BIG Festival to host talks from devs behind Firewatch, Inside, Assassin's Creed: Origins
Leading game event in South America will also feature talks from Raw Fury, Good Shepherd and Versus Evil
The sixth year of Brazil's Independent Games Festival will have its most international line-up to date, with talks from Campo Santo, the team behind Assassin's Creed Origins, and one of the founders of Inside developer Playdead.
Chris Remo was both a designer and the composer on Firewatch, Campo Santo's debut game and a breakout hit when it launched in 2016. He will discuss Firewatch's use of narrative design to create an experience where combat, mechanical challenge and puzzles were not the principle activities.
Dino Patti, who left Playdead in 2016 to form his new studio Jumpship, will detail his experiences as the CEO of a company that produced visually stunning indie titles like Limbo and Inside - offering practical advice to other independent developers chasing similarly distinctive visions.
The Assassin's Creed Origins session will be delivered by two people: Ubisoft Montreal project manager Isabelle Bismuth, and Spearsoft's Alan Van Slyke. Spearsoft worked with Ubisoft on the development of Origins, and Bismuth and Van Slyke will offer best practices for making similar collaborations effective.
Other sessions at BIG 2018 will come from international speakers like Raw Fury's David Martinez, Versus Evil's Steve Escalante and Good Shepherd's Paul Hanraets. The local games industry will also be represented, by successful local companies like Horizon Chase developer Aquiris, and Brazilian developers who left the country to build their careers, like Rovio studio head Reginaldo Valadares.
There will also be two new areas of focus covered within BIG's schedule of more than 120 talks: the emergence of virtual reality, and the role that serious games can have in shaping attitudes towards real issues like sexuality and bullying.
Brazil's Independent Games Festival will take place at Centro Cultural São Paulo, from June 23 to July 1, 2018. You can find out more information on the official website.
GamesIndustry.biz will attend BIG 2018 as a guest of the organiser.