New Orleans-based developers and gamers Barrett Conrad and Paul Teall decided to take the NOLA Game Developer meetup to the next level, establishing Launch Fest Play, an expo of the video game development happening in and around New Orleans.
Launch Fest Play coincided with the fifth annual Launch Fest, the one-day startup conference and demo day earlier this month.
“Part of the fun of helping grow the NOLA Game Developer group has just been realizing how many talented people we have right in our own backyard,” said Teall. “It’s been really encouraging! With Launch Fest Play, we want to expand on the momentum we’ve built with the Meetup. I know there are even more talented game devs in the area, and we want to bring as many of them together as we can.”
Conrad said that between 60 and 70 people attended for some of the event highlights, including 12 demo companies (full list below), a keynote, panel and pitch competition.
Ken Keys from Gameloft shared some insight from his career during the keynote conversation, according to Conrad. So did the panel about development tools and techniques for working in teams, which introduced the crowd to Vile Media’s Chris Gianelloni, Playable Bread’s Brendan McGuire and Autodesk’s Matt Kelly. Other presentations came from Rosstin Murphy fromCastle Pixel and Jason Tate from Pixel Dash Studios.
The game pitch competition was also a hit. Michael Grey won the game pitch competition with his concept for “Sound Boy,” a hip-hop themed adventure-game based in a futuristic New Orleans.
Exhibiting companies included Borne Games, Castle Pixel, Game Hop Music, GameLoft, Hop and Jaunt, Juggleware, Ludicrous Games, Playable Bread, Pixel Dash Studios, Red Ticket Games, Spirit Drop and Vile Media.
Brad Borne, an independent developer from the group, also just announced the release of his new game on Tuesday. For more information, click here.
To learn more about the meetup and future events, visit meetup.com/NOLA-Game-Developers/.