Chandana Ekanayake, Co-Founder, Outerloop Games

Falcon Age, the first title by Outerloop Games about raising a falcon and fighting colonizers, succeeded in getting attention on social media with viral bird gifs. Does that translate into a sustainable business? We’ll explore how it all came about, the importance of long term goals, building a remote studio with work life balance, thinking about marketing as part of game design, and the importance of having something to say.

Eka is a co-Founder, Studio Director and GIF maker at Outerloop Games currently focused on Falcon Age, a game about raising a falcon and fighting colonizers. Outerloop's goal is to tell stories of characters from under represented cultures and spaces.

Erik Johnson, President, Infinite Monkeys Entertainment

Having your game appear on Steam's store page is one of the most valuable marketing opportunities available to indie developers. But the systems governing visibility are complex and the competition for these slots is fierce. Erik explores the ins and outs of the Steam store, discusses the best opportunities for indies, and offers some insight into the platform that so many developers depend on to earn their livelihood.

Erik Johnson is one of the developers of Life Goes On, an award-winning puzzle-platformer available on PC and consoles. He is enthusiastic about data and market analysis. He has a MSc in Computing Science from the University of Alberta, where he studied Graph Theory and Complexity Theory. Topics that unfortunately have little relevance to game development. Erik has also completed 100% of the achievements in TIS-100.

George Depree, Co-Founder, Leviathan Core

An exploration of working with Content Creators, from associated risks to development and execution strategies. The conversation will aim to provide a baseline level of information on metrics, communication, targeting, platform selection, third-party services, and standard practices.

George is the co-founder of Leviathan Core, a professional services group within the video game industry, who specialize in developing and executing Influencer-related strategies for numerous game developers and publishers.

Lottie Bevan, Producer/Co director, The Weather Factory
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Indie studios are fragile and the road is perilous. Diversifying revenue streams is a good way to keep your studio safer, so Weather Factory opened a physical merchandise shop based around its Cultist Simulator IP. In this talk, Lottie will go over Weather Factory’s merch experience, how to set up your own merch store, Weather Factory’s numbers, the hideous pitfalls she’s run into in the Church of Merch’s first 8 months of life, and what else you can do as an indie studio with... merchspertise?

Lottie’s a producer and co-founder of BAFTA-nominated narrative microstudio Weather Factory, best known for Cultist Simulator. She’s one of the youngest female founders in the industry, a current BAFTA Breakthrough Brit and founder of Coven Club, a women in games support network. She produces, bizzes and arts at Weather Factory and previously worked on Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Zubmariner and Sunless Skies as producer at Failbetter Games.

Andy Nguyen, Project Manager, Brace Yourself Games

Andy Nguyen was one of the first pioneers of Discord for game development back in 2015. Due to Discord being new and unknown, various strategies were attempted with different levels of success and failure. Learn from commonly asked questions about how to increase the popularity and discoverability of your game's Discord. Learn how the tools available within Discord can create an extension of your game's engagement with the community.

Andy started his career as a Designer and the Level Designer for Monaco: What's Yours is Mine. For his follow up game, Tooth and Tail, Andy pursued building an active gaming community during the development process via Discord. This unique approach to the application was recognized by Discord and Andy was invited to write a post detailing the process on Discord's official blog. This blog would be used to inspire future developers on how to use Discord for community development in what would become a standard practice for the game industry today.

Derek Lieu, Trailer Maker, Derek Lieu, LLC

How does a trailer campaign grab the biggest possible audience, hold their attention during development, and seal the deal upon release? Derek will show you how to design your campaign to pace the flow of information, and frame the conversation around your game at each phase of development. You’ll learn questions and exercises to help make a trailer campaign designed around the unique needs of your game.

Derek Lieu is a trailer producer who got his start at the prestigious movie trailer house Giaronomo Productions in New York. He later moved to Los Angeles where he worked at Hammer Creative editing trailers for games like Mortal Kombat X and the LEGO games. He now makes trailers for indie video games. Previous works include: Firewatch, Subnautica, Spelunky 2, Ooblets, Dead Cells, Tacoma, and Heaven's Vault. He lives with his black cats Uni and Ebi.

Haley Uyrus, Marketing and Communications Manager, Mediatonic

Whether you're a garage indie or burgeoning mid-sized studio, the 2019 marketing landscape is a crowded space, making visibility even more paramount than before. So what areas of marketing are absolutely necessary? How can you strategically layer these for maximum impact? Discover ways to bolster your overall marketing strategy, as well as ways other studios are overcoming the visibility challenge.

Haley Uyrus is the Marketing and Communications Manager at Mediatonic. Before joining their ranks she worked on over 30 indie games, most recently at Failbetter on titles such as Sunless Skies, Sunless Sea and Fallen London.