AdventureX 2018 Talks - Part 1

Hey everyone,

For the next few weeks we get to be super lazy and get an easy ride for our weekly blog! Not to worry we still have something very cool to share. We thought we’d take the chance to highlight some of the great talks that happened at this year’s AdventureX.

We didn’t get the chance to see many on the weekend itself as we were busy demoing, but we’ve been playing catch-up and there are some corkers so we thought it’s be nice to share some over the next few weeks.

We’ve also tagged the Twitter handles of the speakers in the talk description in case you want to follow them and of course you can follow AdventureX itself here! For those that don’t yet know, AdventureX is the only convention dedicated to narrative-driven games. AdventureX 2018 was run in partnership with the British Library as part of International Games Week.

Enjoy!

AdvX 2018 - Chella Ramanan - Black Panther, Afrofuturism and Writing Meaningful Black Characters

The release of Black Panther brought Afrofuturism to a mainstream audience, making this the perfect time to examine it in the context of games. Afrofuturism centres black people when considering a high-tech future. This is counter to mainstream fiction, which erases black people from the past, present and the future. Writer Chella Ramanan looks at Afrofuturism and how it can help games tell more inclusive stories.

AdvX 2018 - Dave Gilbert - No Idea What I'm Doing

Dave Gilbert (Wadjet Eye Games) opens the conference with a postmortem of his latest indie hit. Unavowed is “unambiguously, Gilbert’s best game” (AV Club), “unquestionably one of the most impressive point and click adventures made in many, many years” (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) and unsurprisingly, our first choice to begin AdventureX 2018.

AdvX 2018 - Konstantinos Dimopoulos - Narratives in Urbanism

Konstantinos Dimopoulos, Game Urbanist & Designer (The Sinking City), uncovers how a well crafted and thoroughly researched game city can convey history, be a crucial aspect of world building, solve narrative problems, inspire plot-threads, influence game and level design, shape characters, reshape mechanics, and allow for environmental storytelling on the grand scale. Konstantinos is the author of Virtual Cities.

AdvX 2018 - Helen Carmichael - Interweaving Story and Mechanics in Shadowhand

Using mechanics that don’t fit the world and story can frustrate players, or break their immersion. Mechanics and story must work in harmony. In this design session, Helen Carmichael (Grey Alien Games) shares how story fed into game mechanics in RPG card game Shadowhand, and how mechanics also sometimes inspired a better story.

AdvX 2018 - Vivek Gohil - The Answer to Zombie Fatigue

Freelance Journalist & Disability Advocate Vivek Gohil uses the Walking Dead and transhumanism to explore the untapped potential of disability narratives for creating innovative storytelling opportunities. How can disability narratives end zombie fatigue?

AdvX 2018 - Haley Uyrus - Understanding Your Sales Funnel

As an indie dev, marketing can feel like a mysterious and insurmountable task. If you don’t have a marketer on staff, it’s easy to miss some important areas in your marketing plan. Haley Uyrus, Marketing Manager (Failbetter Games), demystifies marketing for indie devs by explaining the path players go on from hearing about a game, to deciding to buy that game.

That’s it for this week, we’ll be back next week to highlight some more,

Have a good one,

Team Röki