Narrative-focused video games development with Ren'Py, an open source engine

Abstract

The game engine, Ren'Py, is an open source engine used to make countless interactive fiction games, also known as visual novels (VNs). These include commercial hits with VN elements such as Persona 5, to viral works such as Doki Doki Literature Club (2mil+ downloads as of Jan 2018). I learned to program in Python using this engine, and have released my commercial game with it after working for a few years on it during weekends, selling 10K+ copies in 8 months. In the daytime, I work as a principal data scientist in fintech. Outcome: The audience will understand the independent gaming industry and how they can use Python to break into the industry, as I share my journey. There will also be components of source code walkthrough, but will be more of an overview than a step by step tutorial due to the scope of the talk.

Description