Category Archives: Videogame Industry

Things related directly to the videogame industry.

IGDA Quality of Life SIG Committee Member

I’m not even in the games industry…why even try and be a committee member of the IGDA’s Quality of Life SIG? I think I can help is why!

It also might be a plus not being in the industry I’m only peripheral to at best, since I can’t really get fired for saying anything.

I’m also really happy if I can help get students more knowledgeable about the situation, and help facilitate the SIG to do great things. I’m going to be helping edit people’s own QoL stories, if anyone wants to contribute any, as well as help write or at least edit some of the white papers that the SIG will be doing. All this will hopefully grow the SIG so more rapid progress can be made, which is always awesome to see.

Videogame Nation

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The Urbis Gallery opened the Videogame Nation exhibit two weeks ago – I was invited by the curator, David Crookes, to go along. I meant to get up something about this before, but my camera died (these are it’s last pictures) when I broke it accidentally.

The exhibit is based around the UK videogame industry from past to present – there is enough for a good few hours, if not more, looking at the exhibits, playing the games on show, and reading the huge amount of information on a whole range of aspects – from playing to making videogames.

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An entire bus stop, yep

I personally loved it – some great games on display (apart from the arcade cabinets all free to play), design documents and a varied amount of information on different magazines, publishers, developers and people. The games are presented in a variety of forms – including some nice football bench seating for Sensible Soccer, and a bus stop and bus seat backs for portable games (okay, that was more odd then great, hehe).

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N64 lunchtimes!

I added a few things to the places you could write and draw – I’ve got pictures of my additions to the wall of consoles (sadly missing out several older consoles, but still allows you to pick one and put a comment up), and my Half Life “crowbar” cover, no doubt by now replaced but, well, a game which deserved a clean classic-like cover 🙂 (it was also easier to draw then any of my other ideas! 😛 ).

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The Urbis at night
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Half Life cover

There were also some great displays on the mini-controversies in the UK around videogames. For Manchester, the Manchester Cathedral sillyness, with Sony’s response printed in its full glory, in the 18 rated section (where, for some reason, Bully was situation despite not being rated 18…), as well as some on the value of fitness to do with videogames.

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Never finished Oliver-twins material

However, the main thing that was great for me was the history side – there is a lot of information about pre-current-generation games, including ones not finished (Dizzy 2, as photographed to the right), the design of many UK titles – Lemmings, Sensible Soccer, Broken Sword (which I still need to play…), Jeff Minter classics, Oliver Twin games and things from the bedroom programming era – including Elite, and more. It is about the only UK exhibit of videogames on right now – so well worth a visit. Check my gallery of pictures to see some of the information boards and pictures of what was available to play – not at all comprehensive, I should have took more picture 🙂

I am also going to try and get back for some of the Sunday-timetabled related events, some sound very interesting 🙂 and if I go I’ll put down what they were like (especially since I’ve not been updating my site much!).

For more pictures I did find Negative Gamer to have some great pictures up, and David has a small Flickr set too 🙂

Going to Brighton Again

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I’ll be at the Brighton Develop Conference for the second time volunteering all next week. If I have the internet, I might make nightly posts, but probably my hotel won’t have wifi or more likely I won’t have time. There’s a lot more going on this year out of hours, so I really hope I’ll be busy to be honest 🙂

I’ll take some pictures and see if I can’t note anything interesting down. There’s a few game AI talks, one being a keynote, and I am sure to see many other interesting things. Keep an eye out in a weeks time 🙂

Preserving the memories

A new initiative has started within the IGDA Preservation SIG – we’re looking to put up memorials about for industry developers. This is to help preserve history of the people working in the videogame industry, as well as players and important people related to the industry.

It’s currently just starting, but if you know any people who should be listed, you can contact me or the Preservation SIG to have them added – eulogies and information are both very much welcome. It’s important to keep the information somewhere easy to find. While we don’t have the resources to document everyone in the industry like Mobygames attempts to, we can keep a good list of those who have passed on, and save the memories that people have of them for posterity.

I’m going to the Game Devlopers Conference!

GDC 2008

I’ve received the IGDA Foundation’s Eric Dybsand Memorial Scholarship for AI Development, to go to the Game Developers Conference 2008 in San Francisco!

I’m honoured! 😀

I’ve been withholding this up until it was announced on the IGDA’s website, but now that the organisation has sorted the passes and the winners, I can post. I’m still very much busy with exams, but have booked my hotel and flight to get over there and now need to sort what I’ll be doing.

If anyone does read this and is interested in meeting up there, I’m on MyGDC too, or email me 🙂

Expect photos, reports and whatnot since I’ll be taking over my Macbook, and will be primarily looking at AI sessions – some very interesting ones are going to be put on, which I’ll be sure to attend.

Never Mind The Polygons #8 video online

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I’ve finally been able to get Never Mind The Polygons #8 online, since problems with the Internet Archive with recent maintenance stopped me last week. You can enjoy it (for it is very enjoyable) from the archive in 3 flavours if you’re interested in viewing it: