Been to any of our events? Past or Present? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
September brought us back to Glasgow for another new and improved IGDA Scotland meeting. Following the success of Dundee, we had another great night of talks and tipsy banter, bringing together developers from all over Scotland. Glasgow’s a highly significant place for the Chapter to visit; the city is a gateway to the South-West of Scotland, and I met people who had come from as far south as Hamilton to be with us!
I came to Glasgow knowing there was a bit of business to discuss with everyone: Formalising with the IGDA. We have just one step to go before we can ask to get our name put up on the shiny list of officially active IGDA chapters around the world. We’re drumming up quite a fuss over the air waves, and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon!
Bringing on board an elected committee helps us in a variety of ways. In fact, there’s enough content on our committee elections that I’ve given it it’s own page on the IGDA Scotland site! This will stop me blathering about it here any longer. I made up a little overview talk on the bus journey down, and talked to the guys in Glasgow about it (all while under the influence of freshers flu!) and there was a great response on the idea from everyone. It’s always really satisfying when you see that there are people interested and passionate about helping out! You can visit the page on the committee elections & volunteering with the IGDA Scotland chapter here!
Kraig Walker on Twitter
Boring stuff over with, Daniel Livingstone entertained us all with some Kinect demos from students at the University of the West of Scotland. These demos had been built up pre-Kinect SDK and already showed a pretty good grasp over the hardware. For those who fancy antagonising the WWF, “Punt The Penguin” allows to players to play beat the goalie by kicking about an adorably aerodynamic looking penguin across the field. For those who cried when they watched Happy Feet, there was also a demo of the Kinect being used as a musical instrument, something Microsoft has actually taken on now as a Kinect Labs mini game. We’ve got videos of them down below!
Daniel Livingstone on Twitter
We topped off our talks with a presentation from Glasgow based Claymore Games. Claymore is a small 2 man outfit, but have already had some success in the Java mobile market, with Super Solitaire selling over 30,000 copies to date. Brian Hackett talked about their transition to iOS with their latest title Plum Crazy and the lessons that they’ve learned from release.
View the Slides Here
Plum Crazy has only just been out on the app store a little while, and it’s got fantastic life in it. Get it on your device here!
What will stay in my mind about Glasgow is the amount of cross communication that went on. This was one of the key reasons why the Chapter was founded in the first place, and it’s great to see that we’re achieving our aims of linking people together and forging new partnerships.
We’d like to thank everyone who came along and made such an awesome night happen. Planning is now underway for our next meet-up in Edinburgh in October. Keep an eye out for details on how you can get involved very soon!
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