The modern game dev market is a dynamic environment that is constantly changing and updating. In recent years, the gaming industry has become a billion-dollar industry with a large number of players.
Gaming has long gone beyond mere entertainment. Games have become a popular sport with major tournaments and championships. Streaming gaming on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube has become an important tool for advertising, entertainment, and communication.
Game development is the process of developing a game for a specific gaming platform. It can be a game for PC, for consoles, for mobile, for VR helmets, for smartwatches, etc. Game development is the domain of universal experts: those who work in game development usually understand what their colleagues do. And ideally, they have two professions.
The students of the educational program “Esports and Computer Game Development” had the opportunity to plunge into the modern world of game development.
After completing the first year of the educational program, students and teachers had the opportunity to take part in the Game Gathering 2023 conference held in a hybrid format in Kyiv.
Game Gathering 2023 is an international gaming conference, an opportunity to raise your professional level and meet new business partners – publishers, investors, and service providers. These are lectures where experienced developers share their experience. These are free stands for independent developers, an opportunity to demonstrate their product by participating in the INDIE BLAST indie showcase and applying for the Indie Blast Awards game project competition.
Games Gathering is the largest B2B conference for game developers and the creation of high-quality game content in Ukraine. It has been held annually since 2015.
In 2023, the event brought together more than a thousand participants and more than 55 speakers from leading Ukrainian and foreign IT companies involved in the development and promotion of games.
Games Gathering 2023 included a number of discussion panels. In particular, at the discussion BizDev in Time of War, owners, founders and CEOs of Ukrainian game development companies spoke about the specifics of business operations in the context of the war in Ukraine, the impact of Russian aggression on business, the search for partners, and work on new products.
The discussion panel “What are the problems with finding a job as a game designer” focused on the key aspects of getting a job as a game designer and the main problems on this path. You can watch the panel discussion at the link “What are the problems with finding a job as a game designer”.
The discussion “So what?
A Survival Guide for Video Game Developers in Wartime” concerned the main steps of the crisis response of various game development companies to the challenges of a full-scale war.Founders and solo developers of game projects discussed the problems and impact of Russian aggression on the Ukrainian game industry, shared their own experience of survival and work on projects in wartime, and revealed their expectations for the future of the industry.
According to the organizers of Games Gathering 2023, the conference materials will be posted on the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@GamesGathering On this channel, you can view the conference materials of previous years.
The history of Games Gathering development and the importance of this event for the gaming industry in Ukraine can be found at the link History of Games Gathering
The Department of Economic Cybernetics is sincerely grateful to the CEO & Founder of Games Gathering Oleksandr Khrutskyi for the opportunity to join the professional environment of the game dev!