October is approaching fast, and with it comes the third edition of Dev.Play – hard to believe it’s been three years already! Things have been evolving nicely and I must say, better than initially expected; for us in the organization team, I remember the skepticism we faced when we started, from the local community and from potential sponsors. But we believed strongly that Romania – and in a broader perspective, Eastern Europe – has a good story to tell for the industry and a regional conference is possibly the best way to do that. So here we are, following up from an excellent 2017 edition which has effectively put Dev.Play on the game dev events map of Europe.

Last year we had over 400 registered participants, hailing from 15 countries and representing over 100 companies. We had great lectures (you can find a complete play list here, by the way), pitching sessions and a bunch of other features. But the one we’re most proud of and the one that was arguably the most successful part of the event was the Indie Expo Area.

The Indie Expo surprised us through the amount and quality of the games present. We realized the local and regional community is bigger and more mature than we thought. The quality of the games was well appreciated by the international jury and the results followed: “Yaga”, a game developed in Cluj Romania and showcased at Dev.Play, has won the grand prize at the Nordic Game Discovery Contest final, earlier in May this year; “Second Hand: Frankie’s Revenge”, another exhibiting title and winner of Dev.Play 2016 pitching contest, made it all the way to the Nordic Game finals; other games present last year have gone further and won various awards and other international competitions.

What better proof for the potential of our region in game development? And of course, these results also validate Dev.Play’s potential as a launching platform and networking opportunity for our regional industry!

Indie Expo and the Dev.Play Awards are coming back this year, of course. On top of that, through our new partnership with Epic Games, we’ll have a dedicated section for developers using Unreal Engine. I can’t wait to see the results of the Dev.Play Awards and the next successful games which will have been first showcased at our event!

And we have tons more in store!

New for this third edition is the addition of a dedicated art track (something we were missing in past years) which features top speakers such as Chris Evans from Blizzard and Henry LaBounta from Ghost Games. Our business track is back and solid as ever, same for the tech track, featuring presentations by Epic Games and 11bit Studios, among others. And opening the event is none other than Rami Ismail, one of the most well known of today’s industry speakers.

There are many other great things to speak of, but I’ll let explore the website to discover them, and be sure to drop by on our social media – see links at the bottom.

So, we’ll see you in October! Early Bird tickets are still available until September 5th, so make sure to grab one! ? Your presence honors us and we’ll do our best to show you a great time in Bucharest, at our event!

 

Best,

Catalin Butnariu

 

Founder & CEO | Dev.Play

President | Romanian Game Developers Association

 

Dev.Play Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/dev.play.conference