get it looking great, no matter the screen. 

Rob Donkin

Director, Bad Viking Ltd

John Donkin

Video Game Artist

Rob:

I've been making games for about four years now and feel very lucky to be able to make a living from something that I love doing. In that time I've made around 30 games, many of which have been collaborations with the artist RobotJAM (perhaps most notably Hambo which has recently been turned into a mobile app by Miniclip). More recently though I have been working with my brother, John. Together we've started developing multiplayer games and have had success with an artillery game called Bad Eggs Online. 

John:

I’m a flash game developer and a graphic designer. I like to draw stuff and make things look nice. I got involved in flash games after my brother, Rob, had been making them for a couple of years and suggested I join him. Arty, fun, be my own boss… Done. We've made five games together so far and are currently working a new multiplayer game.

Bad Eggs Online: Our Eperiences with Multiplayer & Microtransactions

A post mortem of our multiplayer game Bad Eggs Online and how it hasbecome the most successful game we've made so far. 

James Pearmain

Freelance Video Game Artist

Over the last 5 years I've had the opportunity to collaborate with some of the best developers in the industry, and worked on a number of successful games including Sushi Cat, Elephant Quest, Zomgies and Achievement Unlocked 3 to name a few.  

Game Aesthetics & Branding

Visual feedback acts as the main connection between game and player, so the right aesthetic can really help maximise your games appeal. A look at some branding strategies and methods to improve reception of your game through visuals.

Stuart Allen

Indie Game Developer, FunkyPear

Stuart Allen (AKA FunkyPear) is best known for his Gravitee series of games. He has a love of Physics and Game Design and is currently working on a multiplayer version of Gravitee Wars. Stu has been using Flash for well over a decade, first as a web developer then later on as a games developer. 

Simple Verlet Physics for Games

The logic behind a simple Verlet physics system and demonstrate some fun and interesting ways we could use it in our games. 

Tom Krcha

Gaming Evangelist,

Adobe Systems

Tom Krcha is a Gaming Evangelist at Adobe and speaks regularly at conferences in USA, Europe and Asia. He started with Flash and programming more than 12 years ago and worked for interactive studios, streaming companies, telco providers and recently he is focusing on game development. 

Adobe Gaming Solutions

9 out of top 10 games on Facebook are in Flash. Understand why companies like Rovio or Zynga and others choose Flash for their social games. Get inspired by visionary demos of the next generation GPU powered Flash games using Stage3D rendering and see where the web gaming is heading. Learn how to target iOS and Android with your Flash apps using Adobe AIR. See the upcoming CPU/GPU/Memory profiling tool for Flash codenamed Monocle in action.

Rob Davis.

Founder and Director,

Playniac

Rob Davis is founder of Playniac, a London games studio working with clients as well as making their own IP. He has been game designer for many productions, and programmer for quite a few. Playniac are making a new indie title, which has won funding form the Abertay Prototype Fund, and have just launched International Racing Squirrels with Channel 4 and Journey to Fossil Island with British Gas. They've also made games for BBC, CBBC, BBC Bitesize, UKTV, Nickelodeon and Dreamworks. Rob has written about games for The Guardian, Develop magazine and TIGA; and spoken at numerous games industry conferences. His mass participation "game about game design" Cat On Yer Head has been performed internationally, covered by the BBC, included in the Edinburgh Fringe and used to teach about game design in UK and Dutch classrooms. He's produced game-like digital art installations that have been shown internationally and has had game design in his blood since he was a 14, when his first game was published. Rob can be found on Twitter as @playniac

 Beat the Post-Launch Blues: Your Game is Out, What Now?

With a game launched it might be tempting to lie on a beach, but a lot of the work has just started. It's time to seed it and promote it; tweet it and talk it; distribute it as far and wide as it can go; see what your players are doing and improve their experience; take it to new platforms; add new content; and weigh up options from in-game ads to publishing deals. Using International Racing Squirrels (Channel 4) and Journey to Fossil Island (British Gas) as case studies, Rob talks about how Playniac grew their users; worked with the game's community; designed for beneficial piracy; used analytics to improve design; reversioned for iOS and Android; and added light-touch freemium mechanics.