On 29th and 30th November, as of a yearly tradition now, the biggest game developer conference in Central Europe took place – Game Developers Session in Prague. By each year, more and more developers attend with the specialized public, the interest of foreign studios rapidly grows and who knows what else awaits us in the future. The varieties of people one can meet here is massive. Furthermore, as a Veteran speaking, I remember the times, when the ratio of talks here was outbalanced in the favour of Czech language, as English here was quite rare. It made sense, as only a fracture of visitors were actually foreign. By the time flowing though, the situation had moved forward and our gaming bussiness grows more and more, with that, much more people are attending this conference now. I can speak for everyone when I say that such a thing really pleases us.

One topic that really stood out was education – and its state in the Czech Republic, being rather dismal. We stand in front of a big problem, facing the fact that our industry is constantly growing with each passing year and our companies need specialized employees more and more. Our education system overlooked this fact for many years, and now we fight with the lack of quality labour. We lack animators, graphic designers, specialized programmers and so on. Yes, it is true that thanks to the GDA association and a handful of initiative individuals, the tables are slowly starting to turn, however it will take years before these changes really become visible in the overall game industry ecosystem. At the very least, even if we succeed in our fight for a better game development education in schools and universities, it will take a long time before these efforts give birth to successful, qualified students. Most of us that work in the industry are typical self-taughts that taught themselves everything in our free time, as there were no opportunities to do so in schools whatsoever. We shall see if in a few years whether there will be more positive words to say or not, but for now I agree with everything that occurred on the conference about this topic.
We at Dark Sheep also want to help with the future of our industry. As a self-taught, I would give everything to have resources and teachers that would have guided me in my pursuits. Once we stabilize our team a bit, we are definitely going to open our project "Academy", to which we would like to accept talented individuals and teach them everything we know ourselves – if they show effort and diligence, of course. It doesn't necessarily have to be interns, there would be multiple options. We’ve been in touch with a few schools that would be interested in cooperation, so lots of negotiations are taking place. We are going to release more information in the future in a more dedicated post.
This year's conference has definitely moved to the better in many regards. As I've missed last year because of personal reasons, I am not really sure, when this change occurred, but I have to give a massive thanks for all the changes, especially dividing the spaces for indie developers and established companies – these used to be both in one crowded room, that was very chaotic and confusing, as you couldn't see more than a few meters around you as it was swarming with a lot of people. Luckily, that didn't happen this year, so we had enough time and comfort to stop, have a look around and talk with developers without the fear of being trampled.
What I consider the best novelty is the presentation of the indie projects at the first day of the conference, right after the last talk, as well as subsequent party that took place in the same hall. It's great that someone finally had the idea that people actually don't like to travel to the other side of Prague to some bar, especially non-residents. I hope that this strategy will carry on for the next years to come. We would like to thank the organizers for a work well done!

As our company Dark Sheep exists officially for barely a year, it was our first game dev event that we attended to, and we took it as an opportunity to relax, meet new people, try out projects of others, gain some knowledge from the talks and.. take advantage of a food stall. :D Really, the banquets were flawless. If everything goes well, and we manage to expand our team with new members, so our development can gain more momentum, it is quite possible that we will attend as one of the indie developer teams with our Devorian.

While on the subject, I would like to conclude it by bringing attention to our just enlisted job opening that you can find in the Career section. At the moment, we are looking for experienced programmers, but if you think you have something else to offer as a graphic designer, animator, or just about anything from the game development, feel free to get in touch. If you have a bit of a „crazy“ mindset, maybe you are the one who can enrich our team full of dark and playful sheeps. :) We can't wait!

Nothing else to add, apart from giving a massive thanks to everyone who managed to get all the way to the end of this article. See you next year!