On Wednesday November 13th we held our annual general meeting in the Admiral Bar in Glasgow, which looked over what the chapter had achieved in 2013 and also our plans for the future. The event was very kindly sponsored by the UK Interactive Entertainment Association, who bought a drink for everyone who attended the event.
Proceedings kicked off with the annual report, where we looked at the numerous success that the chapter has gone through over the past year and what we hope to do over the next year. Our successes included the tremendously successful Scottish Game Jam and associated Play Party, Richard Lemarchand’s masterclass in July, the Develop Conference breakfast, and our two recently-launched services; the RiftShare program and the IGDA Scotland Job Board.
The RiftShare program is designed to strengthen the relationship between the chapter and the greater Scottish development community, while at the same time making it easier for developers to create projects for the Oculus Rift. The job board provides a free forum for the community to advertise open positions, but it is also open to hobbyist or student teams looking for new members.
Looking to the future, the chapter is hoping to build upon its successes. We are planning to hold more events, such as new masterclasses and game jams, and increase our engagement with the community by helping to run other events. In 2013 we were delighted to present GamesWest alongside the University of West Scotland and West College Scotland, which saw a variety of speakers give advice on how to get into the games industry to FE and HE students. We also partnered with the University of Abertay in Dundee to host a screening of the Launch Conference, and most recently we were involved with the Scottish Game Jam.
You can view a recording of our annual report below.
We also ran both an open mic session at the start of the meeting, and there was a chance after the annual report for developers to show off some of the projects they are currently working on.
Highlights during the open mic session included the one man development team over at Pixel Sword, who has released his first game Square Match Go, a mobile-based fast paced puzzle game and is available now from the Pixel Sword website. A number of companies also used the open mic to advertise any vacancies they currently have, which of course you can check out on the IGDA Scotland Job Board.
Following the annual report, we got demonstrations of some games produced within the community. The Dungeoning is a procedurally generated, roguelike platformer with some really nice visuals and pretty fluid gameplay, which you can see in action here. Tricone Lab is a puzzle game centered around the interactions within a multicellular organism, which was really fun to play. You can find out more about the game by visiting the website.
We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along, and of course a massive thank you to UKIE for sponsoring the evening. Here’s to a successful 2014!