September Meetup - Rapid prototyping with Dan Magaha of GameSalad

For our September event, we're thrilled to feature Dan Magaha (Director of Operations at GameSalad). He'll discuss iteration and rapid prototyping of game ideas. Dan will demonstrate how GameSalad's tools can be used for prototyping, but will also cover the topic more broadly, including other tools, techniques, and strategies for success.

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Dan has over 15 years of experience in the game industry. From 2002 to 2007, he worked as a Producer at Firaxis Games in Maryland. While there, he oversaw a number of critically acclaimed titles including Civilization III, Civilization IV, and Sid Meier's Pirates! In total, the games he shipped at Firaxis sold 6.5 million copies and brought in over $100 million in revenue.

Next, Dan spent a year at NCSoft in Austin, where he served as Producer on an unannounced casual MMO. And in 2008, he pitched and founded a new 2K Games studio in Austin to prototype an MMO title. While there, he recruited the team and set the project direction. In less than eight months, they built a working, custom multiplayer client/server prototype from scratch, including numerous game systems and a basic 3D engine.

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From 2010 to 2012, Dan served as Studio Director at Seamless Entertainment, a small game studio in Austin. While there, he oversaw the delivery of several work-for-hire titles and launched the company's first original IP, SOL: Exodus. After that, Dan spent a number of years consulting with various clients on project management, marketing, and sales/biz dev.

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In 2013, Dan joined GameSalad as Director of Operations. GameSalad builds tools that allow users to quickly create their own games in a visual, drag-and-drop interface. In addition, GameSalad users can easily publish their games to iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and HTML5. The tools are widely used by nontechnical game designers and artists for rapid prototyping and have been adopted by various schools and universities for teaching game dev.

Dan's role at GameSalad is to manage all the daily operations, coordinate product development, oversee marketing efforts, and set strategic direction for new initiatives. Thanks to his diverse background, Dan is the perfect person to discuss prototyping for a range of different project types, game genres, budgets, and team sizes. Don't miss what will surely be an informative discussion!

Schedule for this event:
• 6:30pm - Arrival and socializing
• 7:00pm - Intro and announcements
• 7:10pm - Dan Magaha talk
• 7:50pm - Q&A
• 8:20pm - More socializing