February 2013: Announcements!

Hey everyone!

Thanks again to those of you who made it to our IGDA meeting last night! We had a lot of great projects to show from our local developers. You can look forward to hearing more about these games in the future!

In the meantime, I wanted to provide a quick recap of yesterday’s announcements. There’s quite a few:

 

Dark Side of the Jam: A NASA Hosted Game Jam

Friday, March 8th – Sunday, March 10th
Starting approx. 6pm at University of Advancing Technology!

UAT has become an official location for the NASA jam! Much like the Global Game Jam that happened last month, this is an opportunity to team up with other developers and make a cool game in 48 hours. Come be part of a nationwide event to create games around aerospace exploration and technology! You can read more about it at the Dark Side of the Jam website.

 

Game Developer’s Conference 2013

March 25th – March 29th at Moscone Center in San Francisco

Just wanted to remind you guys that GDC is around the corner! You can find more information at the GDC site. Aside from just being a generally fun time, GDC is a great opportunity to meet and learn from other game developers. If you have the means, I would strongly encourage you to attend! And for those of you who are attending, make sure you’ve got your trip planned out!

And for those of you who are registered members of the IGDA, you can find a full-list of IGDA-sponsored tracks and events at http://www.igda.org/node/1042867. Check it out!

 

Ernest Adams at UAT!

Monday, April 1st at University of Advancing Technology

On the way back from GDC, we’ll be getting a visiting lecture from popular game designer and owner of The Designer’s Notebook, Ernest Adams! This talk is open to anybody, not just UAT students. Keep an eye out for more details!

 

Collins College Jam

Friday, May 3rd – Sunday, May 5th
Hosted at Collins College!

This one is still a little while away, but mark your calendars! Collins College will be hosting a game jam in the beginning of May, and it’s open to everyone. More details on that to come.

 

Finally, a few announcements from devs and studios around the area:

PJ and the crew at Super Fun Games are looking for alpha testers for their gorgeous upcoming game, Crystal Catacombs (read more about it on their Kickstarter Page). If you’re interested, drop PJ a line at pjvilsaint@superfunproductions.com.

 

Retora Games has an opening for a Web Developer. If you’re interested or know someone who is, contact Tyler at tylerthedesigner@gmail.com.

 

And finally, a big congratulations to local dev Mario Castañeda, artist on The Bridge, now released on Steam! In addition, congrats to Alex and Kyle at Abstrakt Games, whose 48-hour Indie Speed Run game Protein Pirates won the ISR grand prize! Nicely done, guys!

 

That’s all we have for now! As always, if you have any announcements you’d like to make, e-mail myself or Kyle (corey@igdaphx.org, kyle@igdaphx.org). Thanks again, and we’ll see you all soon!

Cheers,
Corey

February Meeting Update!

Hey guys!

 

Bad news bearer time: I’m sad to announce that our speaker, Mike Todd, won’t be able to make it. 

 

We will still be having our February Meeting this 27th, but as of right now there is an open speaker slot. If there’s anyone who with a pre-prepared talk who would like to fill in, please let Kyle or I know ASAP!

 

The current plan for Wednesday’s meeting is Show and Tell Night. Bring along your latest game jam games or other projects, and we’ll throw them up on the big screen for people to watch and play!

 

Sorry for the last minute change. We’ll keep you guys updated on that open speaker slot, but either way, you can plan to bring your projects along.

 

And don’t forget to RSVP! http://igdaphxfeb2013.eventbrite.com/

 

Corey

February: Michael Todd, Platformers, Jam Games and More!

Howdy everybody!
 
 
Happy Valentine’s Day, with lots of love from your favorite IGDA chapter! Quickly, a big thanks to everyone who participated in our recent survey about operations over here at IGDA Phoenix. We got such a strong response, in fact, that we’ll be trying something new this month! Which brings me to our main announcement…

 

February IGDA Meeting!

Wednesday, Feburary 27th
7 PM in the Little Theater at University of Advancing Technology!

Our featured speaker for this month is our new Arizona transplant, Michael Todd! A bit more about him:

Michael Todd is an award winning game developer, recently based in Toronto. He has spoken around the world at GDC, PAX, GamerCamp, NoMoreSweden and the Hand-Eye Society, and is a specialist in rapid prototyping methods.

A co-founder of the Toronto Skillswap & the Toronto Jammers, Michael is an active part of the indie game development community.

Twitter: @thegamedesigner

 
Michael’s talk is entitled “A LEAP OF FAITH: Platformer Design & Paradigms.” It addresses his unique approach to platforming games, including some dissection of existing ones. With a solid platter of experience under his belt, including the upcoming Unity-based 2D platformer Electronic Super Joy, Michael has a lot of wisdom to offer on platformers and game development in general. He’s also a renowned speaker, having given highly-rated talks at events including GDC and GamerCamp. Be sure to set room in your schedule for this one!

 
Now for the twist: instead of the normal food plans, we’ll continue socializing and demonstrations right there in UAT’s Little Theater! Everyone is free to get food as they please, but the projector will also be available after the talk to any of our Game Jam participants who would like to demo their games. Which leads me to our next announcement:

 

Global Game Jam 2013: Winners!

A HUGE congratulations is in order for everyone who participated in our most recent game jam, the Global Game Jam 2013. At UAT alone, we had more than 20 games that were created and fully playable in just 48 hours. That’s incredible!! We’ll be giving each of our local winners a quick shout-out in the announcements before the February meeting. JAMMERS: If you would like to select the screenshot(s) (up to 3) that will be displayed with your game in the announcements, please email them to corey@igdaphx.org. OR if you would prefer that your game goes unmentioned, e-mail me and we can handle that as well.

Congratulations again to everybody! GGJ 2013 was one of our best turnouts yet, and things are continuing to look up! A big thanks to Alex Bascom, Tyler Coleman, and everyone at UAT for putting it together. For updates about future jams, don’t forget to ‘like’ UAT Game Jams on Facebook!

 
 
Finally, we have an invitation our member, Zach Snader, to join a game development-based team in one of the toughest events of the year. If you’re into playing real-life platformers, this might be your bag:

Fellow IGDAers!

I hereby invite you to get your asses kicked at this year’s Tough Mudder! For the uninitiated, Tough Mudder is a ~12 mile endurance course with obstacles like: Climbing 12-foot tall walls, crawling over an ice covered tarp littered with electrified wires, and just straight up running through hell mud!

If that doesn’t sound like your idea of fun, stop reading this.

…

For the one of you I have left, please contact me if you are interested in joining my (small) team and training (heartily) before the event.

JOIN!

You can reach Zach by e-mailing zacsnade at uat dot edu. There’s only a few days left to register so if you’re interested do it soon!

 

We’ll see you all in a couple weeks!

 
Your chairs,
Corey and Kyle