Our studio grows slicker and more… League of Geeks by the day!

The studio is now over 30 people strong, and we decided to give it a little make over. Enjoy!

This year’s Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW) was the studio’s biggest yet! Here is a little recap of the week’s highlights.

Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP)

This year GCAP was bigger than ever, extending it’s talks, panel discussions, networking and opportunities over three days! For GCAPs 14th year, the theme was, ‘Lighting the Way’ – drawing on the age-old symbolism of strength and light to guide us home through turbulent waters.

During both GCAP and PAX we had a group of the awesome LoG Squad

LoG Talks

Lisy

• Joined a roundtable discussion at High Score, a two day event focusing on Composition and Sound Art for Gaming
• Shared insight in what production looks like at LoG in her GCAP talk What to Expect when you’re expecting (a producer)

Emilie

• Ran another talked in her ‘Cards Against ..’ series at GCAP called More Cards Against People Mismanagement
• Game Development Explained With Sock Puppets

Darcy

Lent his voice to a PAXAus panel about Community Management called – ‘Behind the Curtain: What Do Community Managers Actually Do?!’

Woody

Flexed his knowledge in a PAXAus panel called Extra Life: Games as a Service And What Keeps Them Growing

Game for Change Lunch

LoG was also proud to sponsor this year’s Game for Change Lunch hosted by Film Victoria.The invite-only event celebrates the experiences and perspectives of women and non binary individuals who are central to Australia’s game community. The lunch featured insights from key guest speakers in the sector as well as providing a networking opportunity with peers.

We are proud to continue supporting the growth of our local Game Development industry.

During the week, it was a very proud time for our Founders to look around the different events and see so many smiling LoG faces around; sharing in learning and connecting with their peers.

That’s a wrap for this year’s, and the team was left feeling tired.. but INSPIRED!

Bells toll for Armello’s King, and savage heroes strong in scale and faith return to reclaim their birthright.

The Dragon Clan DLC is now live and it stars four, threatening reptilian heroes, and a whole trove of exciting features.

Our new scaley heroes are:

Volodar, Wormchanter

A self proclaimed prophet able to influence sophisticated and beastly minds alike.

Agniya, The Revenant

Likely the oldest creature in Armello, this ancient warrior still holds her oath to the Worm.

Oxana, The Sentinel

A member of the elite sect of Druid Hunters, she is the perfect weapon against the Wyld.

Nazar, Worm’s Will

An illusionist devoted to the Worm who is as crafty as he is paranoid.

This update also includes:

• A brand new Dragon Clan pictographic quest system. Uncover and interpret their mysterious tales.
• “The Dragon Clan” novella penned by returning Armello author, Alex Kain.
• The Dragon Dice. Represent your allegiance to Armello’s forgotten clan.
• Six new Dragon Clan Rings, allowing for a variety of devious playstyles.
• The “Ruin” Amulet, which encourages even the purest of Heroes to become Armello’s next menace.

Find the Dragon Clan DLC on Steam

At League of Geeks, we understand the importance of breaking bread with those you’re close with. Yesterday the whole team did just that, in a spectacular fashion

We ate, drank and conversed in a setting away from work and spent some quality time with each other, building lasting connections that carry into the workplace and hopefully aid communication and teamwork.

If for nothing else, we had a fantastic meal and the crew are already counting the days until the next one.

With our group of geeks growing, we needed a new space to put them all!

Welcome to the brand spanking new League of Geeks Studio Space! A picture is worth 1000 words, so here is 5000 or so.. without further adieu, please take a look around. 💕

ALSO we can’t talk about this move without a BIG thank you to our fantastic new Office Manager, Meegs, who spearheaded project STUDIO SHIFT!

After 4+ years of Hero Packs and content-driven updates, the focus has been set on re-architecting some big systems that would vastly improve the user experience and quality of life for our Armellians. v2.0 also contains a tonne of player-driven feedback – including, yes, MULTIPLAYER RECONNECTION.

v2.0 will be coming across to consoles in the future. More news on that to come!

We’re proud to announce that Armello has landed on Nintendo Switch. The base game is available, along with all of the DLC packs released on other platforms. Or, better yet the Deluxe Edition which includes everything!

Jump in and take your journey for the throne on the go!

