Global Game Jam

In January next year we will be running a Sydney meet of the Global Game Jam at the Powerhouse Museum. Forty developers, designers and artists will be spending a weekend at the PHM working round the clock to create exciting new game ideas. There will also be speakers from the local and international games industry. It will be a very exciting event.

Details are still being arranged, but if you want to know more, watch the IGDA Sydney Facebook group or follow @GameJamSydney on Twitter. And tell your friends! This is going to be big!

Ass 4 due this week

Just a reminder that your “games and society” essay / game design is due this Sunday. Not all of you have sent me proposals. I hope this is not because you don’t have an idea.

Ass 3 Marks + Journal

Your marks for assignment 3 and the journal have been posted. To collect your marks either type:

/home/cs4431/bin/classrun sturec

or check on the web at: https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~give/Student/sturec.php

Note some marks have a ‘late’ flag attached. Don’t worry about this, it’s just part of the marking program that we can’t remove. It doesn’t affect your mark.

GDG this Thursday

The Game Deconstruction Group is meeting this Thursday night. All welcome.

Ass 3: Postmortem

It seems I haven’t really told you clearly enough what I expect for the post-mortem, so I’ve made the design diary and post-mortem from the Great Big Rescue project available for you to download as examples of what I am looking for.

Note that you only have to submit one diary and one post-mortem for your group (unless you have had a major falling out and want to have your own say).

I’ll also give you 3 days extension in case anyone suddenly realises they’ve done the wrong thing. No marks will be deducted until after Wed 11:59pm.

Ass 3: Post-mortem submission

I’ve set up give to accept submissions for the post-mortem (and design diary) with by the usual methods.

Game Connect Asia Pacific

As I mentioned during the seminar today, the Game Connect Asia Pacific conference is holding independent games competition. A “beta” of the game needs to be submitted (in 3 hard copies) by October 30, so you don’t have much time left, but some of you should serious consider submitted the games you made for the course. There are (unspecified) prizes for Best Gameplay, Best Graphics and Best Unsigned Game, and all finalists get free entry to the GCAP Expo.

Prize Winners + Big World Tour

Congratulations to “Brotherhood of Awesome” (Sam, Sasha, Jimmy and Priscilla) winners of the Micro Forte prize for most innovative game design for their game Nightlight.

And thankyou to everyone who demo’ed today. Steve always tells me how impressed with the creativity you exhibit and the remarkable things you manage to build in such limited time. If any of you are interested in pursuing a career in game development, he told me that he’d be happy to hear from you. I won’t post his email here, but if you do want to get in touch with him let me know and I’ll send you his address privately.

In connection to this, some of you expressed an interest in taking a tour of the Big World offices and seeing a tech demo. Steve has graciously agreed to do this as long as we give him sufficient warning. Can I have a show of hands (by email) who would be interested in doing this and what times you might be available? Would sometime next week be good, or will you all be too busy studying?

Two more games about drugs

Two games that include interesting drug-addiction mechanics:

• Addicsjon, by Arvi Teikari
• Insomnia, by William Saunders

IE2009 Volunteers

UNSW is hosting the Interactive Entertainment conference this December 17-19. This is an academic conference about games. I’m looking for people who are interested to help out as volunteers – stuffing bags, welcoming participants, moving things and any other general dogs-body jobs that come to hand. In return you get free registration to the conference (usually $300) and my undying gratitude.

If you’re interested, please email me.