Cracow is well-known for its legend about the dragon, but that’s not the only dragon you can find there. Digital Dragons conference – rings a bell? One of the biggest events in the gaming industry in this part of Europe, two days with international and renowned guests, dozens of indie games and lectures to check out… Sounds like heaven for us! And what if I tell you the trip can be partially sponsored by UG? Sign me up!
We’ve decided to attend DD 2017 already in January and since then it was a carousel of booking tickets, applying for financing from the University and in general: preparing for the trip (with Beholder hanging above us till the last minute).
After few short months here it came! On the 21st of May we finally went to Cracow and pretty quickly spiralled down the rabbit hole. Already in the train we noticed people from the gaming industry. We were super excited for the event and also couldn’t miss the chance to join another event that took place then: Film Music Festival!
On Monday morning we’ve encountered the first problem: what panels should we attend?!
There were quite a few interesting speakers (including amazing Sam Lake from Remedy games who dressed up as game characters during his presentation), often at the same time, so we had to think really hard which ones we should see. The topics were really diverse – from more technical about engines, to creating quests (CD Projekt’s fantastic panel), creating music and arts, designing, to starting up a company and some purely business themed panels. No time for food or to catch some air, we were flashing between lecture rooms, devouring every piece of new information. We wanted to enjoy everything to the fullest!
We’ve attended as many as was humanly possible but we also found time to stop by indie games (who would have thought being a pigeon can be so…violent?) and we did quite a bit networking. After all, we were representing LINGUANA, right? 🙂
Being there, with all these people who shared the same interests… we felt at home. Even if sometimes we didn’t exactly understand more technical aspects… it was an experience though, hopefully to be repeated next year! Also great news folks: localization is here to stay and feels better than never!
