PAX East is a gigantic consumer facing video game conference that descends on Boston, MA each spring. Pax East attendance is estimated to be greater than 100k over the traditionally 3 day event; this year Pax East organizers threw in a 4th day to expand their offerings to the exuberant gaming communities. Vermont Digital Arts wasn’t going to pass up on the opportunity to attend such a monumental gaming event, yet we opted out of demoing Waggle Words in a traditional expo booth for four days (right after spending a week at GDC). We accessed a great alternative for demoing at the conference: MassDiGI’s Made In MA at PAX East 2018 Party!
Elliott Mitchell (Co-Founder of Vermont Digital Arts) traveled to Boston’s District Hall for the Made In MA Party to demo Waggle Words on iOS and to demo an alpha build of Waggle Words VR in development for Valve’s Steam PC platform. Waggle Words VR leverages the HTC Vive Virtual Reality system (HMD, controllers and lighthouses) to deliver an immersive and extremely comfortable VR experience. Waggle Words VR also currently supports the Oculus HMD and Touch controllers in Steam as well.
Elliott Mitchell [Co-Founder, Vermont Digital Arts] demoing Waggle Words, – Photo courtesy of Luke Hollis
Elliott Mitchell [Co-Founder, Vermont Digital Arts] demoing Waggle Words, – Photo courtesy of Luke Hollis
After a great night at the Made in MA Party, Elliott put on his Boston Unity Group (BUG) organizer hat and spoke with other Boston game dev community leaders on a panel entitled, “We Created Game Dev Communities – And You Can Too!” The panel discussed the different focuses that game dev events can have, how to find external support, the ins-and-outs of creating a welcoming environment, and much more.
Adri Mills [Organizer, WIG Boston],Craig Herndon [CEO, BostonVR],Oleg Brodskiy [COO, BostonFIG], Caroline Murphy [CEO/Founder, BostonFIG], Seth Alter [Organizer, Boston Indies] & Elliott Mitchell [Co-Founder, Boston Unity Group], – Photo courtesy of Rydia Vielehr.
If you are looking for smaller events within the 100k people of PAX East, attending talks and finding concurrent events like the Made in Ma Party are great ways to connect and network with your community.
The panel, comprised of key organizers from the Boston and Austin communities, offers the audience valuable insights into organizing events, meet-ups and co-working collectives which in turn fuel local industry growth for the future. Speakers include Elliott Mitchell (Vermont Digital Arts), Adri Mills (Independent), Dawn Rivers (Harmonix Music Systems), Michael Carriere (Zapdot), Jono Forbes (Defective Studios) & Andrew Eiche (Owlchemy Labs).
Unite 2015, the annual Unity game developer conference, is scheduled to be held in Boston, MA, September 21st – 23rd! Isn’t that exciting?!?
I’m Elliott Mitchell, co-founder of Vermont Digital Arts and the Boston Unity Group. I am honored to announce that I will be presenting at Unite for the fourth consecutive year! My session, Unity Maximus: Art Optimizations for Maximum Performance in Unity 5, was announced on a list of talks published on Unity’s blog yesterday. This talk will be geared towards helping artists and designers who are beginners with Unity 5 art optimizations.
Unity Maximus: Art Optimizations for Maximum Performance in Unity 5, is scheduled for Tuesday, September 22nd, 5:00-5:30, Ballroom A.
Many platforms, like VR and mobile, place high demands on developers to meet acceptable frame rates or else risk failure. Often, the art assets in a Unity project look fantastic but no matter how optimized the code base is, the build just doesn’t meet the desired frame rate. Unoptimized art assets, including some art which may be purchased on the Asset Store, can seriously hinder performance on demanding platforms. In this session, we will highlight some red flags to look out for in a variety of art asset types and identify key optimizations that can be implemented into your art pipeline to significantly increase performance on demanding platforms. Art asset types covered will include:
3D Models, Animations and Rigs
2D Textures and Sprites
Materials and Shaders
I’ll likely cover a few more topics like lightmapping & post process effects.
I hope to see you at Unite 2015 Boston!
Best,
-Elliott
EDIT 9/18: Changed the time and location to Tuesday, September 22nd, 5:00-5:30, Ballroom A.
Vermont Digital Arts will be represented at PAX East 2014. As you may or may not be aware of, VTDA is a member of the Indie Game Collective in Cambridge, MA. To learn what VTDA and the rest of the collective are speaking about, games they are showing off and booth information, check out this handy IGC PAX East Schedule.
We are often asked “What game developer meetups do you regularly attend?”. Unfortunately for us in Southern Vermont, most of the “local” meetups are in the Boston, MA area with the exception of a couple non-game specific events in Western MA. Fortunately for Vermont Digital Arts, we also work in Cambridge, MA at the Indie Game Collective and thus attend a lot of game development events out there.
Our personal top 5 Boston area game developer meetups are (in alphabetical order):
Please let us know if you have any favorite game developer meetups in the Boston area that we may have missed. I’d be great to have a giant comprehensive list to share online perhaps as a wiki.
We hope there will be more going on in the Vermont / Western MA area to populate a list half this long in a few years! VERMONT / Western MA -> Let’s make it happen!
