August CGDA Meetup - Leigh Beattie

Welcome to the August 2025 Christchurch Game Developers' Meetup!

Location:
John Britten 102 Conference Foyer, University of Canterbury Ilam Campus

The meetup will also be streamed online:
[Link to be added on the night!]

Don't forget to check us out at:
Website: https://chch.gamedev.co.nz
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CHCHGameDev
Facebook: https://fb.me/CHCHGameDev
Discord: https://discord.gg/68YqqFZ
If you like our meetups, consider supporting us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/CHCHGameDev
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Speaker - Leigh Beattie
Leigh is an industry veteran with over 10 years of experience ranging from indie titles all the way to AAA. He works in tertiary education in game design but is also creating a project on the side called Surreal 98. An expert at wearing most hats, with an incredibly diverse background ranging from infrastructure programming and design all the way through to VFX work and art production.

6:15 PM - KICK OFF
Welcome to the Christchurch Game Developers Meetup, with news from around New Zealand!

6:30 PM - Surreal 98 and Sustainable Programming Practices
A showcase of my in development product, Surreal 98, a runtime retro game transcoder, along with a talk about how good development practices can help you stay on track and deliver on complex projects.

7:20 PM - PIZZA
Enjoy some refreshments (AKA pizza) and catch up with/meet other game dev enthusiasts.

Event Photography Notice: The CGDA occasionally takes photos and/or videos at our events for promotional purposes. If you would prefer not to have your image recorded for marketing purposes, please make your wishes known to the photographer, and/or reach out to a committee member, and we will accommodate your request. Thank you!
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Massive thanks to all our supporters for making our meetups possible!
Our Corporate Supporters:
Yoobee College of Creative Innovation - a tertiary institute committed to developing creative and technical talent across New Zealand.
https://www.yoobee.ac.nz/courses/

HIT Lab NZ - a multidisciplinary, Human-Centred Research environment that collaborates with industry.
https://www.hitlabnz.org/

CerebralFix - a Christchurch-based game development studio specializing in work for hire from some amazing companies.
https://cerebralfix.com/

Screen Canterbury NZ - a Canterbury-based film office helping creatives get their projects delivered to the screens of their choice, providing fantastic resource-sharing & advocacy for our screen production industry.
https://www.christchurchnz.com/screen-canterburynz

And our awesome Patreon Supporters:
Matt Barton
Leith Caldwell
Samantha Cook
Nik Scarr
Carl de Visser
Alexander Swords