OPN DevLounge Monthly - September 2016
Every month, the independent scene releases over a hundred games on Valve's distribution platform, Steam, and every month, the folks at OpNoobs look at each closely, to make a selection of what they believe are the 10 most significant releases.
OPN's DevLounge Monthly brings together industry professionals for a lively conversation on Twitch, to reflect upon the highlighted games of the month and bring insight on their significance for the indie gaming movement as a whole.
The OpNoobs organizers present each title and the studio behind them to a panel of game developers, after which they open the floor to commentaries. The conversation has a free form format, therefore allowing for flexibility in topics approached, whether the focus lies on the game itself, its genre, competitors and predecessors, or the studio, its creators and developers.
THE PANEL
KATE EDWARDS
Executive Director, International Game Developers Association (IGDA)
IGDA Website: http://www.igda.org/
Kate Edwards is the Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), hired in December 2012. She is also the founder and principal consultant of Geogrify, a Seattle-based consultancy for content culturalization, and a unique hybrid of an applied geographer, writer, and corporate strategist, built upon a passion for global cultures and media technologies. Formerly as Microsoft’s first Geopolitical Strategist in the Geopolitical Strategy team she created and managed, Kate was responsible for protecting against political and cultural content risks across all products and locales. In the Microsoft Game Studios, she implemented a “geopolitical quality” review process and was personally responsible for identifying potential issues in all 1st party games between 1995 and 2005. Since leaving Microsoft, she has provided guidance to many companies on a wide range of geopolitical and cultural issues, and she continues to work on a variety of game franchises. Kate is also the founder and former chair of the IGDA’s Localization Special Interest Group, a former board member of IGDA Seattle, the co-organizer of the Game Localization Summit at GDC, and is a regular columnist for MultiLingual Computing magazine. In October 2013, Fortune magazine named her as one of the "10 most powerful women" in the game industry and in December 2014 she was named by GamesIndustry.biz as one of their six People of the Year in the game industry.
ANDY KUTRUFF
CEO, Reentry Games
Reentry Games Website: http://www.reentrygames.com/
Andy Kutruff fell in love with writing code in 1995 and hasn't stopped since. After college, he was lucky enough to join Microsoft and spend a few years doing video processing engine development for the GPU. He moved to New York, and tried his hand as a Wall St. tech architect, picking up a lot of networking and design experience. In 2011, his friends and him fled the corporations to start a game company and revive the Puzzle Fighting genre. Since, his company, Reentry Games, has released Ember Strike, thier first game, on Steam Early Access.
CHRISTOPHER NATSUUME
Creative Director and co-founder of Boomzap Entertainment
Boomzap Entertainment: http://www.boomzap.com/
Producer of the original Far Cry, Chris Natsuume has been actively working as a designer, producer, and director in the game industry since 1992, with credits on almost 50 games. Currently, Chris is the Creative Director of Boomzap Entertainment, a studio that engages 73 people in 14 countries, and one of the pioneers of the virtual studio environment (100% home-based and pants optional).
ZENO ŽOKALJ
Community & PR Manager, Little Green Men Games studio
Little Green Men Games / Starpoint Gemini Website: http://starpointgemini.com/
Zeno Žokalj is Community & PR Manager in Little Green Men Games studio. He is responsible for media relations, community on Steam, GoG and official forums, along with Facebook and Twitter pages. His gaming career started back in 1986. on ZX Spectrum, continued on his favorite Amiga 1200 and then PC. In his free time, Zeno writes game reviews for croatian gaming portal goodgame.hr and plays other games (both AAA and Indie) on his PC, PS3 and PS4. He lives and works in Rijeka, Croatia with his girlfriend. Although he has a degree in information technologies (bacc. ing. techn. inf.) and he's Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), working in gaming industry was his dream for a long time.
OPN TEAM
Frederic Brizzi, OpNoobs President
Shane Gamez, OpNoobs Executive Producer
Chris 'Stylomax' Patricca, OpNoobs Director of Multimedia
James Peterson, OpNoobs Summer Fellow & Chat Moderator
