Sande Chen earned a Writers Guild nomination for her work on Witcher and leads the IGDA's Game Design special interest group. She leads an amazing panel for CIMFest's keynote session June 12: Flavored by Authenticity: How personal experiences amplify narrative.

The full schedule is (all times Eastern):

June 11

7 pm, June 11: Workshop on Creating Content with Gallium Tools with Gallium Studios COO Timothy Johnson and 3D artist Alex Dudley. Please register for your ticket at the Eventbrite link

June 12

• 11:30 am: The Quest for Social Connection / Kimmiko and Atlanta Gamer Life

• Noon: Irrigating The River of Content: How to make workflows that work / Ryan Kline

• 1 pm: Designing Non-Toxic Communities / Sande Chen, Brad Merritt, Kat De Shields-Moon, Joshua Quinnett, Auverin Morrow, Jared Creasy, Isiah Turner, Judy Tyrer, Tony Jones

• 2 pm: Your Text Editor and You / Clark Chambers

• 3 pm: Flavored by Authenticity: How personal experiences amplify narrative / Sande Chen, Kimberly Unger, Dr. Matthew Farber, Juliana Loh

• 4 pm: Relational Joints: Gameplay / Simon Hoffiz

• 5 pm: The Clutter Mini-Talks: Tales from the Indie-Dev Front Lines / Joe Cassavaugh

• 6 pm: Winning Early Access / Stu Phelps and Jason Hillhouse

Where: www.youtube.com/GeorgiaGameDevs GGDA members can also network and meet with presenters in our Discord server.

How Much: Free!

CIMFest has gotten better every year and even grew when we went virtual in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpcMokBfapQBZtK2GZGEvaRnukVaNheP8

Friday Workshop

Saturday Keynote Panel

Flavored by Authenticity: How personal experiences amplify narrative / Sande Chen, Kimberly Unger, Dr. Matthew Farber, Juliana Loh, 3 pm

Digital storytelling is a currently evolving medium and the push-and-pull nature of player interaction in video games provides an opportunity for the inclusion of personal touchstones in order to more deeply connect with and engage a broad audience. Over the past decade, there has been an increase in the examination of personal narrative elements as methods of engagement in teaching and community building, most notably by contributing a level of accessible authenticity.

Saturday Presentations

The Quest for Social Connection / Kimmiko and Atlanta Gamer Life, 11:30 am

Whether you are quarantining or simply just adjusting to life on the world wide web, stepping into the vast unknown world of information could be scary and sometimes you don't really know where to go, what's real or who to turn to. Whether you are a gamer, indie developer, or parent that just needs to look up how to solve an Algebra 2 problem for your kid; We are here to give you a couple starter tips for navigating the web, some safety tips, and recommendations for platforms that may steer you closer to that social and informational connection that is so needed during these crucial times.

Irrigating The River of Content: How to make workflows that work / Ryan Kline, Noon

Often as programmers on larger teams making games or simulations with lots of content, we are tasked with making tools for our teammates to use in authoring that content. In this talk, we will explore the process of building these tools, the communication that happens around them, and come away with some best practices for building better workflows for everyone.

Designing Non-Toxic Communities / Sande Chen, Brad Merritt, Kat De Shields-Moon, Joshua Quinnett, Auverin Morrow, Jared Creasy, Isiah Turner, Judy Tyrer, Tony Jones, 1 pm

What game design principles can be used to promote friendlier and harassment-free communities? Join us for a discussion on what strategies game designers can use to create safe virtual spaces that are enjoyable for all players. In particular, we focus on game mechanics that encourage community-oriented behaviors, the pros and cons of automated reporting, and how to minimize griefing.

Your Text Editor and You / Clark Chambers, 2 pm

When we talk about Computer Science, we often focus on the theory and application of programming, computers, algorithms, etc. Seldom do we focus on the tools we use to apply this theory: keyboards and text editors. In this talk, I will discuss some of the fundamental problems that arise while editing text and some of the tools we currently have available to solve them.

Relational Joints: Gameplay / Simon Hoffiz, 4 pm

This presentation features a framework to understand how we navigate and inhabit game design.

The Clutter Mini-Talks: Tales from the Indie-Dev Front Lines / Joe Cassavaugh, 5 pm

Puzzles by Joe has been cluttering the game dev landscape with successful games for well over a decade. This talk uses graphs and pictures to Illustrate what sticking with the same, "good enough concept/game-idea" has really accomplished in 11-12 years.

Winning Early Access / Stu Phelps and Jason Hillhouse, 6 pm

The Blue Bomber team stretched Steam Early Access to its limits, and have returned with a veritable plethora of lessons for all game devs. Take a look at Looking for Heals HERE and join us to learn the lessons for which they worked so hard.

How Live Streaming can Push the Industry Forward / The VR Girl 7 pm

VR live streaming, the platforms, the dos and don'ts, from someone who has made it work for her.

See all speaker bios HERE