The Bilbao International Games Conference 2024 has wrapped up its third edition with over 3,000 visitors, more than 900 professionals from around the world, and close to a 1,000 professional meetings that served as a meeting point for industry veterans and students alike.
María López, 2024 BIG Conference's honorary award.
María López, co-founder of ERBE and former Development Director of PlayStation Spain, received one of the 2024 BIG Conference's honorary awards and has been a key speaker this Saturday. López began her career in the music industry at CBS Records before one of her employees, Paco Pastor, former lead singer of Fórmula V, suggested to start a video game distribution company, which they would name ERBE, back in 1984: “We quickly saw that video games would become part of youth entertainment, just like magazines or books. Some people told us we were visionaries, but I think we were just reckless.”
After a brief hiatus from the video games industry in the early nineties, López landed at PlayStation, where she worked on the launch of Sony’s first home console up until the PS4. “During a trip to Chicago, I saw Wipeout and Ridge Racer, and I immediately knew this was something different. PlayStation was here to stay—not just because of those two games, but because of all the plans they had for the console.”
Neva, by Nomada Studio, is the sequel to the acclaimed Gris, and Roger Mendoza, one of the creators of the game, traveled to Bilbao to dissect the development of the title. “After the success of Gris, we were deciding what our next steps would be, until Conrad [Roset, co-founder of the studio] suggested making a game about parenthood. With this idea, and aiming to maintain the philosophy and style of Gris, Neva was born.”
Roger Mendoza, co-founder of Nomada Studio.
Mendoza shared details about Neva's development, explaining the use of colors to distinguish the game’s elements and the challenges of animating four legged animals. He also revealed how Devolver Digital decided to fund the game. “After sending them our first trailer, we got a response in four minutes asking what we needed to create it. We really appreciated their trust in us.”
The Croatian studio Croteam, founded by Damjan Mravunac and Davor Hunski, unveiled the secrets behind the philosophy and design of The Talos Principle 2, the sequel to the puzzle game released 10 years ago. “It was scary to work on a sequel of such a successful game.”
Davor Hunski and Damjan Mravunac, from Croteam.
However, The Talos Principle 2 is a game that managed to keep the essence of its predecessor and gather praise from puzzle fans, despite the setbacks faced during its development. “We knew that halfway through the project we would have to switch to a new development engine, which was very complex, and we tried to take that into account while planning the first puzzles in the old engine. The final game features a total of 182 puzzles.”
Jupiter Hadley, journalist and coordinator of the BIG Contest guided the audience through the whole concept of Game Jams: “Jams are all about the fun of game development. You don’t need to go through the process of developing a full game. Instead, you focus on a fun mechanic and enjoy creating it”. Hadley pointed out the most interesting features of games created during jams: ”I’ve seen such alien concepts come out from game jams, mechanics that I’ve never seen before or thought about, and I think it happens that way because developers aren’t looking for comercial success, they just make the game they feel like making”.
After the introduction, she showcased different games from jams using them as examples of creativity and unique mechanics. Some examples are The Mind Is A Small Place, a game trying to explain through simple puzzles how a depressive mind can work; Party Hard, a stealth-action game developed by Pinokl Games for a game jam that after its success was published by Tiny Build; and Baba Is You, an indie game that changed completely how puzzle games are understood and served as inspiration to many other game jam games and even student projects.
Adam Riches, from Robust Games.
And precisely, a clear example of a commercial project born from a game jam is Loco Motive, from the London-based Robust Games. “The large number of positive reviews after the release on itch.io encouraged us to turn it into a commercial release.” Adam Riches, co-founder of Robust Games, gave an overview from the birth of the idea behind Loco Motive to its release last November. “We expected only about 10% of the wishlist to convert into sales, but the real number has been much higher.”
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Picture Gallery (2024 edition)
Key art: BIG Conf logos
Key art: IndieDevPlay logo
BIG Conference videos (EN/ES)
ABOUT THE BILBAO INTERNATIONAL GAMES CONFERENCE
The BIG Conference picks up the baton from the Fun&Serious Game Festival, which started in 2011 in Bilbao. With the slogan of "celebrating video game culture and video games as culture," for years, it attracted tens of thousands of people and the most prominent names in the international video game industry with a proposal that mixed professional presentations with activities aimed at the general public: from the fun for the whole family of the Fun Zone to the congress for indies Games Industry Forum, passing through the Titanium Awards or esports competitions. After the pandemic hiatus, with a purely virtual edition and another semi-presential one, the festival became an exclusive event for industry professionals and it changed its skin with a brand that reflected this new strategic direction.
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