Author Archives: Brian McDonald

Scottish Game Jam 2013 – Play Party

Earlier this week, IGDA Scotland held our first meeting for 2013, beginning as we do every year by inviting teams from the Scottish GameJam to showcase what they created in the intensive 2 day event held at the end of January.

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We had a record number of registrations for the event, and despite a very snowy night, we clocked around 60 people through the door in what proved to be a really enjoyable night of socialising and play, with 12 games from all three of the Scottish Game Jam sites on hand to be played.

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At the end of the night, we held the now-annual awards to select IGDA Scotland’s “Pick of the Jam”, this year using a highly sophisticated and technical “clapometer” voting system. The crowd had some clear favourites among the teams that were exhibiting and expressed that loudly.

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1st – Typing Together – http://globalgamejam.org/2013/typing-together 

A fast and furious competitive typing game where the goal is to out type your opponents. This game also threw in some interesting additional challenges such as typing on a upside down keyboard, typing with your nose and saying aloud the incompressible word before typing.

Typing With Friends

2nd – Luv vs Dub – http://globalgamejam.org/2013/lub-vs-dub-ipad

A lovely little 2 player iPad game where you and the other player have to run on a line while avoiding the spike of the heart beat. The winner of the game is the player which collects the most hearts, seems simple enough but there are various special items such as ice which will thwart your opponents ability to control his character.

LvD_3

3rd – Hunt The Wumpus Global Edition – http://globalgamejam.org/2013/hunt-wumpus-global-edition

Another multiplayer game where the goal is to hunt and kill the elusive Wumpus. In this game the players navigate a text based adventure environment by issuing the classic NORTH, SOUTH, WEST and EAST commands. The player with the most Wumpus kills is the winner.

HuntTheWumpus

You can play these games and more from the following links

Dundee – http://globalgamejam.org/sites/2013/sgj-dundee/games

Edinburgh – http://globalgamejam.org/sites/2013/sgj-edinburgh/games

Glasgow – http://globalgamejam.org/sites/2013/sgj-Glasgow/games

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the jam, but of course special congratulations to our winners, who get to proudly claim that they are Scotland’s Pick as best of the Game Jam!

Glasgow Meetup

We are back in Glasgow for another IGDA Scotland meet-up. Join us on Wednesday July 25th from 7pm onward at the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts.

We have some excellent speakers lined up:

Phil Harris is a long time friend of IGDA Scotland and has worked in the industry for a number of years: Initially as Editor-in-Chief of SquareGo videogame review site and more recently with The Story Mechanics. He is now working on story aspects with Blazing Griffin, as well as providing articles and feedback to a variety of indie developers and press.

Steve Young is Creative Director at WeeWorld in Glasgow,  he has spent the last 7 years building WeeWorld.com into one of the world’s leading Social Networks/Virtual Worlds for young teens, predominantly in the US, with over 50 million user accounts created and 2.5 million monthly active users. WeeWorld have recently been featured in a Studio Profile at ScottishGames.net.

http://scottishgames.net/2012/04/24/weeworld-studio-profile/

Join us at the CCA for the usual – interesting speakers, a chance to socialise with like minded developers and, importantly, a really fun evening.

Please sign up for the event on Eventbrite.

IGDA Scholarship Workshop – 19-04-12

Hot on the heels of our successful Edinburgh meetup we are delighted to
announce a second event this month!

In conjunction with Glasgow Caledonian University, we will be hosting a Scholarship Workshop.

This Workshop focuses on the IGDA Scholarship Programme, which is open to all students across Scotland. The programme gives you the chance to attend some of the largest Games Conferences in the world. Not only do you get a free pass but you will be rubbing shoulders with the giants of the Games Industry, picking up valuable inspiration and insight.

http://www.igda.org/scholarships

At this workshop, Luke Dicken(@LukeD) who won the AI Scholarship for this years GDC and a scholarship for last years E3 will talk about his experiences as a Scholar and will give some hints on how to get in.

We will be hosting this event at Glasgow Caledonian University in room M705 – George Moor Building on 19th of April from 12pm – 2pm and is open to full time PhD, post-grad and under-graduate students.

Finding GCU

Hope to see you all there!