Last week we teamed up with Amazon to do a GDC (Game Developer Conference) talk in San Francisco. It was great fun and I appreciate the opportunity. The talk was called:
'How Small Impact Games Built "Marauders" on AWS using Amazon GameLift'
Juho Jantunen (a Senior Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services) first did a short introduction to Game Lift and how it can be used and then it was our time to shine. The three of us, Mitch, Cam and myself all had a go at talking. Cam explained Marauders overarching design and its art direction. I spoke about our journey so far; from prototype, through core development to our pre-launch Alpha/Beta/Tech testing. Explaining some of the key issues we encountered and things we learned along the way. Then Mitch wrapped it up by talking about the games launch and the technical side of how we have been using Game Lift.
Overall it was a great experience and we had a bunch of people come up at the end asking questions and who have enjoyed the game, which was nice.
Apart from the talk, over the week we had a bunch of meetings. Some with people we have been working with for a while, like AWS, Denuvo and Heroic Labs Nakama (who are great guys, I would suggest checking them out if you are in need of a backend solution). As well as meeting a bunch of new people for potential partnerships.
Didn’t get a chance to hit up as many of the developer talks as I wanted to but one talk I did really enjoy was by Andrew Shouldice called: ‘TUNIC’: This Was Here the Whole Time. I’m a big fan of emerging complexity in game design. For example, I love how in the game Kingdom you slowly understand more and more and through gameplay and over time you realise that there are secrets or more depth to techniques to be discovered. As Andrew said in his talk, it’s a hard thing to explain in a single word but “Mystery” sort of does the job. The idea everything isn’t laid out in plain sight for you, there are things you must first realise are “things” and then you can search for a solution and then finally you gain an understanding of them. This can leave players wondering what other paths or secrets exist in your game. Making it feel like a bigger fuller experience. He mentioned that this is likely one of the feelings players get from playing ‘Elden Ring’. It was a great talk, If you have access to the recording of it I would give it a watch! I haven’t played his game yet but will pick it up soon and give it a good play through
I randomly met the dev who made Endoparasitic, which was cool, he seemed like an interesting guy. I’d seen one of his blog youtube videos a while ago and thought the game looked cool. His game came out at the same time we launched Marauders so I must have missed its launch. I gave it a download when I got back and played it through. I really like the minimalistic controls (only using the mouse and LMB and RMB for everything) as well as the kind of diegetic feel of reloading weapons etc. It’s a hard game, but I enjoyed it, you should give it a go.
Here is a funny story from the end of the GDC trip. When we were going through airport security in San Francisco on the way back to England. One of the security staff while chatting to Cameron realised that we were the Marauder devs and was super excited to chat and wanted to take a photo with us. Turns out he had just bought the game and been having lots of fun playing with his friends for the last 5 days! Guess the game is starting to get a bit more well known ha
Now I’m back in England and excited to be working full steam ahead again on the next Marauders update, it’s going to be a biggen!