Taiwan is all set for its annual gathering of game developers at Taipei Game Developers Forum (TGDF), which is organized by Institute for Information Industry (III) and International Game Developers Association (IGDA), along with several co-organizers in Taiwan and from abroad, TGDF. Scheduled to be held on 23-24 July at Taipei International Convention Center (TICC), it promises to be grander than the earlier editions.
The coming forum features virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), hot topics that blasted the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this March. TGDF participants will be briefed with the latest developments of Hololens, Microsoft’s AR technology, and experience Vive, HTC’s VR helmet, which will make its debut in Taiwan at the forum. HTC will also demonstrate applications and future developments of VR.
The game industry has been changing rapidly in recent years, specifically in the field of mobile games. According to the statistics of domestic game industry, the domestic output has reached US$ 600million in 2014, and it is expected to exceed US $830 million in 2015. Taiwan’s Google Play has even made into the top five in the ranking of global revenues, following Japan, Korea, the U.S. and Germany. The global market of mobile game will reach US $29 billion this year at an annual growth rate of 15 per cent.
Therefore, this forum has invited top-notch game developers from the United Kingdom, the U.S. and China to serve as lecturers. Among them is Neil McFarland, producer of top grossing game Monument Valley, which was also the winner of the 2014 Apple Design Award. It was crowned as the best in innovation, visual arts and mobile games by the Game Developers Choice Awards. The founder and producer of Rayark, Ming-Yang Yu will be another big name at the forum. He will be focusing on the balance between revenues and branding. Rayark is regarded as the pride of Taiwan for being the first Taiwanese company which was granted the rare honor of having an exclusive developer room on Apple’s App Store. Its recent masterpiece Implosion has been sold over three million copies worldwide.
Since 2012, TGDF has drawn the attendance of over 1,000 game developers and students majored in related departments. It has presented over 40 lectures featuring noted speakers, including Inafune Keiji, founder of Megaman; Kataoka Yohei, producer of Tokyo Jungle; Andrew Wang, developing team CTO of Bastion; and Ryo Agarie, developer of Tengami.
The forum welcomes the attendance of senior developers, parties interested in game development, and people from all other industries. The agenda of the forum include game development, experiences sharing, programming techniques, artistic visual effects, game design methods, establishment of gaming communities, and market trends.
