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The DeanBeat: DICE Summit shows that gaming has gone multi-generational

Mathew Anderson
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The DeanBeat: DICE Summit shows that gaming has gone multi-generational

From VentureBeat: LAS VEGAS — There were plenty of times in the past when everyone was fretting about the state of the game industry. But this week at the DICE Summit, the elite game industry event in Las Vegas, the industry showed it had grown up and was spreading in many different directions.

Games have become a $70 billion global business, and many predict that it will grow into a $100 billion business in just a few years.

So many of the segments of gaming are doing well, and the core console and PC business leaders were joined at the event by indie game developers, mobile gaming giants, and international conglomerate executives. Everyone had gaming in their genes, and they were passing it on from one generation to the next.

“I’m not worried about gaming as much now,” said Rich Hilleman, chief creative director at Electronic Arts, which won the big award for Game of the Year for Dragon Age: Inquisition. “Back in 2009, the industry was shrinking and it was bad. But there are so many indies that are growing now and thousands of new games.”

Read more at VentureBeat.

Indie Prize Winners at Casual Connect Europe Revealed

Mathew Anderson
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Indie Prize Winners at Casual Connect Europe Revealed

11 Indie Prize winners were chosen from over 120 independent finalists. This showcase has been the biggest one so far, with over 200 applications from more than 40 countries.

Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS – February, 6 – Indie Prize at Casual Connect Europe in Amsterdam announced the eleven winners of the Indie Prize Showcase during a special awards ceremony on the third day of the conference.

Indie Prize Winners:

Best Art – Lumino City by State of Play Games

Best Audio – Amphora by Moondrop

Best Narrative – Herald by Wispfire

Best Game Design – LA Cops by Modern Dream

Most Promising Game in Development – Guild of Dungeoneering by Gambrinous

Best PC Game – Guns, Gore and Cannoli by Crazy Monkey Studios

Best Multiplayer Game – Move or Die by Those Awesome Guys

Best Mobile Game – First Strike HD by Blindflug Studios

Director’s Choice Award – Shadow Puppeteer by Sarepta Studio

Best in Show: Critic’s Choice Award – Party Hard by Pinokl Games

Best in Show: Audience Choice Award – Replay: VHS is Not Dead by Neko Entertainment

“We are both overwhelmed and humbled by the talent and effort of participating independent teams. On behalf of Casual Connect and Indie Prize, we wholeheartedly congratulate the winners of Indie Prize Europe and wish them further success and hope to see more awesome games from them”, says Yulia Vakhrusheva, Director of Indie Prize.

The games were judged by critics – Henry Oh from CNN, Zoya Street from Gamesbrief, Dan Oravasaari from PlayStation LifeStyle, Aaron Whitfield from PocketFullOfApps, Rai Sewgobind from Eye For Games, Jurjen Tiersma from Power Unlimited, André Bernhardt from Indie Advisor, and prize judges: Nick Berry from Facebook, Christopher Hamilton from Rovio, Oscar Clark from Unity, Candy Yang from Aarki, Aaron Walz from Walz Music, Jamison Selby from b Spot, George Donovan from Gogii Games, Jason Della Rocca, Execution Labs, Djordje Radulovic, Power Up Digital, Matt Donnelley, Dutch Game Garden, Daniel Boutros, Soul Arcade, Tomo Moriwaki, Hyperkinetic Studios, Dave Padilla, Hyperkinetic Studios, Jan-Michel Saaksmeier, Bigpoint GmbH. Due to the huge number and high level of games submitted, this time Indie Prize required twice as many judges as before.

The winners got prizes worth over 500,000 euro from the sponsors: Unity licenses, 5K in Google Cloud Services, Photon Cloud Services, headsets from Plantronics, various devices from Amazon, free ads on PocketFullOfApps, live game streaming from Indie from Twitch, free highlights from BlogsRelease, and the developer of Best Mobile Game got a full day of consulting with an App Annie expert. “This will take a deep dive into App Annie data and cover global game opportunities by platform, category, and region; IAP and monetization strategies; a presentation covering topics that will be for the devs to keep, and for devs in a remote region consulting will be done via Skype”, explains Kieran Barr, Director of Business Development of App Annie. And the two Best In Show winners got $1000 stipends from Casual Connect that will go towards their trip to Casual Connect Asia in Singapore in May.

