Check out that header photo! Credit goes to the fine folks at Develop Brighton - you can check out all their photos from the 2019 conference on their Facebook.

Last week we headed down to Brighton, and not just to say hi to our fellow Tonics—each summer, game developers across the UK (and beyond) trek down to Brighton for our industry conference, Develop.

This year we wanted to add a bit of our own MT flair to the conference, and such the Tonic Terrace was born! (After many, many hand-drawn diagrams where I calculated and recalculated between meters and feet).

What was really exciting was that we were offered a brand new space at the conference. Instead of being in the usual exhibitor hall, we had the opportunity to kit out a special space—and so we did! With grass armchairs, astroturf, Gears POP! character cutouts and the brightest garden chairs we could find.

Besides getting the word out about Mediatonic, one of our main goals for the event was to have meaningful chats with developers attending the event. So we made sure we had MT devs from different disciplines on hand throughout the conference, so that if anyone rocked up to Tonic Terrace and wanted to know what it was like to work at MT, they could talk to a developer from their specific discipline. We also set up two different meet-ups on the Wednesday, one for engineers and one for artists (we may or may not have tried to tempt them with delicious mini-cupcakes from local bakery, Cloud 9).

Speaking of tasty treats, we also had these spectacular multicoloured marshmallows as one of our branded giveaways. We had no idea marshmallows could be so customisable and were delighted by the results. They were made by The Fat Mallow Co. and our marketing and recruitment departments made sure they were thoroughly inspected and up to standard ahead of the event.

Overall the event was a great success. Believe it or not, we ended up taking over 30 different Tonics from the London office alone, let alone the Brighton folks who stopped by who were more local! We all had a great time chatting to fellow devs, grads and many of the event volunteers who were full of questions about game development.

It also was a great reminder of what we can achieve as a Mediatonic team, whether that was cycling heavy 2L bottles of lemonade from the Brighton studio to the event space, or convincing the hotel to let us keep our furniture there a day after the event because our delivery van cancelled on us.

Can’t wait for next year!