gamedev.world

Inspired by her experience working as Game Maker Relations for IndieCade in 2014 and a Gamasutra blog post by Rami Ismail highlighting the overwhelming English dominance in games industry discourse, knowledge, and creation, Sarah approached Rami offering to help him launch a proactive response to the language barrier in games.

Rami settled on an innovative conference concept: virtual, to spare burdensome travel costs for speakers; free, for greatest viewer access; and delivered in a diverse set of languages, live-translated to all the other languages supported by the conference, for an authentic experience and a truly global simultaneous audience.

gamedev.world was first realized in 2019, with a diverse set of 34 speakers from around the world, giving talks in 8 different languages. The 24-hour live event offered unique and varied insights both from the perspective of, and addressing, games communities that don’t often enjoy equal platform or opportunity.

As co-founder and part of the core production team (with the key addition of Event Producer Myriame Lachapelle), Sarah’s role was both tone-setting, and anything-that-needs-doing generalist. Her contributions ranged from drafting initial base-English communication and solicitation materials for speakers, to sponsor coordination, invoicing and promo creation - but she is especially gratified by the talks she found and fought for among submissions which landed in the final lineup. GDW’s programming reflected additional diversity of discipline and approach, offering practical, technical, artistic, and mental health takeaways. Sarah was proud to showcase the ingenuity, empathy and creativity of this special slate of creators.

In 2020, after the cancellation of the Game Developer’s Conference due to COVID-19, gamedev.world held a fundraiser streaming event on Twitch - with accompanying game jam and itch.io bundle - to benefit the Wings Fund supporting financially impacted developers, ultimately raising over $80,000.

Click here for a selection of press coverage about gamedev.world.