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I hope it was a cure and didn't add to the fomo!

Denari @astrodiaries.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Reposted by Ben Taels

🔥⚔️Denari is at NZGDC this year!!!🔥⚔️ If you're in Auckland Saturday October 3rd swing by and come play Denari!!! We're at Kiwi Game Zone in the NZICC🤩 #NZGDC2026 #indiegames #indiegaming #gamedev #NZICC #auckland #newzealand

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I need to get back to Te Awamutu now. But I hope folks that are going to be sticking around for the after party have a fantastic time. It has been awesome to go to talks, play games, and meet folks!

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And the end for NZGDC 2026!

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And that is it for Chris!

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Chris says finally that you should embrace your kiwi roots and take advantage of it to attract talent and get interest in your games.

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Importantly he also stresses survivor bias and while they worked hard. Things could have gone the other way. So do be careful

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His advice to kiwi founders: - Be careful of your scope - Be careful to not jump on bandwagons and get tricked by hype/fads - Make sure you have the money to make your game. Be lean. Treasure funding if you get it.

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One way he is doing this via Kia Coding that supports learning about coding with kids. In particular kids who may not be able to access programming resources. www.keacoding.org.nz

keacoding.org.nz

About | Keacoding

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Chris wraps up by encouraging the crowd to support the NZGDA and sponsor NZGDC. He also encourages people to mentor people. To go to schools. To encourage and support the next generation of game developers.

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After leaving Grinding Gears he is enjoying having a small company (13 people) and experimenting. With the resources he has he could pick anywhere in the world for this new company, but he picked NZ

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He also calls out the cooperative rather than competitive game dev scene in NZ. That people here support each other and that we should work to maintain that. (It is amazing!)

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Another advantage to NZ is the film industry is advanced here. So if you need support from them (like building a huge fantasy tree) they are right there.

He also talks about the amazing lifestyle in NZ. That this helps with recruiting new folks. It also helps encourage fans to come visit if you are big enough to hold a convention.

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Chris talks about working with China and how NZ is about half way between Asia and the USA. Which positions folks in NZ well for communicating to both. For example work could start with a team in the USA, then be passed to a NZ team, and then passed to an Asian team. "Follow the sun development"

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Chris highlights that another thing that makes NZ a good place to make games is the government support. Importantly it isn't a political issue. Parties on the left and right both support gaming and the gaming industry. So the support will be there in the long term.

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A key thing was designing with the idea that people will play for a bit and then stop. But they will come back if you make it clear there is value to do so and also when they should come back (i.e. a regular release cadence)

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Designing Path of Exile to Be Played Forever. Chris Wilson at GDC 2019

Chris recommends you check out his GDC talk about Designing Path of Exile to play forever (so do I. It is an interesting talk) youtu.be/pM_5S55jUzk?...

youtu.be

YouTube video by Angry Roleplayer

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This let them do promotional campaigns later themselves as well. He recommends taking a moment to make and share a real world thing. It connects you to people and people to you.

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This was quite a lot of work as well. Particularly the physical goods and signed documents. Other companies might hire someone to do this. But while it was a lot of work it gave them a lot of experience, and particularly experience with physical goods.

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Another example of "doing it themselves" kiwi number 8 approach was handling the crowdfunding for the game themselves as well. These initial packs included a kiwi, which he thinks helped with their success.

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This was a lot of work! But only 22% of people used them. He was upset about this. But it is actually quite a good conversation rate!

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Pictures of the codes that got you into the Path of Exile beta many years ago. Chris hopes these codes don't do anything nowadays!

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Early press for Path of Exile was also focused on it coming from New Zealand. He believes the NZ angle still works today and gets you traction.

A early preview write up of Path of Exile that stresses the New Zealand connection

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He talks about the "number eight wire" approach of taking a computer apart to fit it in luggage to fly to the USA

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Initially they couldn't get any traction with press in the USA for Path of Exile via promoting the game. But then they found great success by their PR person stressing that they were from New Zealand. That got interest. That got them in the door, not the game.

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They made a plan, focused on it, and shipped it (with iteration and playtesting - particularly at LAN events and Cafes). So much so you can look at photos of old planning on whiteboards and nearly everything is actually in the launch game

The five pillars of Path of Exile were: - Visceral Action Combat - Randomly Generated Levels - Randomly Generated Items - Secure Online Economy - Deep Character Customization (PoE really doubles down on the last one)

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They originally were working on Path of Exile in the gap after Diablo II If another Diablo game wasn't going to come soon they would make it themselves.

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Initially when he co-founded Grinding Gear Games he felt NZ wasn't a good place for games. It had a small talent pool and not enough support. But that has changed.

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Chris grew up in the 80's programming on his Amiga 500 (hell yeah, Amiga was so cool!)

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Now for Chris Wilson and "Why New Zealand is the Best Place to Shape Our World From"

Chris and a slide with the title of the slide

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Now for the announcement... where will NZGDC 2027 be? It's going back to Wellington! 2028? Well, who knows?

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Big thanks to the Speakers! the Exhibitors! the Volunteers! the NZGDC organizing team! the NZGDA! the Sponsors and Partners! Everyone rules! As a speaker I will add thank you to every one that came. The NZ game industry is so wonderful!

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It's closing session time! The speaker will be Chris Wilson from Light Pattern (lightpattern.com) But first the closing content

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Ok. Now I am going to head to the kiwi games zone (which is open to the public today for $5) again to check out some games And then pick up again with the closing session just after 12pm!

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The final point of this talk is that the ability to have fun, to mess around, as a critical part of the culture of Ninja Kiwi That drawing fast to be whimsical and have fun. Has also made them good at drawing fast to communicate and iterate.

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Back to the talk. The important point being made right now is that the problem with 'passion' is that it runs out. That you can't possibly be passionate about everything and will have to do things you don't feel passionate about. So make room for other ways of having fun and being whimsical

Just to quickly jump back to using humor for communication. A point that was made is that it is important that the humor is *sincere* That you believe in the silliness People will see through forced attempts at humor and references. This applies to both social posts and in-game humor #gamedev #ux

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Again the goal is to communicate and share vision quickly. Without losing momentum.

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To do 3D effects with the 2D you can split the grease pencil so some things are drawn in front of and behind 3D elements (via the pink cube like 3D cursors) Because if you know where your camera is pointing you can quickly fake things.

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Another example is using the quick drawings (with text labels) to make a storyboard. Then taking that and quickly doing an animatic/previs to animate it in Blender This can be done using existing models and then drawing fast with a grease pencil.

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For the moment the talk is getting too visual and fast for me to effectively summarize. I do recommend looking it up though when the video is available. It's a very cool way to use Blender.

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She gives the example of using modifiers to the grease pencil drawings to get things like line boil, etc.

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