Biggest event of the year only a week away: Digital Dragons live!

10 maja 2022

The leading event of the game dev sector in CEE is about to begin. See the accompanying events and get ready to meet the stars of game development. A real-life conference starts at the ICE Kraków Congress Centre on 16 May. Online activities are launched for you on 12 May already.

Worth attending before the conference:

Business Networking

All holders of Business and VIP tickets, and speakers have unlimited access to the planning of ONLINE business meetings on 12 and 13 May and OFFLINE ones during the event in Kraków on 16 and 17 May.

The networking is hosted on PINE, a platform to which participants receive access by purchasing the tickets.

The participants are welcome to arrange online meetings on 12 and 13 May, and those present in Kraków – also plan face-to-face meetings. After prior confirmation, the meetings will be held in the Business Networking Zone in the Congress Centre on 16 and 17 May.

The application allows precise planning of meetings both online and during the conference. A confirmed offline meeting will be assigned to a numbered table in the dedicated Business Networking Zone in the ICE Kraków Congress Centre. So it’s worthwhile to fill in the data in your profile and arrange the calendar of your meetings now.

Indie Showcase

Also on 12 May we launch presentation of indie games on Steam. The Indie Showcase has for years been an essential element of the conference. It is an opportunity for gamedev studios from all over the world to rise and shine, as many of them have found the competition the starting point to further success. Steam will let conference participants get to know one another and play the demos of selected games.

During the conference you will have an opportunity to meet the best indie developers live at the ICE Kraków Congress Centre. It is a perfect opportunity to discuss productions and to choose your favourite game in the Community Vote.

The winners of the competition will be announced during the Indie Showcase Gala on 17 May. The selection of the best indie games will be the job of the jury composed of journalists and developers.

The prizes, including processors, graphic cards, and money, are sponsored by AMD, Intel, and Xsolla. Also the results of the competition organised by Intel will be announced at the Gala.

Bagde Pick-Up

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The Badge Pick-Up will take place at the Kraków Technology Park at 5pm on 15 May. It makes sense to arrive here a day before the conference to collect your badge with the bonus package from the sponsors and organisers of the event, and use the pleasant atmosphere for the icebreaker with other participants of the conference. For those who cannot arrive earlier, additional registration will be organised during the conference at the ICE Kraków Congress Centre on 16 (8.00 AM) and 17 May (10.00 AM).

Important information about this year’s conference

The Agenda

The conference agenda is full to the brim. Participants will see the most recognised celebrities of the gamedev world on seven stages. The names already announced include Roland Lesterlin of People Can Fly, Tor Frick of Neon Giant, and the large forces of Techland, who will disclose information about its latest game, Dying Light 2: Stay Human at a number of meetings. We are also in for the lifting of the veil and shouting the production of Trek to Yomi (Flying Wild Hog) by Mirek Baran and Katarzyna Szymczak-Skalska.

You can still ask questions concerning VALVE’s largest sales platform: Steam. The answers will be given at a special Q&A session by Alden Kroll.

You can ask your questions under the post on Facebook

Ask a question

Over a hundred lectures in seven thematic paths make up an agenda designed under the watchful eye of curators and professionals so that it both touches upon specialist questions facilitating game development and covers such important aspects of the market as block chain and metaverse.

Anna Krampus-Sepielak, Head of Digital Dragons

The organisers have made a decision that some conference lectures will be streamed live on the YouTube channel to reach wider audiences.

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Digital Dragons Awards Gala

There will be no shortage of emotions around the awarding of the most prestigious prizes in the sector this year. The Digital Dragons Awards. This year’s Award Presentation Gala will have an exceptional setting, as the entire event is celebrating 10 years of operation.

The partners of the Gala are Polsat Games and the Municipality of Kraków, and the whole will be hosted by the dazzling Tadeusz Zieliński, Radosław Nałęcz, and Sonia Wojciechowska of the Kraków Technology Park.

The Gala will be held live at 7pm on the first day of the conference, and will be re-broadcast on TV at 6pm on 27 May. FRENZY will make sure that the technical and production aspects have been properly taken care of. The organisation of the event is supported by the Municipality of Kraków.

PHOTOmodeBOOK Exhibition

This year's conference will be highlighted by an artistic look at computer games. The in-game photography exhibition presents photographs taken by Rafał Szrajber during his travels to selected video game worlds. The photographs of the world and characters in this part of the project are a record of an adventure which defined and shaped the presence in the game. The impulse for the realization of the artistic and technological project PHOTOmodeBOOK was the phenomenon of photography of video game worlds and the creative and didactic limitations caused by the pandemic.

Digital Dragons Party

The conference means more than just business meetings and lectures as it also provides space for informal meetings. These are best held to the accompaniment of delightful music in the unconventional 19-century interiors of the Forty Kleparz music club (at 9pm on 16 May).

The Digital Dragons Party has become a legendary element of the conference. This time there will be no shortage of good fun and delicious refreshments. Additionally, apart from the 10 years of the Digital Dragons, we will use the opportunity to celebrate 20 years of People Can Fly studio, which is a partner of the Digital Dragons Party.

This year PCF is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its presence in the game industry. The studio has been established as one of the pioneer development teams in Poland and made its mark on the shooter genre with titles such as Painkiller, Bulletstorm, Gear of War: Judgment and Outriders, which will receive ab expansion titled Worldslayer in June. Today People Can Fly is one of the top studios in Poland in the AAA games market segment – what’s more, PCF Group S.A. is a global public company on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, with 7 locations in Poland, UK, US and Canada, and over 500 employees onboard (1/3 in North America). Currently the studio works on 7 projects: Outriders and Project Gemini with Square Enix; Project Dagger with Take-Two Interactive; Project Bifrost planned for self-publishing; Project RED and Project Victoria, which are in a concept phase; and PCF Framework – an in-house software extending the capabilities of the Unreal Engine.

The world’s largest gamedev studios

Participants in this year’s edition of the event include CD Projekt RED, Techland, People Can Fly, 11 bit studios, Huuuge Games, Flying Wild Hog, Infinity Ward, and Third Kind Games. Their representatives can be met in the Expo Zone, and some of them have decided to add splendour to the conference with their addresses and lectures.

The Third Kind Games studio, the main sponsor of this year’s event, offers the explanation why it’s worthwhile to come to Kraków:

Third Kind Games is delighted to be the Main Sponsor of Digital Dragons this year. Having opened a new studio in Poland early in 2022, with our main studio in the UK, we felt that Digital Dragons would be the perfect opportunity to meet and better get to know some of the talented people in the games industry in Poland. As one of the largest games conferences in Europe, we thought Digital Dragons was a great place to showcase some of the fantastic opportunities we have to offer and why it’s such a good time to join Third Kind Games. Our Poland studio is a programming centre of excellence working closely with our UK teams to support our innovative new projects and lead the adoption of new technologies. We will continue to grow our Poland studio and look forward to drawing on the skills of the local gaming industry.

Sylwester Zaluga, Technical Director at Third Kind Games Poland

Tickets can be purchased until 17 May

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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.