Armello is now available worldwide on Google Play after a successful improvement and development cycle through the Android Early Access program. The team is proud to have brought the magic of the full, glorious and gorgeous Armello universe to Android users.

The Android release brings new minor improvements, optimisations and bug fixes along side a powerful GDPR upgrade giving Armello players more information and control over their data. The same updates are being simultaneously deployed to the current iOS release.

Today we have very exciting news to announce – Armello is coming to Nintendo Switch and is now available for Pre-Order on the Nintendo eShop.

Our team have poured heart and soul into this version of the game and it’s wonderful.

Armello on Nintendo Switch will be available in two versions:

Armello
The classic game we all love, which includes years of post release updates and content;

Armello – Complete Edition
That includes all the DLC at the time of release from the other platforms in one glorious edition and at a discounted bundled price making it the best value and most complete edition of Armello yet.

We will also offer an upgrade option for players who purchase the base Armello on Nintendo Switch to upgrade to the Armello – Complete Edition.

The Nintendo Switch is a perfect platform to turn on your friends in multiplayer, in the brutal and beautiful digital board game of Armello.

Worldwide release will roll out on September 27th, 2018

Armello is in beta-launch on Android devices, in the Early Access program!

Whilst we prepare for the full launch, you can navigate to Google Play and download Armello for Android right now. Another exciting milestone, it has been a very long journey for the team but, Armello is now available on all announced platforms.s

Paper House’s Paperbark has launched worldwide on iOS! Paperbark is a serene tale of the Australian bushland, where you guide a peaceful wombat through a very eventful day.

League of Geeks are proud to have partnered with Paper House to bring Paperbark to fruition, it’s a beautiful game that celebrates our beautiful flora and fauna, so unique and special to Australia and rarely seen on digital screens. You can download Paperbark right now on iPad and iPhone in the App Store.

Armello is now available worldwide on iOS!

After many long years since Armello’s initial announce the time has finally come. You can download Armello right now, from the App Store and for FREE!

Since the very beginning of the project we always aimed to make Armello, a best in class experience on tablets and we’re so happy to be able to bring the very same game to high end smartphones as well, something we never originally thought possible. It’s a feat that our development team has managed to allow Armello to function and thrive on mobile devices without compromising that quality seen on consoles and PC.

Android users fear not, we’re hard at work with Armello for Android, coming soon.

The Road to v2.0 has begun, shining a bright new light in Armello’s future.

League of Geeks will be working towards a bigger, better version 2.0 for Armello later this year. This journey is important, not only will we be hoping to provide a fresh experience for old and new players, we’ll be bringing many of the community’s most requested features and many smaller improvements to playability and balance that will make this the best version of Armello ever! Also for players who haven’t played Armello since its original launch, they’ll be surprised to see the significant expansion in content and new playable heroes on offer, they’ll be sure to be a few more surprises as we continue down this journey.

This journey is also exciting as we approach 2.0 content updates will be coming to Steam on a month to month basis.

League of Geeks’ Co-Founder and Director, Trent Kusters, is announced as host of the 2018 IGF (International Games Festival) Awards.

The IGF Awards are regarded as one of the most meaningful Indie Game awards in the world. In previous years, this position has seen prestigious names such as Capy’s, Nathan Vella and Fullbright’s, Nina Freeman, and we know that our very own Trent will do us proud.

So be sure to tune into the live stream on the night of the awards, lap in the laughs and magic, and be wow’d by the incredible games made by the world’s best indie game developers.

Armello – The Rivals DLC, is Armello’s third Hero pack has just launched on Steam!

Four daring new Heroes have entered the fray, and pose as new and interesting threats OR allies. These four new heroes explore Armello’s mechanics in new ways and are some of our most interesting and diverse characters yet. With Armello’s second anniversary just passing in September, we’re proud to continue to add value for our players, old and new.

In the following months, we’ll be hard at work launching these heroes across our other platforms, so stay tuned.

The Victorian Government has appointed Melbourne game developer Blake Mizzi to the Film Victoria Board.

A Director and Co-Founder of the Melbourne based games company League of Geeks, Mr Mizzi will bring valuable expertise and ably represent the interests of Victoria’s booming game sector.

League of Geeks’ debut game Armello launched internationally in 2015 in 13 languages receiving worldwide accolades and winning the 2015 Australian Game of the Year from Kotaku.

