We know the detailed programme of the Digital Dragons 2022 conference

20 kwietnia 2022

The organizers of the international video games industry conference Digital Dragons have announced the event’s full programme; it will take place on May 16 and 17 in the ICE Congress Centre in Kraków. This year’s edition will be graced by the presence of lecturers from the biggest gaming studios, such as CD Projekt RED, Techland, People Can Fly, 11 bit studios, Huuuge Games, Flying Wild Hog. The conference will feature other international brands such as Third Kind Games, Valve, Activision and Infinity Ward.

In cooperation with Reality Games, the organizers opened up a new thematic track devoted to the blockchain.

Blockchain is a new topic entering the games market. It has as much enthusiasts as opponents. We do hope that during DD you will be able to decide yourselves, whether to engage your company’s resources to navigate those waters.

Błażej Grygiel, Digital Dragons Programme Coordinator

In this thematic track you will be able to hear lectures from Chris Hamilton (Genvid Technologies), Maciej Burno (Aptoide) and Zbigniew Woźnowski (Reality Games) who was this track’s initiator.

Blockchain and NFT are the future of gaming. This technology will stay with us and will influence our industry. This is the best opportunity to learn everything you need to know on this subject and prepare for what’s to come. Join us and check out the lectures in the Blockchain games thematic track!

Zbigniew Woźnowski, CEO & co-founder of Reality Games, Blockchain track initiator

Undoubtedly, one of this edition’s biggest attractions will be the opportunity to check out the behind the scenes happenings of some recent, wildly successful games.

It’s a unique event and an incredible edition! Our guests from CD Projekt RED will share their thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077, we’ll see Flying Wild Hog who will talk about their poetic hit, Trek to Yomi. Techland will join us as well to share the secrets of making its incredible Dying Light 2: Stay Human. The Game Design track is rich in speeches from experts and it’s tough to choose the best of them. You’ll just have to come and see all this for yourselves!

Maciej Miąsik, board member at Movie Games, member of the DD 2022 Advisory Board

The full conference programme revealed

See the programme

What to look out for on the first day of the conference?

On the first day Roland Lesterlin of People Can Fly New York will show up for two lectures: Linear narrative versus systematic design approaches and Developer / publisher relationships. One can bet on a strong showing from CD Projekt RED’s Michał Janiszewski, who will talk about Creating diverse dystopian Cyberpunk 2077 Night City. The importance of the art bible in a AAA project.

For everyone who wonders: how to enter the Middle Kingdom’s market and be effective, 11 bit studios’ Damian Jaśkowski is coming in to help. He will share his thoughts and a few tricks in Tips & Tricks to Promoting Your Games in China.

Specialists who are normally working with free to play games will definitely be interested in Mariusz Gąsiewski’s (Google) lecture titled Is there any space left in F2P yet? Future of mobile based on the data and user behaviour. Mariusz is also the curator of the Mobile and F2P thematic track. Everyone who likes big numbers, spreadsheets and business optimization of games can start rubbing them hands togethers and buy tickets to Kraków.

The day will end with a strong showing from Techland with two lectures on Dying Light 2: Challenging the player through level design - Parkour in Dying Light by Bartosz Mikołajczyk and Karol Wróbel and Zombie crowds in Dying Light 2 Tomek Kosek. You cannot miss this one!

Dying Light 2: Stay Human is a game awaited not only by enthusiasts of the open world genre. It’s a real event for our industry, technologically and financially. Our conference is a chance to take a peek behind the curtain of a production selling millions all over the world.

Błażej Grygiel, Digital Dragons Programme Coordinator

Finally: Krzysztof “Dalton” Pachulski of Epic Games will show how to squeeze even more out of Unreal 5: Automating repeatable tasks with custom tools in Unreal Engine 5.

On that day, the results of the Polish Gamers Research 2022 report will also be presented for the first time. The Krakow Technology Park, in cooperation with GRY-OnLine Spółka Akcyjna and Polish Game Observatory, has been conducting research into trends and consumer behaviour in the games industry since 2014.

