From November 30 to December 5, the long-awaited Games Gathering 2021 was held.
2800 offline visitors, 600 online participants, 75 sponsors and partners, 120 volunteers, 95 indie teams, 120 speakers — and it’s all on the 10th Games Gathering Conference anniversary.
The online format was no less productive than the live part. Six lecture streams were performed by the stars and game dev veterans, representatives from such companies as Wargaming, Riot Games, Ubisoft, 4A Games, AppsFlyer, Google, AB Games, Voki Games, etc. With Google‘s support, the new online lecture stream was held called “User Acquisition and Analytics”. The virtual sponsors’ booths, the traditional Job Board, Indie Blast projects were available for every participant.
Despite the pandemic, they have managed to collect an impressive number of visitors from different countries. More than 50 stands and locations were presented at the offline event; the total expo area amounted to 8400 m². The magic cosplay created a magical atmosphere at the conference and sponsors constantly entertained the guests with contests and draws with lit prizes.
Moreover, the lecture program surprised everyone this year. Speakers from leading Ukrainian and foreign companies made talks on the main topics: game design, art, production, analytics, business, law/HR, analytics/UA.
Among the speakers were: Jakub Transchik — Head of Business Intelligence & Game Design, SuperScale; Ivan Kovalev — indie developer, G30; Jama Jurabaev — Senior Concept Artist at Lucasfilm and BigMediumSmall co-founder; Konstantin Telpis, Playrix Art Director, Deep Learning Engineer; Oleg Malamuzh — a talented producer and director, creator of the animated film “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, etc.
In Odessa, David Mullich was performing online however at Games Gathering Kiev everyone could see him in person! David gave an informative lecture “Heroes of Might & Magic III: Forging Erathia”, and after there was an autograph session with a line filled with fans of the childhood idol.
You can check the lecture records on the YouTube channel Games Gathering.
The real legendary T-34-85 was brought by Wargaming Kyiv. The tank became the center of the visitor’s attention. In addition, Wargaming Kyiv presented new projects on the Unreal Engine in their zone. The visitors had the opportunity to talk with the team members and get to know how the iconic “tanks” were designed.
AB Games and their team have created a mini-library where they assemble the collection of art books from AB Library. Zagrava managed to make the fairy tale come true! Their booth was an underwater world with colored coral reefs and seashells. Each conference visitor could participate in the interactive experience on the TV show “Squid Game” theme and get some treats. On the second day, Zagrava served “magic” cocktails. Playrix showed their punk spirit and placed the interactive graffiti on their space, where everyone could leave a piece of themselves. Games Gathering’s regular sponsor Huawei has presented technical innovations of their store and shown the AppGallery updates, raffled off many prizes, as well as held an interactive competition with their speaker. MoonActive and Gismart also prepared contests with valuable prizes, such as Apple iPhone 13, Sony PlayStation 5, планшет Wacom Intuos Pro M, Air pods 3.
Indie Blast Awards
This year, 95 teams from different countries took part in the Indie Blast developer competition: Switzerland, Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Poland, China, Brasilia, France, Bulgaria, Latvia, USA, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Denmark, Azerbaijan, Belarus.
The general sponsor of Indie Blast is Unreal Engine. The Best Conference Game and $10,000 from Kefir went to David Elliot, the indie developer with the Epiphany City project.
You can find all prizes and nominations of Indie Blast Awards 2021 here.
Certainly, the parties were held! The most-awaited part of the conference — Preparty and Main Party — have taken place in Kiev.
The next event Games Gathering 2022 Odessa is coming soon on 12-17July!
