Kathy Smart

Awards and Achievements

Kathy's work as a producer at Joy Everafter Stories has given her a lot of opportunities.

Here are some of her achievements as a game developer.

Exhibition at AVCon 2024

Kathy wears a red foam exclamation mark as a hat and an AVCon lanyard. Her shirt has mirror writing incompletely saying I do not go around kissing frogs. Beside her a bearded man smiles and holds up the camera.
Kathy Smart and Chad Habel at AVCon. Kathy wears a red exclamation mark to show she is a Live Action Role Play NPC.

Panel member of inaugural meeting of Women in Creative Technology

Kathy felt privileged to be asked to be on the panel of the launch of Women in Creative Technology in Adelaide.
5 women sit on high stools in front of a Stone & Chalk venue logo with a powerpoint slide to the right showing their faces and names. The woman on the left looks thoughtful, the next woman is holding a microphone looking humorous, the next woman, also holding a microphone, is speaking with great charm, the next woman is looking up as she listens, the woman on the right is looking across to watch the speaker.
Nara Wilson, Kirsty Parkin, Onnie Chan, Linda Phompak, Kathy Smart. Dr Helen Chandler, moderator, is off scene.

Interview on ABC Radio Drive Adelaide

Kathy was honoured to be interviewed on ABC Radio Adelaide Drive by Emma Sleath on 30 January 2024.
The thrust of her message it that it takes indie developers to make really original games.

National Cultural Policy submission

Who writes a 17-page submission about the videogame industry?  Somebody passionate about the industry!
The submission may be downloaded in pdf format at https://www.arts.gov.au/sites/default/files/submissions/ncp0513-kathy-smart-game-design-pty-ltd.pdf.  If you would like a copy in a different format, email kathy123456@iinet.net.au.

Game Changer 2021

GamesIndustry.biz is the market leading website and community for news and information about the global video games industry.  The site has a significant and qualified global audience, with over 130,000 registered users spanning every part of the industry.
gamesindustry.biz profiled Kathy as a Game Changer for proving that games are not just a young person's game.  https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-12-16-game-changers-2021-part-seven.

Long-listed for the New Media Writing Prize 2021

Frog's Princess was long-listed for the New Media Writing Prize, to be announced in early 2022.

World Energy Council Transformathon 2021

Kathy was honoured to be asked to find participants from the games industry for this unusual game-jam/hackathon hybrid event.

She also participated but alas, the team did not win.
Her fellow team members were Rachelle Cooper and John Millard.

SA Screen Awards Best Game nomination 2021

Frog's Princess Chapters 1&2 was nominated in the Best Game section of the South Australian Screen Awards 2021.

Winnovation Award 2021

South Australian Women in Innovation awarded Kathy the Winnovation Award for Art in 2021.

Rising Star Award 2021

The Australian Game Developer Awards are awarded by IGEA, the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association, every year and guess who won a Rising Star Award in 2021!  It just goes to show you can still be rising at the ripe old age of 61.

Games For Change - Asia Pacific Festival 2021

Kathy was delighted to be chosen to speak at the inaugural Games For Change Asia-Pacific Festival about Frog's Princess: Making a diverse, inclusive and accessible visual novel.

GCAP 2021

Kathy was again honoured to speak at Games Connect Asia-Pacific, this time about Indie Finances - Invoices, ABNs, GST, costs - how do we do this stuff?  This talk was fully animated by Kosta Canetselis and Alex Ferrabetta of Live Booleans and Kathy prepared an Invoicing cheat sheet for any indie contractor to use. 

Australian Fairytale Society Conference 2021

Kathy was privileged to speak at the 2021 Australian Fairy Tale Society Conference alongside such luminaries as author Juliet Marillier and playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer.

Adelaide Game Developer Talk 2021

Poster with photo of Kathy laughing in front of image from game, with wording: Kathy Smart, Indie Finances.
Kathy gave a double talk about Indie Finances featuring an Interrogator, Sol Trader, Partners A&B, a company director, and "representives" from ASIC and the ATO.

Live Booleans interview

Kathy was honoured to be interviewed by Kosta and Alex of game dev podcaster Live Booleans.

For a discussion about game development in Adelaide, Kathy's latest game Frog's Princess, and how the audacious Recording Dialogue GCAP 2020 presentation was made, listen as Live Booleans interview Kathy in their 8th podcast.

GCAP 2020

Kathy spoke at GCAP, the premiere game developer conference in the Southern Hemisphere.  Well, actually, she made a movie in which she gave full rein to her sometimes lamentable sense of humour.

