The entire program was held at the Novi Sad Science and Technology Park, a recently completed, impressive facility for the development of technologies and innovations, which is one of four such spaces in Serbia, along with Niš, Čačak and Belgrade.
During four days, the 30+ Playing Narratives participants had the opportunity to get to know each other, listen to several thematic lectures held by leading gaming experts from Serbia, but also to divide into teams, get to know their strengths and weaknesses, and start working on their joint game concepts.
During the second working day of this specific bootcamp, the participants had the opportunity to hear from one of the veterans of the domestic game development industry – back in 1986, Dragan Jerosimović developed his first narrative video game. Today, he works at 3Lateral (Epic Games), specifically on the MetaHuman Creator project, and he introduced us to the narrative aspects of video games in the first lecture on the second day of our PN bootcamp.
The teams were then “taken over” by Nana Radenković from Nova Iskra, who devoted the rest of the day to practical exercises and the theoretical basis on how to build and maintain a strong team culture, creative collaboration and team identity.
Eight new teams have been formed that will work together until the end of November this year on new game concepts, which they will pitch to an international jury. In order to better equip them for this task, we also organized a lecture on the importance of the producer’s role in the gaming team, held by Milica Todorović from Ubisoft Belgrade studio, who will mentor the participants in terms of production during their project work.
This program is for Playing Narratives participants only, and is not open to the public. Thank you for your understanding.
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Program Playing Narrartives: Ideas to games is supported by the Franco-German Cultural Fund, which was established in 2003 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Elysee Agreement. The general sponsor is Unreal Engine (i.e. companies Epic Games & 3Lateral), while the distinguished sponsor is the French company Ubisoft Belgrade. This year, the Niš-based Webelinx Games also joined the program as a sponsor, while additional support in the realization will be provided by French and Goethe institutes from the entire region, as well as SGA colleagues from Slovenia Games, MAGDA and RGDA.