Game Wave: Call for Speakers

The Game Wave Festival is an international event currently planned to take place from September 24-26, 2021 on-site in Jūrmala, Latvia. The event is created to be a balance between fun, relaxation, education and business.

It incorporates a conference, exposition/showroom of games, technology and art, job market/talent pool, B2B meetings, games pitching, a game jam and an afterparty. The conference will take place in Jūrmala, the largest resort city on the shores of the Baltic Sea, in a 5 star spa & resort hotel, right by the beach.

The conference is currently looking for speakers with industry experience to talk in any of the following tracks: board, mobile and extended reality games. Talks can cover a wide range of topics including business, design, technical, software, hardware etc.. The conference will have a diverse audience from beginners to industry veterans.

Visit the conference website for more information.

And apply here to be a speaker.

Get 20% off PGC Digital #7

Pocket Gamer Connects Digital returns 12-16 July, illuminating the business of making games with over 200 speakers, 1,500 professionals to connect with through a dedicated online platform, a jobs board, game pitching competition, and curated matchmaking events to introduce you to investors, publishers and monetization experts. This summer's theme is Best Of British so expect to discover some amazing UK talent.

IGDA members can get 20% using promo code IGDADIGI20 when registering.

July is WN Eastern Europe Conference Month

From July 1-31, WN Eastern Europe will bring together game developers, publishers, investors, platforms, service providers and other game industry pros from more than 100 countries.

You can catch all the action live streamed in the WN Hub. Lectures will be held online-only format from July 1-3. There will also be a physical event in St. Petersburg from July 9-10, which will also be live streamed (so you can enjoy it from the safety of your home). Experts from Raw Fury, Activision Blizzard, Unity, SEGA, Tilting Point, Ten Square Games, MY.GAMES, Facebook, and many other leading companies will deliver the insights on different aspects of game development.

Online networking and recorded lectures will be available the entire month from July 1-31.

The WN Hub and its meeting system is already open which gives you the opportunity to add your game to the Devs Showcase yourself. Three steps to include your game to the Devs Showcase:

• Register to showcase on the website

• Log in to the platform following the instructions that will be provided immediately after registration

• Add your game from My Profile

This is an opportunity to find partners and investors.

Basic tickets are FREE and provide access to the online lectures.

For more information visit the conference website.

Get 10% off PG.biz Master Classes

The folks at PocketGamer.biz at running five half-day master classes taking place 8-10 June, from recognized industry experts.

Sessions include Building a Game Pitch with Arran Topalian, How To Run An Effective Playtest with Pascal Luban, Mastering Data For Engaging Game Design with Poornima Seetharaman & Vimal Sathish, Cognitive Science and a UX framework to Improve Your Game with Celia Hodent, and Designing for LiveOps Success with Crystin Cox.

For more information and to sign up visit: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/pages/masterclasses/

IGDA Finland members can enter the following code: IDGAPartnerMC10 to get 10% off.

Have a Connection with Type 1 Diabetes? JDRF Wants to Talk

JDRF is the world’s largest nonprofit funder of research toward cures for type 1 diabetes (T1D), one of the deadliest auto-immune diseases on the planet. T1D is a potentially fatal autoimmune disease that affects up to 38M people worldwide. JDRF’s mission is to improve lives today and tomorrow by accelerating life-changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent and treat T1D and its complications.

In 2019, the charity launched JDRF Game2Give to bring together video game developers and players in the fight against T1D. The program was started by two game industry execs, Telltale Games cofounder Dan Connors and recent IGDA Board Chair Hans ten Cate, who are both fathers of children with T1D. Former Kongregate CBO Josh Larson, also a T1D dad, joined as JDRF Game2Give’s director in 2020.

To date, JDRF Game2Give has raised more than $1.1M through Humble Bundles, Twitch charity events, and online game tournaments. The team also built the first-ever charity game in Roblox to take the place of traditional in-person charity walks during COVID-19.

JDRF Game2Give and its growing group of game industry volunteers are actively seeking out IGDA members who care about curing type 1 diabetes, to help raise awareness and money toward crucial research. If you have a T1D connection or simply want to collaborate in support of a good cause, please reach out at gaming [at] jdrf [dot] org.