Games Now! Anna Kipnis "Gameplay Programming Challenges"

Gameplay Programming Challenges

Anna Kipnis

Sure, it’s great to learn from one’s own mistakes and failures — but what’s better is to learn from the mistakes of others! Come hear what I learned throughout my 15 years of doing gameplay programming. Hear some harrowing development tales from Psychonauts, The Cave, Broken Age, Headlander, and even some Kinect and VR games. Find out how the team solved the many gameplay and design challenges, and where technology for games might be heading in the future.

Anna Kipnis started her game development career at Double Fine Productions, as a Gameplay Programmer in 2002. At Double Fine, she contributed to various unreleased and top secret projects as well as Psychonauts (2005), Brütal Legend (2009), Costume Quest (2010), Once Upon a Monster (2011), The Cave (2012), Dear Leader (designed and led the prototype, 2014), Broken Age (2015), Headlander (2016), and the upcoming Psychonauts 2. Anna is currently working on prototypes for yet to be announced technologies. She is active in the indie game community and has collaborated with Santa Ragione on Final Candidation (2013) and Wheels of Aurelia (2016). She is also the founding organizer of Molyjam, a game jam inspired by Peter Molyneux and his fake Twitter account, @petermolydeux. Anna has served on the IGF technical jury, the Global Game Jam theme committee, and as an adviser for UCSC’s MS Games & Playable Media program.

In Games Now! we dig deeper to what is current at the game scene – and what will happen in the near future. The topics and speaker invitations are curated in collaboration with Finland’s game industry leaders and companies. Our guest speakers are industry leaders and inspiring individuals providing their insights and advise for students and practitioners.

The lecture series is run by Aalto University’s Media Lab and is open for public.

The lecture series has been developed as part of the Aalto University’s A!OLE program.