Tag Archives: Glasgow

Upcoming Event: Game Think 2.0 – 3rd Feb 2017

Building on the original event in 2015, Game Think 2.0 is a half day mini-conference that will provide students, researchers, and games industry practitioners with an opportunity to share their current video game-related research and development interests in a fun, informal way. You can register for the event at https://game-think-2.eventbrite.co.uk
This year, the headline speaker is renowned game theorist (and occasional game developer) Jesper Juul. Jesper is currently Associate Professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Visiting Associate Professor at Comparative Media Studies/Writing, MIT. He is the author of The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games (MIT Press, 2013) and Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (MIT Press, 2005) and has published extensively on topics relating to game design and theory. A second headline speaker, and the full line up of talks, will be announced shortly.

The event will take the form of a series of short ten-minute talks with an additional five minutes for discussion following each talk. The line-up includes talks on topics including: successfully obtaining a UK Games Fund Grant, organising games exhibitions, the design of serious games, queerness in games, the impact of game audio in modern culture, and more. The mini-conference will be followed by informal drinks and networking is actively encouraged.

A limited number of modest travel bursaries are available to support UK-based postgraduate students – please contact [email protected] for details. Funds are also available to support follow-up meetings between attendees from industry and academia, with a view to developing future collaborations.

 

#GameThink

Film Student looking for game devs and academics to interview

Jack Hunter, a student at Glasgow University, is looking for Scottish game developers and academics to interview as part of his final Masters project.

He is producing a documentary on the question of “Are Games Art?”, and seeking input from:

  • Gamers
  • Developers
  • Academics; specialists in Video Game studies and History of Art

He is currently in the research stage and looking for input from developers at this time, specifically regarding:

  • what do video games mean to you personally?
  • what do they mean to you as a creator?
  • what are your opinions on the ongoing debate as to whether or not video games should be considered an art form?

If you are interested in taking part, and comfortable being on film, please contact Jack at: [email protected]

Glasgow Caledonian University hosting Antura Jam to aid Syrian children

Glasgow Caledonian University is hosting a game jam to make games that can help Syrian refugee children. You can register here: http://bit.ly/anturajam

Over 2.8 million children are out of school due to the five year conflict. These children receive no education and a wealth of potential human capital, creativity, and achievement is being lost.

In the light of this horrible tragedy, Cologne Game Lab, Wixel Studios and Video Games Without Borders teamed up to form a partnership and find a way to limit the consequences of the situation. Antura and the Letters is a game project being led by Emmanuel Guadiola from the Cologne Game Lab. The game will be released on iOS and Android so that Syrian children can receive an education and learn how to read.

We are hoping to prototype a few different game ideas over this jam weekend and we need your help!

The jam will take place in rooms C116 and C117 in Charles Oakley building at GCU, from Friday 7th through Sunday 9th

We will have access: • from 5pm-8pm on Friday 7th • from 10am-4pm on Saturday 8th • from 10am-3pm on Sunday 9th.

About Emmanuel

Emmanuel is a Game Director and expert in game design methodology, Emmanuel Guardiola contributes to more than 30 major titles in the game industry, for independent studios (Life is Strange, Frank Herbert’s Dune…) and publishers (Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia…). PhD in computer science, he also drives research on player psychological profiling through gameplay at the CNAM computer science laboratory (Paris). He was one of the key creators of the game design training at the French Graduate School on Games and Interactive Media (ENJMIN) If you want to learn more about Emmanuel’s work, you can check out his LinkedIn, or his MobyGames profile

http://bit.ly/anturajam

 

IGDA Scotland June Meeting – Save the Date!

We will be returning to Glasgow on the 22nd June for one of our regular monthly meetups. Join us at Megabytes for the usual talks and announcements, then stick around afterwards for a drink and natter with everyone.

Our theme this month is Exhibiting and we would like to get a good mix of people together to discuss their tips and experiences covering all manner of showcasing at events. This could be from small indie games, right the way through to big-budget AAA projects. And if you are one of the people reading this thinking “hey, I’m going to be doing a bunch of that at E3!” then we would love you to come along and share your experience. Just get in touch with us at [email protected].

We also have a special giveaway this month. Our lovely friends at RESONATE – Glasgow’s upcoming eSports and gaming festival –  have given us some free tickets, which we will be raffling off on the night.

Tickets for the meetup to be released very soon! In the meantime you can follow any updates on Twitter or join us on Facebook.

March 2016 Glasgow Meetup Recap

The first meetup in our calendar of monthly events for 2016 was held at MEGAbytes cafe in Glasgow on the 30th March.

We kicked things off in a relaxed style with our usual “Announcements” open mic session, where anyone attending can get up and plug their current project, event or interest. And what a response we had, with a whopping nine things talked about! In case you missed them (or if you were unable to attend) they were:

Wow, what a productive community we’ve got. With all those announcements, was there even time to fit in the meetup’s Post-GDC roundup panel? Well of course there was!

The panel was Caitlin Goodale, Andrew Reid, Jon McKellan, and David Farrell discussing their various experiences of GDC from the perspectives of academics, students, and developers. They talked about what they had hoped to get out of the conference, what they actually spent their time doing, how to organise meetings with publishers, networking (and which parties to avoid!) and finally how they paid for their trips and how you the avid audience-member might receive some funding towards attending GDC yourself next year.

We hope to have a recording of the panel available soon.

The evening was rounded off with socialising until venue close.

We’d once again like to thank our panellists, MEGAbytes for hosting us, and our ever-useful volunteers.

The next meetup will be at Codebase in Edinburgh on Tuesday 19th of April, see you there!

IGDA Scotland March Meetup: GDC Round up!

Now that the dust has settled and jet lag is fading away, IGDA Scotland is happy to announce that we’re hosting our annual GDC Roundup at MEGABytes in Glasgow on Wednesday 30th of March from 7pm. We’ll be having a roundtable of students, academics and professionals discuss their experiences and takeaways from the biggest game developers event of the year, so if you’re interested in GDC at all then come hear about it from the horses’ mouths!

 

 

As always, we will have an open floor for announcements before the panel kicks off. So if you have any news you’d like to share then feel free to come down and do so! We’ll also be opening up to general networking after the panels.

Don’t miss your chance by registering your free ticket on Eventbrite or by using the handy registration box below. Our meetings are open to all, even if you’re not a member of the IGDA. Non-students must be registered ahead of the event in order to be guaranteed entry to the venue.

Boyd Multerer Masterclass at GCU

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Join us for a masterclass with Boyd Multerer (@BoydMulterer), the man responsible for Xbox Live, the gaming and entertainment service now used by more than 46 million people worldwide on 12th May 2015 from 6pm at Glasgow Caledonian University. He will share with us lessons learned from Xbox and his predictions for the future of gaming. He will focus on the importance of anticipating changes in technology and culture, and forecasting how they will change in future years.

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While working at Microsoft, he was also behind the XNA C# game development framework, which allows independent developers and creators to produce games for the Xbox 360 console for the first time. Since then, he founded and led the team that worked on the Xbox One’s operating system, which went on to win a Technical Emmy and a Microsoft Technical Achievement Award. After almost 20 years at Microsoft, Boyd left in December 2014 and is now working on an as yet unannounced project.

The masterclass is free and open to the public, but IGDA members can book reserved tickets for themselves by contacting us at [email protected] (while stocks last). Light refreshments will be served afterwards in the Garden Café in the Govan Mbeki Building.

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