Board President Ian Robertson welcomed the new appointment saying “Blake’s passion and experience at the forefront of game development will bring an informed perspective and assist Film Victoria in continuing to support the Victorian games industry.”

The Minister for Creative Industries, Martin Foley also confirmed the reappointments of Ian Robertson, who will continue to serve as Film Victoria’s Board President and Lyn Maddock AM. Both have been reappointed for a further three years.

Ian Robertson has served as Film Victoria Board President since 2011 bringing over 35 years of experience in the media and entertainment industries and has also served on the Boards of Screen Australia and Ausfilm.

With more than 25 years of experience in government and private sectors Lyn Maddock AM was recognised with Queens Birthday honours in 2011 for her service to public administration.

Board President Ian Robertson thanked outgoing Board member and CEO of WTFN Entertainment Daryl Talbot for his service to the Board and the Victorian screen industry over the past six years. “Daryl has been a valuable member of the Board sharing his business and production expertise and we are sincerely grateful for the contribution he has made.”

The Film Victoria Board currently comprises 11 members, the majority of which must have screen industry experience.

Source: Film Victoria.

League of Geeks’ latest profit share distribution marks a happy occasion as the amount of profit now distributed to contributors is above – or well above in many cases – that of a standard industry contractor at market rate. What does that mean? It means, our contributors are seeing significant return and upside on time investment in the Armello project.

We at League of Geeks are well into our second-year post launch and have the iOS and Android releases well underway and in development, with the 3rd milestone just approved. Our team is continuing to expand our DLC offering across platforms and have invested more heavily on internal systems and process to facilitate those ends, including a deeper investment in automated and manual QA testing and game analytics.

League of Geeks’ own, Lisy “Forbes’ 30 Under 30” Kane has been presented with the 2017 Tim Richards award at this years Seen and Screened Awards.

“Melbourne-based games producer Lisy Kane was presented with the 2017 Tim Richards Award in acknowledgement of her skills as a leading female games developer and her efforts to support women working in the games industry.”

Apparently Lisy is determined to cultivate an extensive award collection and we have no doubt she’ll succeed.

You can check the full details here.

It’s International Women’s Day 2017! A great day to celebrate all the hard work women have made in games. We’d like to thank the women we work with every day, whose creativity and skill both inspire us and make such incredibly positive changes to our profession, games and lives.

LoG is proud to say that we have 6 out of 14 team members who identify as women. We’re still not at the goal of 50/50 gender representation that we’ve long strived towards, but we welcome the work needed to get there. We genuinely believe businesses should be powerhouses for good, but we also know believing is not enough. Change can only happen by being bold, actively looking for solutions, and by making positive decisions in regards to company culture, hiring methods and treatment of women.

The games industry is still largely staffed with men, despite half of game players being women. Game development culture needs to adapt and create bold strategies for inclusion, diversity and gender parity.

You can expect to see LoG continue our efforts as a leader in equality, diversity and pushing best business practices. Not just within games, but within our local and global community.

From all of us at LoG

We’re happy to announce that LoG has just completed its fifth consecutive Profit Share Distribution for the sales from Armello’s fourth quarter of 2016. This distribution is the third largest and marks a significant upturn in revenue for the project and company as a whole. The main drivers pushing Armello and LoG’s revenue upwards is the increasing reach to customers in China through Steam, an enhanced product offering on consoles through DLC and the continued investment into inventory game systems through Steam’s marketplace.

LoG is continuing with its port of Armello to iOS and Android and is in the midst of securing a strong partner to help expedite the mobile launch, still expected for Q2 this year.

The team at LoG have spent time around the Christmas break reviewing company procedures and processes and have been authoring plans into taking them well into 2020. Following the first stages of these new plans LoG will be moving to a new and larger studio space this March and expanding the team with new hires already underway.

We’re proud to announce that every available member of League of Geeks will be heading to San Francisco for the Games Developers Conference (GDC), late this February. We’ll be taking this opportunity to meet with our established business partners and mingle with partners-to-be.

The team will disperse throughout the conference to trade secrets regarding their individual areas of expertise, imparting what we’ve learnt in our journey and gathering knowledge from the other side of the world.

