On the 28th July 2018, Singapore Games Guild in partnership with IGDA held its very first Industry Day at NUS Enterprise, our ecosystem partner. A total of 122 people attended, from students to industry veterans. Our aims were to encourage students/fresh grads to join the local games industry:
1. Talks - There will be a series of talks in the morning for the students / fresh graduates to attend, where they can get an insight into the current state of the industry & raise any questions they have with our speakers.
2. Portfolio Showcase & Networking– Roughly 12 – 15 games created by students / fresh graduates will be presented in the afternoon.
Here was the itinerary:
10:00 - 10:15 : Opening Speech
10:15 - 10:45 : Game Industry 101
A summary of the current opportunities & communities in the local/regional games industry
10:45 - 11:15 : AAA and Indie: The Story
Speaker: James Barnard (Springloaded)
11:15 - 12:00 : Microtalks - Beyond Traditional Roles
Speakers: Teck Lee Tan (Virtually Live), Aiysha Plemping (Battlebrew Productions), Elicia Lee (Eliphant), Justin Ng (Gattai Games)
In this series of microtalks, speakers will have 7 mins each to share their story about how they landed their current roles in the games industry outside of what they were originally trained for.
12:00 - 13:30 : Break for Lunch (provided)
13:30 - 16:00 : Student portfolio showcase/networking
16:00 : End of event
Opening Speech
Allan Simonsen, President of IGDA Singapore officially announces Singapore Games Guild public appearance as an independently-registered association, while being an official partner with IGDA Singapore. Gwen (myself) takes over to explain what SGG hopes to achieve and what actionables we're executing for the rest of 2018.
Talks
Shawn Toh from Battlebrew and Gwen (myself) from SGG co-present a summary of the games industry in Singapore, possible roles to explore and the state of the community.
Formerly from LucasArts and now having founded an indie studio, Springloaded, James Barnard presented an honest journey on the pros and cons of both his experiences.
In this series of microtalks, speakers each had 7 mins each to share their story about how they landed their current roles in the games industry outside of what they were originally trained for.
Portfolio Showcase
Participants from NUS, Digipen, ITE College Central, Singapore Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic managed to display their games at the portfolio showcase. This gave them an opportunity to pitch their game to industry veterans, as well as expand their future career options - On top of the many indie studios which attended, AAA studios such as Ubisoft and I Got Games also made their way down to check out the portfolio showcase.
This was the first time ITE students were involved in any form of portfolio showcase under community-driven events such as IGDA or SGG.
Overall, the event was productive, with students providing feedback that many of their concerns have been addressed and they feel more at ease joining the industry. We are heartened to hear such feedback as our speakers presented a stellar objective viewpoint on not just the realities of the industry, but also their personal journey of game dev survival.
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