The first day of the conference will be finished by the Digital Dragons Awards Gala, during which we will learn the names of the owners of the iconic statuettes for last year’s best games. Afterwards, there will be time for networking and celebration in informal circumstances during the After Party.

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The second day of the conference in a nutshell

On the second day, the Art in Games thematic track will open with the lecture 30 years of Game Audio and counting by British musician and games composer David Wise of Sound Studios. Other attractions on this day will involve three separate lectures from Techland, during which the team will share their experiences from development; Work smarter, not harder - systemic approach to open-world audio in DL2: Stay Human by Edyta Mosińska-Duralska, From deadly streets to sunny rooftops - designing environments for Dying Light 2 Stay Human by Katarzyna Zielińska and City Builder - A tool that created Villedor from Łukasz Burdka.

A novelty during the second day will be a remote Q&A session with Alden Kroll (Valve), who works in developer relationships at Steam. It’s worth following Digital Dragons’ social media profiles, the organizers plan to collect questions there before the event.

An important part of the conference will be the Digital Dragons Arena, which will connect young game studios with investors and publishers. The most promising studios from around the world will present their projects and compete for the attention of the attendees, as well as for a chance to further develop their projects. For the chosen indie studios, DD Arena can open the door to the Digital Dragons Acceleration programme, help them release their game or gain resources for further development. The call for submissions ends on April 25, 2022.

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Digital Dragons is a brand recognized all around the world. Thanks to its variety, it regularly gathers the entire gamedev community. Smart lectures, Indie Showcase, Business Zone, DD Arena and the lavish DD Awards Gala are just a couple of the planned surprises. There is a lot of reasons to visit Digital Dragons on May 16-17 at the ICE Congress Centre.

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Partners

Third Kind Games is the Main Sponsor of the event: an independent studio with over 60 employees based in Leamington Spa, United Kingdom, founded on AAA experience by senior developers from Activision (FreeStyleGames) in 2016. Third Kind Games has also recently expanded into Poland, launching a new studio in early 2022. Third Kind Games has experience working with some of the largest companies in the games industry, developing critically acclaimed games and franchises for the likes of Activision, Sony, Nintendo, Codemasters, Crytek and, most recently, Mythical Games. Third Kind Games is the lead developer of Blankos Block Party by Mythical Games, a ground-breaking Play to Earn party game featuring NFT characters and accessories, providing players with proof of verified ownership and authenticity and enabling true player-to-player trading through Mythical Marketplace. Third Kind Games is also currently working on its own IP, alongside an unannounced project with a high profile industry name.

Województwo Małopolskie is the Main Partner of the event: the regional authorities implementing a range of projects that serve innovation and economic development of Małopolska, and its attractiveness for investors. Małopolska is a perfect location for running business, particularly based on new technologies. Evidence of that is the number of new ventures growing every year, including dynamically developing tech start-ups. Thanks to the massive support given to entrepreneurship and the optimal utilization of EU funds and other public funds, Województwo Małopolskie positively stands out among other voivodships.

Miasto Kraków is a modern metropolis with over a million people working in it. Krakow is 150 thousand students, 23 universities, over 200 international corporations employing nearly 80 thousand people in sectors such as finance, IT, services, research and development, business analytics. We base the development of the city, among others on intelligent management and strengthening the sector of modern services and research and development. That is why we focus on innovation and effective cooperation between science, business and local government.

Krakowski Park Technologiczny has contributed to the development of proper conditions for the development of entrepreneurship for 25 years. For 10 years it has managed the Technology Incubator for IT start-ups. The KPT inspires the start-up community by organising numerous events including workshops, hackathons, and conferences that help to verify business concepts. Besides these, it runs KPT ScaleUp acceleration programme. Companies may count on the support of seed funds, tax reliefs offered by the Polska Strefa Inwestycji (Polish Investment Zone) programme, and preferential office space rental conditions. The KPT is particularly focused on Industry 4.0 and the video games industry. It is the leader of the hub4industry consortium aiming to provide comprehensive support for companies wishing to implement Industry 4.0 solutions. The KPT also organises Digital Dragons – the leading games industry event in Europe.