Develop: Brighton Recap
David Pither
Technical Account Manager, Samsung Game Ecosystem
Last month, the Samsung Galaxy GameDev team attended Develop: Brighton – the UK’s biggest developer-focused games industry event. The sun-kissed conference showcased the best local talent, with some fantastic experiences from indies and big publishers alike. I particularly enjoyed nDreams' showcase of their upcoming VR game Phantom: Covert Ops – it looks set to be the biggest kayaking stealth shooter of the year!
Samsung was out in force at the event with two business staff and two technical staff, along with yours truly. We spent most of the time having meetings on the beach in the delightfully bright sunshine. I’m leaving a note to myself that breakfast beachside chats are my new favorite way to spend a work trip!
It was particularly lovely to see ex-colleagues and friends from SEGA, Sony, Jagex, Miniclip, and Sumo Digital while hanging out in the bar. Though I can't go into great detail about what we discussed behind closed doors, believe me when I say the UK has some incredible products coming to mobile over the next couple of years. I am not talking your typical hyper-casual games either – core gaming might be seeing a bit of a shakeup very soon!
Another show highlight was the Develop: Star Awards, which featured industry heavy hitters like Gabe Newell and Sean Murray, and of course, many excellent games.
While we were too busy networking to attend any sessions, there were many interesting topics discussed during the conference. Three of the speakers that caught my eye were:
- In-game Content Generation Using Machine Learning (Raheel Yawar)
- MMObile: Bringing Old School RuneScape to Smartphones (Christopher Knowles)
- Next Gen VR - What Developers Need to Know (Andrew Ayre/Alvaro Barua)
It would be remiss of me not to mention the social side of Develop: Brighton, as it is part of what makes the conference so popular. We managed to get along to the GamesIndustry.biz party on Wednesday night and what a turn out it was. The warm night was filled with energy & laughter, with some excellent new connections made and far too many cheeky lemonades. I can’t tell you how grateful I was to MAG Interactive for providing free bacon rolls the morning after.
If you were there, then thank you for being part of such a great event. If you weren’t, I strongly recommend you come along next time – I may even buy you a beachside breakfast!