League of Geeks produce extraordinaire, Lisy Kane, has been recognised in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 gaming list. We’d like to congratulate Lisy on her international recognition within the industry and for staying grounded by spilling 90% of every beverage she consumes.

You can check out an interview with Lisy here.

We at League of Geeks are working with CG Spectrum to help create a healthy and strong paid internship program in the Australian Games Industry. The intent of the collaboration is to bridge the skill gap students encounter between completing their courses and finding full-time employment, which helps the students find employment and helps studios find valuable team members. We’re seeing strong growth globally in the games industry and a high demand for specialised game industry skills such as those found in VR development, helping our local students, also helps secure the future of Australian games studios who rely on finding the best talent to make the best games possible. We’re offering three paid internships initially, with a focus to encourage women and less represented groups to benefit from this program, because we recognise diversity is more than just important, it’s essential in our eyes.

CG Spectrum’s blog post explains more.

The Australian Game Developer Awards may not receive the same level of media coverage and excitement from the general public than a TV Logie might, but it is a critically important award for the developers who pour their heart and soul into their creations. Creating video games are a hugely complex, technical, creative and risky undertaking, few know how difficult developing and releasing a game can be. And for every successful game and studio there are many that don’t make it. To be recognised amongst your peers, is both hugely humbling and a welcome burden of responsibility to help see other studios achieve their goals and reach their potential. The Australian Games Industry is a wonderful industry of inclusion, respect, innovation and creativity, but one aspect we adore more is the openness and comradery between studios who could easily be competition, but instead we stand as sisters and brothers.

So we were blown away on the Wednesday night of Melbourne International Games Week, when the words “and the winner is League of Geeks” were said. Everything after that moment was a blur or excitement, emotion and gratitude. We were taken by surprise, utterly, the calibre of competition that evening, this year, was so high we hadn’t considered we’d actually take out the award. We have worked so incredibly hard over the last (nearly) 6 years, building this company and giving as much back to an industry we love that we can, that it felt amazing to be recognised by our peers and receive this award. We hadn’t expected to win, because we know there’s still so much more to do, so much more we can do together to push our industry forward, to champion diversity, and other critical issues holding us back. For these reasons we hadn’t yet seen our work complete, not yet ready or deserving yet of such recognition with the job not yet done, but we understand that these tasks may never be done and we are deeply thankful and humbled to be named Australian Studio of the Year for 2016.

We’re super proud here at League of Geeks to have taken out the Victorian Export Award this year for the Creative Industries. We want to acknowledge Hipster Whale, good friends of ours who took out the same award in 2015. It is a strong sign of the strength, ambition, creativity and drive of the games sector in Victoria that two games studios have won this prestigious award, back to back, against other strong and worthy competition. League of Geeks is now a finalist for the Australian Export Awards in the Creative Industries field to be decided later this November.

We wanted to share some of the activities and numbers that we feel helped contribute to our success this year;

We launched our debut game Armello, with a simultaneous world wide release in 13 languages on Steam (PC, Mac, Linux), PlayStation 4 and DRM-free platforms. Part of the push included localising store and advertising copy into 20 different languages including Arabic, Swedish, Norwegian, Turkish and many more.

League of Geeks’ global export sales represent 96% of our total revenue, with the United States being our largest single market, followed by, and in order; Russia, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Korea, China and Japan.

League of Geeks has adopted a global “go giver” and “omni-present” strategy. We at LoG actively travel the world, visiting studios, talking at conferences, donating our time, organising peer-to-peer dinners and information sharing between other studios to better the global industry as whole. Our global generosity has paid back many fold over. Our be everywhere “omni-present” approach by being at the world’s major conferences again and again, by being at the major tradeshows has helped secure our place at the global table.

Lastly we work with contractors the world over, and having a local speaker and inhabitant in continent we can access and ask questions has been hugely valuable.

Australian game studios are very well respected the world over, and a continued focus on international markets will continue to see Australian developers reach new and growing markets.

In August Blake, Trent, Ruth and Darcy set off to attend GDC Europe and exhibit Armello at Gamescom 2016 in Cologne, Germany. In between spending some quality time with new and old fans of Armello, they got the chance to maintain our sturdy relationships with business partners and like-minded developers.

