Experimedia Audio
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized on December 21st, 2009
Thanks to Level 3, we have audio from some of our Experimedia sessions available as .mp3
IGF at ACMI
Posted by Paul in Announcements on December 7th, 2009
ACMI are hosting an exhibition titled the Best of the Independent Games Festival from December 8 2009 to February 14 2010. From their site:
“Play brilliant new games for free, as the Best of the Independent Games Festival returns to ACMI. Dubbed the ‘Sundance of the game world’, the IGF has previously featured the groundbreaking games Braid, Everyday Shooter, Drawinia, and Cloud, and premiered smash hits De Blob and Portal.
Established in 1998 in San Francisco by CMP media (now Think Services), the annual festival encourages innovation in game development and recognises the best work of indie designers.
2009 games include:
Blueberry Garden, Eric Svendang, Sweden. Winner – Seumas McnNally Grand Prize.
Machinarium, Amanita Design, Czech Republic. Winner – Excellence in Visual Art.
Brainpipe, Digital Eel, USA. Winner – Excellence in Audio.
Musaic Box, KranX Productions, Ukraine. Winner – Excellence in Design.
Cortex Command, Data Realms, USA. Winner – Technical Excellence.
Osmos, Hemisphere Games, Canada. Winner – D2D Vision Award.
PixelJunk Eden, Q-Games, Japan. Nominated – Excellence in Visual Art.
The Graveyard, Tale of Tales, Belgium. Nominated – Excellence in Visual Art.
Night Sky, Nicalis, USA. Nominated – Seumus McNally Grand Prize.
Eufloria, Alex May & Rudolf Kremers, UK.”
Sessions available on YouTube
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized on November 3rd, 2009
Thanks to Chris Watts and Souri from tsumea, the following sessions are available on the tsumea YouTube channel:
Opening & Welcome
The New iKid on the Block
Kynan Woodman – Development Director at Firemint
Neil Rennison – co-founder of Tin Man Games
Paul Motion – Senior Producer with IronMonkey Studios
Launched in 2007, Apple’s iPhone has, in its brief lifetime, created a new market for independent developers looking to create highly-innovative, smaller-scale projects. This panel explores the issues, challenges, and successes that the iPhone brings to traditional developers.
Agile Development
James Hudson – Nocturnal Entertainment
Agile development is an attempt to allow development to be more reactive to change, to increase iteration speed, and to increase communication between members. This workshop looks at the pros and cons of using agile in a real world game project.
Playing in Someone Else’s Sandpit
Cameron Lee – Development Director at Electronic Arts
Blake Mizzi – Lead Designer at Torus Games
Tarwin Stroh-Spijer – Director at Touch My Pixel
Craig Duturbure – Freelance Games Designer
Australia has a reputation for delivering licensed titles – including Spongebob Squarepants, Transformers, The Fast and the Furious, and others. This panel looks at the challenges involved in working within the constraints of somebody else’s idea – and how you maintain your own creative voice while doing so.
The Art of Getting Things Done
Rory Hart – Head of Development on the virtual worlds project ExitReality
The collaborative nature of games development is one of it’s most rewarding facets, and also one of the most difficult to get right – from estimating tasks, to scheduling milestones, to handling communication, many starting developers struggle with this shift away from their core discipline.
This workshop looks at the fundamentals of managing projects and teams.
Petri Purho – Keynote
Petri Purho, creator of Crayon Physics Deluxe, makes a game every month within a strict 7-day time limit. Freeplay asks him the how and the why of it all.
November EGP
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized on November 2nd, 2009
Little bit late, but this month I thought we’d use the theme from the actual experimental gameplay project. This month, it’s Art Game. Details here.
IGDA Melbourne Chapter
Posted by Paul in Announcements on October 29th, 2009
In response to the sad closure of Transmission Games, local games developer and teacher, Mark Flanagan, is re-establishing the local chapter of the IGDA, with the aim of providing long-term support and opportunities.
