Introducing The 2018 BIG Festival
This year’s Brazil Independent Games Festival marks its sixth appearance. BIG is Latin America’s largest independent games festival. The event runs from June 23rd to July 1st in Centro Cultural São Paulo, Brazil. This festival’s 2018 iteration emphasizes virtual reality’s evolution. By providing insight, it hopes to legitimize the industry.
The 2018 BIG Festival features over 120 keynotes. Topics include indie games’ integration of cultural references. It also discusses virtual reality’s increasing rate of adoption. Furthermore, BIG will take a look at the impact of social games. They will talk about how it portrays bullying, sexuality, education and coming of age.
What to Expect
The event anticipates over 20,000 visitors. It also has competitions with over $24,000 worth of prizes. The current list of confirmed panelists includes:
- David Martinez (Raw Fury, Co-Founder)
- Steve Escalante (Versus Evil, general manager)
- Sandro Manfredini (Aquiris, Partner – Business Director)
- Nando Guimaraes (Cat Nigiri, CEO)
- Bill Le Voir-Barry (CTO for IBM Esports)
- Chris Remo (Firewatch Game Designer, Composer, Writer)
- Samir El Agili (Tilting Point, COO)
- Reginaldo Valadares (Rovio, Head of Studio)
- Falko Bocker (Flaregames, Senior Developer Relations Manager)
- Sebastian Badylak (Coffee Stain Publishing, VR Fanatic)
- Paul Hanraets (Good Shepherd Entertainment, co-founder)
- Jason Della Rocca (Execution Labs, Co-Founder)
Also, more attendees will be announced nearer to the event’s date. Click here for a full list of updated speakers and visitors. Additionally, you can visit this link to view the BIG Festival’s calendar.
More About The BIG Festival
BIG Festival (Brazil’s Independent Games Festival) has been held since 2012. It is considered one the most influential gaming festival in Latin America. With the mission to strengthen the Brazilian video game ecosystem, the event produces a yearly international independent video game award competition. It also has a major exhibition showcasing hundreds of games including the awards nominees. In addition, there is a spectacular awards ceremony event. Furthermore, there are industry-related lectures and business rounds. Also, in 2017, BIG hosted more than 20,000 visitors. Also, 3,500 of them participated in lectures. And more than 1600 attended business meetings. This year BIG will expand its schedule of lectures and workshops by incorporating new topics and areas that are part of games development cycles, such as music, animation, virtual and augmented reality, a career center, among others segments already present at the event.