From Cologne, they ventured through The Netherlands, rendezvousing with business contacts before flying all the way to the Seattle, USA for PAX West. Needless to say, they were happy to return to their own beds after a manic, yet invaluable month.

Hey Armellians!

We’ve heard loud and clear that some of our localisation at launch was a bit well, weird, and we’ve been working super hard with our partners to address that.

As you heard, we updated Armello on PS4 yesterday and we just wanted to let you all know that the PS4 update has major improvements to localisation across all languages that will bring the languages to a level that lives up to that League of Geeks quality bar you all know and love.

PlayStation users will be the first to see these changes, (we know our fans in Japan will be especially happy to hear this news), but fear not as these changes will be hitting all other platforms very shortly!

So, if you’ve been holding off for us to clear up and localisation issues in your region, now’s the time to start your quest for the throne! See you in Armello!

<3 LoG

Hey there!

So the first PS4 update for Armello went live today on PSN!

v1.0.1 has major improvements to localisation across all languages, improved map visibility, and a bunch of miscellaneous benefits like selecting AI heroes and a bunch of stability improvements for multiplayer!

You can check out the full patch notes on the League of Geeks forums now, or of course, just jump straight into Armello and see it all for yourself.

Keep an ear to the ground for v1.1, Armello’s next major update – which isn’t too far off. 🙂

<3 LoG

Kosta from IGN recently joined the League of Geeks crew to write an article about how we made Armello.

Read the full article here.

League of Geeks recently celebrated the official global launch of Armello on PlayStation 4 and Steam. We thank Sony, who were quick to let us know the launch price on the PSN stores had been miscalculated in some regions within South East Asia. The following regions have been affected:

– Singapore

– Taiwan

– Malaysia

– Indonesia

– Thailand

– South Korea

We’re currently working closely with Sony Computer Entertainment, who is helping us set Armello to its intended price in these regions.

We have decided to leave Armello live and for sale with the significantly lower price until the price can be corrected, rather than withdraw Armello from sale. We want everyone to enjoy Armello and have a great experience on PlayStation.

We thank all the PlayStation players who voted for us during the PlayStation Plus Vote to Play campaign and thank every player enjoying Armello right now. Prices will be adjusted very soon to the intended sale price. We thank you for your understanding and are excited to see you online in the land of Armello with your friends!

<3

Everyone at LoG

The League of Geeks crew are super excited to finally announce that our debut title, Armello has officially launched on the Steam and PlayStation 4 platforms.

Enjoy our launch trailer:

The Geeks are proud to announce that our debut title, Armello will be hitting full release on 1st September 2015 (PST). This is an exciting milestone for the team and we can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on. Read more about the journey over here.

The League of Geeks team is excited to announce that Armello has been selected to received funding from Indie Fund. They’ve recently expanded their pool of incredibly talented people and will help Armello reach its full potential.

The League of Geeks crew and thrilled to announce that our debut title, Armello will be coming to PlayStation in September 2015.

Read Trent’s blog post on the Sony site to hear more about this exciting new venture.

We’re excited to announce our debut game title, Armello has arrived on the Steam Early Access store!

Here’s our Gameplay Overview Trailer:

We’re excited to announce that with the help of our incredible community and our hardworking team, Armello is coming to Early Access via Steam on the 22nd January 2015 (PST).

Since coming to Alpha in September 2014, we’ve been doing regular releases based on both our own vision as well as feedback from the community.

We’re very excited to announce that our debut title, Armello has reached Beta. For us this milestone means that around 4,000 new players get to explore the world that we have been working so hard to create.

Those who supported us either via Kickstarter or through Slacker Backer will start to receive their Beta keys, so keep an eye on your inbox!

Our passionate Armello Alpha players have already started to create documents and Quick Start Guides to help out those who are joining us for Beta. You guys rule!

So as we approach the end of 2014 (can you believe it), the League of Geeks crew will be setting our eyes on our next milestone, Early Access for Armello!

We’re so thrilled to have been featured on this months cover of Indie Game Magazine with a great preview spread of Armello.

Back in our home town, the Geeks returned to PAX Australia! The three days were jam packed with multiplayer tournaments and showcasing the progress made in Armello since last years PAX Aus.

We were also thrilled to meet some of our incredible Kickstarter backers as well as new fans of Armello. All in all, a great three days!

