Masterclasses

With millions of active users across platforms like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft, game developers have an unprecedented opportunity to harness these established ecosystems where players already gather. In this intensive masterclass, industry leaders from Filament Games and Blockworks share practical strategies for creating meaningful experiences within existing communities. Learn how to leverage existing player bases, utilize built-in tools, and navigate platform-specific considerations while maintaining your creative vision for impact. This session covers essential workflows for rapid prototyping, strategies for balancing creative freedom with platform constraints, and how to build successful partnerships for in-platform activations, whether with NGOs, educational institutions, or brands aligned with your mission.

In this hands-on workshop, participants work in small groups to evolve and iterate a simple game, as we explore the ways that games create meaningful experiences for their players. First, we will explore how to design games in order to produce an emotional impact on players. Then we will expand our focus to look at how games can be deployed in real-world contexts and connect to real-world issues. Along the way, we will be exploring fundamental concepts and methods for designing games. Please come prepared to play and to collaborate.

This workshop will explore creative leadership from two perspectives. One, on how to lead teams that are doing innovative design and development, with a focus on how to support and empower team members through the ambiguous and uncertain creative process. Two, how to become more innovative in leading and managing teams in general. Attendees will break into teams to brainstorm a game idea, and then pitch their ideas to the group. They will then trade their game ideas and integrate transformational goals in the overall gameplay experience related to the games brainstormed by the other teams. The primary focus is on how they are designing and developing together, but the teams will then present their transformational game ideas to each other and a panel of experts. We'll then reflect on how to best lead and orchestrate the creative process.