Last week was the second time Minsk welcomed one of the biggest game industry events in CIS. While in Belarus DevGAMM is now the only event of this scale with around 1000 people from 25 countries attending.

More than 40 DevGAMM sessions were targeted at people coming from different backgrounds and different levels of experience. This way both beginner developers and trained professionals benefited from the conference.

During this year the conference shifted focus from social and mobile games to hardcore development for desktop, consoles, VR and AR devices. DevGAMM Minsk hot topics included e-sport, Twitch and Youtube for developers, indie apocalypse to name a few.

If you were wondering what sessions to watch at DevGAMM Youtube channel next week here are a few tips. Keep your eye on Stan Just and his session about production cycle of The Witcher 3. Learn how Transformice unexpectedly became a hit wonder from Melanie Christin. Understand Twitch better with Jon Carnage’s talk. Also take a look at extra useful sessions from Microsoft, Nvidia, Unity, Epic Games, Facebook, Wargaming, IMVU and tinyBuild.

Each DevGAMM organizers introduce something new to the conferenсe agenda. This time Pitch & Match and Service Showcase took on that part. Pitch & Match system, which is used widely at conferences around the world finally landed at DevGAMM. 500 meetings in two days made DevGAMM one of the top three conferences by the number of conducted meetings.
Meanwhile Service Showcase helped companies to attract potential clients, who were looking for localization, quality sound or marketing support.

However games were still in the spotlight. GAMM:Play Showcase had around 50 amazing projects competing for audience attention, while more than 80 developers submitted their games to the contest.

Every Speed Game Dating stream came with a big line of developers looking to hijack the list of 40 lucky participants for a chance to meet lots of publishers in an hour.

Conferences may be about business development, but they are actually a great way to break out of everyday routine. Three parties hosted at DevGAMM Minsk were meant to do just that. Free beer, snacks and happy faces created a perfect environment for networking and easy conversations.There are good reasons why relationships established at the informal functions often lead to fruitful collaborations in the future. Parties were sponsored by Melesta and Renatus Media.

All those who stayed till last few hours of the conference dived straight into the festive mood. Hilarious Game Lynch, epic DevGAMM Awards and People of the Year ceremony made this evening unforgettable.

Thanks to the amazing expert lineup Game Lynch went perfect. If you can use the word ‘perfect’ to describe lightsabre fights, drinking races and nerf gun duels. New trial by combat feature fit right in. Jokes, booze, steel-hearted developers make Game Lynch one of a kind event in all history of game industry conferences.

The biggest surprise of the conference was music break with Ressa Schwarzwald and Stanislav Polesko from Strategic Music doing covers of famous game soundtrack.

People of the Year Award organized together with VC.ru acknowledged the most influential industry leaders such as Maksim Donskih, Leonid Sirotin, Sergey Orlovsky and Viktor Kisly.

DevGAMM Awards was the grand finale of the event where the audience learned the names of the games that won in 10 nominations. Mike Rose and Lerika Mallayeva, co-hosts of the ceremony, made the whole room of people laughing out loud with their amazing sketches.

Winner List:

Grand Prize (sponsored by RJ Games)
Game: The Final Station
Developer: Oleg Sergeev and Andrey Rumak

Excellence in Visual Art (sponsored by Fibrum)
Game: Fold The World
Developer: Eon games

Excellence in Game Design
Game: Steam Panic
Developer: NOD Group

Excellence in Narrative (sponsored by All Correct Group)
Game: Breached
Developer: Twisted Pilot

Excellence in Audio (sponsored by RJ Games)
Game: Summer Catchers
Developer: Eugene Siryk

Best Indie Game (sponsored by tinyBuild GAMES)
Game: SKYHILL
Developer: Mandragora

Best Mobile Game (sponsored by Casual Connect)
Game: Fold The World
Developer: Eon games

Best Desktop Game
Game: SKYHILL
Developer: Mandragora

Game Lynch Award
Game: SaviorX – The Story Of Life
Developer: Gediminas Siutilas

Best of GAMM:Play Showcase (sponsored by Wargaming.net)
Game: One Day in London
Developer: OWL-studio

Sponsor companies did their best to entertain the attendees throughout the event. Nekki hosted a tournament for Shadow Fight 3 players with beautiful Japanese swords at stake. Vizor Interactivebooth stood out because of the huge electronic graffiti wall, which allowed to create and print a drawing on the spot. Those who took photos for Instagram on the first day of the conference received their pictures printed with the custom frame at Puzzle Dreams booth.

This year was a huge accomplishment for DevGAMM with three events in Moscow, Hamburg and Minsk. This became possible only due to the support of the Renatus company.

So where do you see us next? Moscow!
Save the date: May 12-13, 2016