Digital Dragons Conference 2024: the call for speakers and indie games is on!

12 grudnia 2023

Digital Dragons Conference 2024, Europe's leading B2B event for the games industry, will take place in Krakow from May 19 to 21, 2024. It will thus last - for the first time ever - three days. The call for speakers and the competition for the best independent game has just been launched.

Digital Dragons Conference 2024 will be a longer and more intensive experience even in comparison to the previous, record-breaking in terms of attendance, edition, which attracted as many as 2,500 people. This time - for the first time ever - the Krakow convention will last not two, but three days. On Sunday, May 19, its participants will meet at the Park Inn by Radisson hotel, neighbouring the ICE Congress Centre, for thematic meetings devoted to legal and game design issues.

Dragons are evolving

Based on feedback from participants in previous editions, the organisers have decided to expand the programme with additional summits, participation in which will be optional.

For the first time, the conference will be accompanied by Game Design Summit powered by Anshar Studios & Fool's Theory and Legal Summit powered by Rymarz Zdort Maruta, formats known to the Polish game development community and aimed at experienced professionals. Game Design Summit powered by Anshar Studios & Fool's Theory is being created to introduce a workshop format to Digital Dragons' content offer. In turn, cooperation with the law firm Rymarz Zdort Maruta has resulted in the presence in the DD programme of the highly popular and content-attractive Legal Summit - a platform for the exchange of experience between business and legal experts and game developers.

Maciej Śliwiński, Content Manager at Digital Dragons

This is not the only change. The formula of the substantive part of the event will be expanded with roundtables - open discussions on specific topics led by moderators with extensive experience in the industry.

Their proposals - as well as proposals for traditional lectures - can already be submitted to the event organiser, Krakow Technology Park. The first round of submissions will run until January 14. A detailed schedule and application form can be found on the Digital Dragons website.

Time and space for indie games

The call has also started for indie game developers, for whom the organisers have provided a special exhibition space. To guarantee yourself a place there, you need to take part in the Indie Showcase competition, which will bring 50 studios to the ICE Congress Centre to compete for the podium. A separate prize will be awarded by the conference audience through a Community Vote. Digital Dragons returns to the Steam platform, where it will be possible to play demo versions of the titles presented at the conference.

Indie Showcase attendees can also apply for an appearance on Digital Dragons Arena, a platform that connects independent developers with potential investors or publishers who, after hearing a project pitch, may decide to support it.

Activities aimed at indie game developers are one of the key elements of the Digital Dragons Hub ecosystem, which includes both a conference and incubation and acceleration programmes for start-up teams.

A year of successes and challenges

As every year, the conference will feature Digital Dragons Awards Gala - the oldest and most prestigious awards in Polish gamedev. Anna Krampus-Sepielak, head of Digital Dragons, predicts that the competition will be fierce.

The year 2023 will see the premieres of such high-profile Polish titles as, for example, The Invincible, RoboCop: Rogue City, Ghostrunner 2 or Lords of the Fallen. We hope that the programme will include post-mortem lectures devoted to the games released this year - that is, lectures that tell the story of their creation from A to Z. I'm sure the jury will have a tough nut to crack when trying to select the best titles - and this despite the fact that the industry has been struggling with serious problems recently.

Anna Krampus-Sepielak, head of Digital Dragons

Tickets for the conference at the most attractive Early Birds prices will go on sale in January. Digital Dragons Hub is planning a busy start to the year. The last weekend of the month will see KrakJam2024 powered by Rage Quit Games, the largest desktop hackathon organised in Poland as part of Global Game Jam. Enrolment is also continuing for Digital Dragons Academy, a series of classes designed for students and anyone looking to start a career in gamedev.