Getting Your Game Off The Ground
Sponsored by Belfast Media Festival
Location: The Factory
Time: Thursday 17th November, 12pm
It takes a lot of work to get your game to take flight, and though a public release is usually the destination, no two game developments travel the same flight path. A panel of Northern Ireland game developers trade stories about how they've brought their game projects and games businesses from blueprint to launchpad. With discussions about investment, crowdfunding, bootstrapping, strategic partnerships and adapting to the twists & turns of day-to-day development, this panel should help if you feel stuck on the runway; there may be routes you didn't know about, and the sky's the limit.
This session features:
Vicky Potts - Whitepot Studios
Stephen Downey, Outsider Games
Adrien Kissenpfennig INCISIV
James Bradley, Rocketflair
Michael Bell, Bellular
Christina Logan, CryBaby Studios
Vicky Potts
Co-Founder, Whitepot Studios
Vicky Potts is co-founder of award-winning game development company Whitepot Studios. She heads up the company with her partner Adam, creating their own IP in the Unity game engine, as well as acting as Unity paramedics for clients far and wide.
In the past few years she has been awarded the MCV Develop Rising Star Women In Games Awards, and also featured on the MCV Develop 30 under 30 list.
Stephen Downey
Founder & Director, Outsider Games
Stephen Downey is founder and director of Outsider Games.
His career path includes work as comic book and storyboard artist, traditional musician and game designer where he worked with partners such as 343/Microsoft, Lionsgate, Fireband/Electronic Arts and Titan/Dreamworks on properties such as Halo, How to Train Your Dragon, & Flash Gordon. Stephen and Outsider Games brought their body-hopping musical adventure game to PC, Xbox and PlayStation in 2018, and most recently adapted the comic book Jennifer Wilde into an award-winning Point & Click video game.
Adrien Kissenpfennig
Operational & Technical Lead, INCISIV
Adrien Kissenpfennig is the operational and technical lead for INCISIV. INCISIV is a neuro-technology company based in Belfast founded in 2018 by Professor Cathy Craig and Kissenpfennig, who has a background in Biomedical Research and led on several scientific research programmes.
In his spare time, he has always enjoyed the evolution of the gaming industry and games development.
Along with Business Development Lead, Dr James Stafford, INCISIV is determined to take award-winning research in Virtual Reality out of the lab and into people's homes. Their vision is simple: improve sports performances, make a positive difference to people's lives and have some fun.
INCISIV's first B2C product to market, Cleansheet, delivers a unique virtual reality (VR) experience where goalkeepers can practice potential real-game scenarios again and again and has sold over 30,000 copies since launching on Meta Quest's App Lab in February.
With 4.8 stars from 328 reviews to date, it's one of the highest rating games on App Lab. The INCISIV team will officially launch Cleansheet worldwide on the ByteDance-owned headset Pico 4 later this month.
Michael Bell
Founder, Michael Bell Media
Michael Bell is the founder of the YouTube new-media business Michael Bell Media, as well as the co-founder of Bellular Studios, its sister Games Development studio.
Alongside running 4 YouTube channels with a total of over 940,000 Subscribers, his game studio is approaching the release of its flagship title, The Pale Beyond, published by Fellow Traveller.
Christina Logan
Director, CryBaby Studios
Christina Logan is a videogame artist with four years experience freelancing in the local industry. She was previously a finalist in Abertay Dare and Transfuzer and is now leading her own team through NI Screen's rapid prototyping process - Crybaby Studios.
She's listed as one of She Plays Games Outstanding Women in the Games Industry for 2022.