Things have surely been happening here at League of Geeks, with an upcoming Beta release and an Early Access following shortly after that we thought.. we need help.

So we want to give a warm welcome to Lisy, she’ll be working with our passionate Armello community as well as wrangling our growing backlog of tasks.

Outside of LoG she co-founded Girl Geek Academy and plays in a band.

Welcome aboard!

Armello was selected to be part of the Indie MEGABOOTH at Gamescom so the Geeks went to Köln for schnitzel adventures!

Five days, fourteen hour days but what a crazy ride! The LoG team got to experience both an incredible massive Convention as well as showing Armello to a brand new audience.

In late August, 2014 the Geeks set out for the rainy city of Seattle for PAX Prime.

Every month, our man on the ground, Michéle is going to be dropping rad little videos straight from inside LoG HQ for you all. You can check out the first one here!

For our first blog post, we were in the midst of our announce.

Exciting. Harrowing. Nerve racking. They’re all fitting when describing what we were feeling at the time.

Now coming out the other end of that incredible period in our history, we are completely and utterly humbled by the response we received. The trailer had a total of 50,000 combined views in just one week – which is literally unheard of for an indie tablet game, from an unknown developer, announcing in the midst of Tokyo Game Show… without a single bit of gameplay to show.

We were featured by:

• Polygon (The Verge)
• IGN
• Kotaku
• Pocket Tactics
• Board Game Geek
• indiegames.com,
• and many, many more, including major European sites, Mega-Games, Games.cz, TricTrac and then more still.

Best of all though, you, our new found community, have made this all worthwhile. Working on a game without sharing it to the world, although often for the best, can be torturous. Your support, comments, questions, even the laughs we got from the inevitable trolls, are greatly appreciated, so we wanted to give something back, to you.

One of the requests we’ve been hearing the most is for more info on what Armello actually is, and how it plays. Obviously we can’t tell you everything (we’re saving some of the best bits for later), but we figured we’d throw caution to the wind and pull back a bit more of the curtain.

So…

Armello has one goal; become King or Queen of Armello.

As we’ve stated before, it’s a digital card and board game, designed specifically for tablets. The environment is fully 3D, and it’s already looking gorgeous. Armello is a lush 3D world, with forests, mountains, swamps, dungeons and more. We’ve even got a full day/night cycle that directly affects gameplay.

You, play as a ‘Hero’ from one of the four animal clans; Rat, Rabbit, Bear or Wolf. You navigate your fully animated, 3D character across the board (divided into hex tiles) as you quest, scheme, explore, vanquish monsters, perform the Mad King’s royal edicts, and face off against other players.

Different heroes provide the opportunity for different play styles, and we have many more features in the game that let you customise your game even further.

People ask us how it’s a card and board game. We want to spill the beans on this, but we’ll be going into details on card play at a later date. All we can say is that cards are integral to almost every part of play.

Shared storytelling is a big part of the Armello experience. We want players to not only be able to carve their very own adventures and epic tales with each game, but to be able to directly influence other players stories. We’ll talk about that a little later on.

Armello’s quite epic, but all of this started from something really simple. At the end of this, we all want to be able to sit down in a cafe somewhere and play Armello, and we want it to be an epic adventure of heroism, horror, and heart, that we’ve created and shared together.

We’re hoping you’ll be ready to start your Armello adventure when the time comes.

If you want to stay in the loop on future updates, join our community on Facebook by ‘liking’ the Armello Facebook page.

<3 LoG

It’s 12:33am where I am right now (Melbourne, Australia) and I’ve just handed over all the assets for the announce of our debut game, Armello.

‘Surreal.’ It’s a word often used incorrectly, but in this scenario it fits brilliantly.

Almost eighteen months ago, this crazy ride began… now I’m sitting here watching this amazing trailer (that we somehow managed to pull together with the help of Adam Duncan and friends at 12 Field) on YouTube. The scary thing is that I know deep down, the crazy ride hasn’t even really begun, and so if you’re reading this because you just heard about us, or you saw the Armello trailer, welcome aboard! Follow us on twitter, like us on Facebook and if you feel like it, reach out and say ‘hey’. In the end, we’re doing all this for you (well, and us, we enjoy this to ridiculous degrees), so I feel like we’ll no doubt become friends. And that’s something we’re really looking forward to.