Australian Fairytale Society Conference 2020

Kathy was delighted to speak at the Australian Fairytale Society Conference about making Frog's Princess.

Regional Digital EXPO

Kathy spoke at the Kadina and Port Pirie Regional Digital Showcase talks in November 2019.

Recognised game at AVCon 2019

One person plays Frog's Princess on a small computer while the game play is reflected on a larger screen beside a banner saying
Ruby Neale and Priscilla Ah Chee play Frog's Princess in the Obscure Games Room at AVCon in July 2019.
Kathy was honoured to be one of only six game developers invited to show their game in the AVCon Obscure Games Room in 2019. 

CareHack 2019

Third place winner for Find It Fast!
Professor Anthony Maeder and Doctor Didy Button teamed with Kathy to design an app for finding misplaced spectacles, hearing aids and dentures in an aged care facility.

The Melbourne Playground at ACMI

ACM CHI Play conference

Kathy stands behind her display featuring a Mac computer, a PC computer, an iPad and an Android phone with Frog's Princess playing on all of them.
Frog's Princess was showed at the Association for Computing Machinery's Computer-Human Interaction conference in Melbourne, Australia in 2018.
The Frog’s Princess Interactive Storybook was accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3270316.3270595.  This is an extended abstract about making a game with strong ethical elements.

Refugees Connect app

Irfan Ahmed, Filip Rajec, Kathy Smart and Rohit Kumar met at GovHack and worked on analysing government databases to improve the Refugee Welcome app
 Winner star

We won the national GovHack .tech/space bounty for the best hack or website to use a .tech or .space domain name as their 'official' domain: - www.refugeeconnect.space

Refugee Welcome app

The Refugees Welcome team:

Team leader Theo Campbell, social worker
Designer Filip Rajec, PhD candidate in Computational Physics
Producer Kathy Smart, Advanced Diploma in Game Design & Production
Website developer Irfan Ahmed, Master of Science in Computer Networking
 Finalist star
Our Refugees Welcome app finalled in the 2017 South Australian Share Challenge!
Refugees Welcome is an international group which finds hosts with spare rooms for guest refugees.  Matching takes a huge amount of volunteer time, so we designed an app for hosts and guests to find matches online.

Subtractive Synthesis

Subtractive Synthesis won the prize for best programming, entirely thanks to William. 
Here we are with the Adelaide Global Game Jam 2017 programming judge.
Subtractive Synthesis was selected for the Indie Games Room at AVCon in Adelaide, 2017.  Here we are at AVCon with William's synthesiser playing along.  From left, Kathy Smart, William Newman, and Ashleigh Hansen who was a tireless helper at our booth.
The Global Game Jam 2017 was a wonderful experience where I teamed with C programmer and consummate game designer William Newman to create a mystery where clues were uncovered by creating sound waves to cancel out noise on tapes.
The art style was influenced by James Whistler's almost monochromatic pictures and characters are all Whistler creations, even Mrs Whistler, who does not appreciate whistling.
Subtractive Synthesis was selected for the Indie Games Room at AVCON 2017 and is available at https://birdrun.itch.io/subtractive-synthesis/purchase.
Vimeo playthrough of Subtractive Synthesis  https://vimeo.com/207176272
Subtractive Synthesis now has its own website at www.subtractivesynthesis.site

The Playground Enrichment App

Created for TechJam Connected Music City Challenge 2016 to the theme 'Digital Play in Musical Spaces'.  Not sure what to do with your child on a playground?  Take your child to the Hindmarsh Square playground and play on all the equipment, unlocking tracks until you can hear the whole song.  Musician Joshua Crowther, artist Andrew Popescu, designer Kathy Smart, producer Mark Videon.

VR Medieval Mysteries

VR Medieval Mysteries, a VR game for vision impaired people to play on the Samsung GearVR.
Designers Kathy Smart and Natalie Mondon, programmers Jaysen Griffiths and Jamie Barker, artists Zack Rosser, Joel Franklin and Jordan Greatwich, producer Kathy Smart.  SFX by SAE students and voice acting by Adelaide College of the Arts students.
www.vrmedievalmysteries.com

Two-Headed Ogre

Winner of People's Choice AIE Adelaide 2015.  Each player is a head of the two-headed ogre in a 3D open world.  Work together to run past obstacles, smash goblins into the river, knock down their houses and finally defeat their master, the wizard in the tower.  Programmer Reece Howe, design and sound Kathy Smart, design and art Russell Andersen, character art Kristopher La, environmental art Kieran Mayer.