8 essential lessons for every game developer

We have recorded short episodes with industry experts and nobody who has any interest in game development should miss them! Here’s a digest of the most interesting advice:

This warning from Dušan and Sanja Čežek, who are behind the award-winning pixel-art game The Ministry of Broadcast, tells how important it is, as their company’s slogan says, to do what we want. In gaming, it’s especially easy to let money divert us from our path.

In their lesson, they reveal that they didn’t always know what they were doing, but that they tried to combine their previous experiences, especially those from the field of advertising. Find out what life of an indie developer looks like before and after their first game:

Dušan i Sanja Čežek, founders, Fuchs+Dachs

As a representative of the Serbia Innovates project (within which SGA and its partners implement the Creative Tech Serbia supercluster), Lazar Lekić talks about how gaming has a great hybridization potential because it is based on technologies that come from other industries, but also how technologies originating from gaming have great application in various fields.

If you are interested in hearing about the ICT Hub, the Serbia Innovates project, but also about gaming and education in general, listen to Lazar’s lesson here:

Lazar Lekić, Supercluster Manager, Serbia Innovates

Krzysztof Pachulski from Epic Games talks about the incredible potential of using Unreal Engine, which often surprises even its creators. He says that the tools that are part of the Unreal Engine aren’t built for the highest quality but for the highest fidelity and yet, you can still get very stylized environments. It is up to us, therefore, to play and discover new possibilities.

More on Unreal as a space that brings all the tools into one space, as well as Epic Games’ mission to bring cool things to the world in Krzysztof’s lesson:

Krzystof Pachulski: Evangelist, Epic Games

We add to the previous talk about developer responsibility a lesson about user privacy in gaming because, as Mateusz Bochenczak says, the industry are user-data junkies and a lot of work is needed to establish user privacy. The first step is to make players more familiar with why we use their (not private!) data and what they get out of it.

Mateusz also touched on the changes to the Apple Store that made developers’ lives more complicated, so if you’re interested in how to get involved in the David and Goliath fight, find out below:

Mateus Bohencak, Senior Accounts Executive, AppsFlyer

Based on the Finnish model of good practice, in which gaming and the government work closely together, Olli Sinerma reveals the secret to the success of Finnish education. He says that the background of everything, including gaming, lies in the entire education system. Finland is a trust-based society, where it is believed that the student will do their best because they are responsible for themself, and if they fall behind, they will get the help they need to catch up with others.

The interesting story of the Finnish gaming industry, as well as how the weather is directly responsible for its success, are topics that Olli touches on in his lesson.

Oli Sinerma, Senior Advisor, Business Finland

This and the next lessons are the most practical ones because they are about marketing. Nusha Gantar from the studio that created the famous My Talking Tom talks about the great happiness and misfortune that come when your game succeeds. First you struggle in production to meet all the deadlines and put the game out to the world, and when you finally do, you feel a great sense of relief but also stress because things are no longer in your hands and you have no idea how the game is going to perform.

It is best to learn from examples of good practice, so hear more about the games My Talking Tom and My Talking Angela, as well as the animated series here:

Nuša Gantar, Senior Marketing Director, Outfit7

We believe that Two Desperados’ head of marketing, Lana Čubric, is already familiar to you because she often shares her expertise with the SGA community. Therefore, it is not surprising that after the quoted sentence she adds that you do not need to have the best marketing team in the world because you can turn to people from the industry: in our region, knowledge is shared selflessly.

How Two Desperados found a niche for an underutilized but beloved concept and led to the reinvention of a genre, about User Aqusition and the company’s future plans, find out in another great lesson:

Lana Čubrić, Head of Marketing, Two Desperados

Hendrik Lesser, a video game advocate (as he calls himself), works for the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF) and almost everything he says seems worth quoting. Although he majored in philosophy and political science, he believes that strategic video games have helped him more in decision-making and are responsible for him running a multinational company. He says video games are something to be reckoned with, which is why developers have a growing responsibility to do “the right things”.

Check out how Hendrik wanted to make a game that would win the Nobel Peace Prize, and more about the positive aspects of gaming and the benefits of the European gaming scene:

Hendrik Leser, predsednik upravnog odgora, EGDF