Since I embarked on this pursuit of making audio tailored to complement and enhance multimedia projects, Game Dev Camp 2018 in Lisbon was my first contact with the Portuguese game development community. Game Dev Camp is a conference catering to programmers, artists, musicians, game designers, publishers, investors, students, and anyone interested in making games or being a part of the game making process. It was a pleasure to be present in the many and varied talks held by international industry veterans as well as talks from small indie studios, during the two days of the event.
Game Dev Camp 2018 was an such a great experience that I had to come back for another year.

This time there was another great round of speakers, these speakers are or once were representing companies such as Funcom, Doppio, Blizzard, Ubisoft and others, and as such they are a great source of information, inspiration, and experience sharing. Portuguese speakers were also present, in fact one of the goals of the event managers was to have a higher ratio of Portuguese speakers than those from other countries. This deliberate choice also guaranteed that attendees took valuable experience and insight shared by speakers that are closer to our realities and the challenges we face while being a part of the game development industry in our country.

What’s also great at this event are the attendees, just a bunch of friendly people eager to meet others and share their passion for video games and their projects, which is really awesome to see. Although the Portugal game development community is still small and our studios are yet to ship the “killer app”, the one who could put Portugal in the spotlight and inspire the creation of new companies, or to make big international ones consider basing their studios here, great strides are being made, some studios are already here, working on their own projects or working for other major studios, and awareness is being raised by events such as this one and other community projects, awareness to our talented and passionate developers, creatives, and to our beautiful country.

To summarise, I’m proud to be a part of such a thriving community and while it continues to grow we will all continue to create to the best of our abilities. Already looking forward to the next Game Dev Camp. I hope to meet you there!

On stage: Greg Buchanan, Writing text for Narrative Games: Interactive Fiction and Beyond