The IGDA (http://www.igda.org/) is an organisation dedicated to improving developers’ careers and lives through: Community, Professional Development, and Advocacy. It is open to anyone, from students to professional developers, and the Melbourne chapter encourages everyone involved in game development locally to come along and help to build the local community. This first meetup will be a chance to learn how to get involved, to plan for the future, and to have input into what you’d like to see at upcoming get togethers and events.
Freeplay is pleased to support the formation of this new local chapter, and co-director Paul Callaghan will give an overview of alternative funding models and opportunities for indie game developers.
When: Tuesday 10 November 7pm onwards
Where: The Embassy, 1 Queensbridge St Southbank
http://www.clubembassy.com/index.html
Experimental Gameplay Project
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized on September 30th, 2009
Inspired by Petri and the Experimental Gameplay Project, we’re taking a leaf out of their book and trying to get the local community involved in rapidly prototyping and iterating over any and all wacky gameplay experiments rattling around their head. It’s all very informal at the moment, so we don’t have many rules, and it’s pretty much: take a theme, make a game, don’t spend more than 7 days on it, and try to do something experimental with the mechanics. You can use whatever tech you want, you can build as big a team as you want, you can outsource all of your art, just don’t take any longer than the 7 days!
When we’re close to the end of the month, we’ll sort out some sort of exhibition / party / get-together to show off everyone’s projects, and we’ll also look at hosting them on the freeplay web-site. Oh, and because it’s our first month we’re going to leave the theme open, but if you need some structure, use the one from the official Experimental Gameplay Project site.
We’ve set up a discussion space on our forums, but if you’re interested in being more public, feel free to comment below.
Freeplay Forum
Posted by Paul in Announcements on August 23rd, 2009
In the aftermath of Freeplay, there was a lot of interest in other events, get togethers, and general discussion about indie games and development. To help support that, we’ve set up a forum with the aim of giving the community a central place to get together, figure out how to work together, and to keep abreast of developments in the local indie community.
You can find it here – and details of how to sign up are here.
SYN Media Learning Week
One of our partners, the Student Youth Network, is holding a Media Learning Week from August 24 – 28 at the State Library of Victoria. Sessions are free, but bookings are essential.
In SYN’s own words:
SYN Media Learning Week is underway next week!!
We will be hosting a week-long series of Free Teacher Professional events at The State Library of Victoria.
One of the highlights of SYN Media Learning Week will be the Keynote Presentation by Mark Pesce. Known internationally as the man who fused virtual reality with the World Wide Web to invent VRML, Mark Pesce has been exploring the frontiers of media and technology for a quarter of a century.
Mark Pesce will be speaking about the “four domains” of importance to educators in the 21st century: Constructivism, Sharing, Mobile and Digital Citizenship.
This presentation is an amazing opportunity for teachers to experience the knowledge of Mark Pesce in person.
There are still spaces available in this session, Thursday August 27 1:30 – 2:30 pm and it is FREE!
Book online http://www.eventbrite.com/event/373156120 or email training@syn.org.au
One week on…
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized on August 21st, 2009
We’re now a week out from Freeplay and some of the dust is starting to settle. Thanks to everyone who came along and made it a huge success.
Over 200 people came along to our panel, lecture, and workshop programme taking place in the Village Roadshow Theatrette and Seminar rooms, hearing from over 50 speakers including developers, educators, students, programmers, artists, film-makers, and cross-media practitioners.
For the first time, we held a public expo program that took place in the Experimedia room at the State Library. Over 300 people had the chance to play locally produced independent and professional games, take part in discussions about games and the broader gaming culture, and workshop their own ideas in a game design challenge run by Infinite Interactive.
Our international speaker, Petri Purho, drew large crowds to talk about not only his process for creating games, but also the role of creativity in creation and play, and his return in our Freeplay Greatest Hits Panel saw him create rag-doll peggle in under 5 minutes.
In the wake of Freeplay, we’re hoping to continue to build the creative community, supporting independent developers through discussion spaces and events, and putting together our plans for 2010 – stay tuned for details.
Thanks again.
For those who couldn’t make it…
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized on August 17th, 2009