About Indie Prize

Indie Prize is a scholarship program for up and coming indie development teams who show promise to be future leaders in the games industry. Indie Prize offers participants an opportunity to learn and network with other indie game developers and showcase their games, skillsets, and ideas to publishers and potential partners, as well as win prizes from sponsors for showcasing the best game in one of 11 categories. More information can be found at http://indieprize.org/ .

About Casual Connect

Launched in 2005, Casual Connect is hosted by the Casual Games Association, bringing together the most talented and knowledgeable experts in the casual gaming field to further the industry with the best learning and networking opportunities for casual games professionals. In addition to Casual Connect Eastern Europe, the CGA will host Casual Connect Europe, Amsterdam on February 4 – 6, 2015, Casual Connect Asia on May 19 – 21, 2015, Casual Connect USA on August 11 – 13, 2015, and Casual Connect Israel in Fall 2015. For more information, visit http://casualconnect.org/ .

About the Casual Games Association

The Casual Games Association is an international trade organization dedicated to promoting casual games and providing educational resources for the game development community. The association hosts annual conferences in USA, Eastern Europe, Europe and Asia; publishes a trade magazine; and issues research reports on the casual games industry. For more information about the association, visit http://www.casualgamesassociation.org.

Valve debuts the next generation of OpenGL at GDC 2015

Mathew Anderson
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0
Valve debuts the next generation of OpenGL at GDC 2015

From Gamasutra: For more than a decade, OpenGL has been powering some of the biggest games in the industry. But as the industry evolves, it’s important to ask: what comes next?

Find out at GDC 2015, where you can join engineers from Valve, Epic, Unity, Oxide, and Electronic Arts for the unveiling of Khronos’ glNext initiative in the “glNext: The Future of High Performance Graphics” sponsored session.

A cross-platform graphics API designed for modern programming techniques and processors, OpenGL successor glNext is designed to be a top choice for developers seeking peak performance in their applications going forward. At GDC, the panel of engineers will present a technical breakdown of the API, advanced techniques and live demos of real-world applications running on glNext drivers and hardware.

It promises to be a can’t-miss session for game makers, engineers and anyone interested in the future of OpenGL.

Full details on this and all other announced talks is available now in the online GDC 2015 Session Scheduler, where you can begin to build your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App, coming soon.

GDC 2015 itself will take place March 2-6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2015, visit the show’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Read more at Gamasutra.

February 2015 Game Industry Conferences and Other Events

Mathew Anderson
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February 2015 Game Industry Conferences and Other Events

To help you plan attendance for this month’s game industry conferences, conventions, and other events, we post a monthly consolidated list of game industry events at the beginning of each month. View the complete event list below for the rest of the year!

February 2015 Game Industry Conferences and Other Events:

Click here for the main calendar view.

3: Engage: The Digital Storytelling Conference
3-5: D.I.C.E. Summit
3-5: ICE Totally Gaming
4-6: Casual Connect Amsterdam
5-6: Mobile Growth Summit
6-7: MassDiGI Game Challenge
6-8: Rockage 4.0
9-10: Winter Nights
9-13: Animex
10: GameDevHacker
10-12: Social Media Strategies Summit Las Vegas
11-13: Kochava Mobile Summit
12: Orccon (Strategicon)
13-15: IndieCade East
15-17: Digital Kids Conference
20-23: PDXLAN 25
27-1: GottaCon

This list is obtained from the main calendar. Did we miss an event? Let us know!

Play top board games at GDC 2015

sirpaul54
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Play top board games at GDC 2015

There are still more passes available for GDC 2015, but more news has arrived for the “Shut Up & Sit Down” board game exhibit. The exhibit will be open to passholders, including Expo and All-Access passes, at various points during the event. At this exhibit, GDC attendees will have the opportunity to play some of the best board games made in 2014.

The game lineup includes XCOM: The Board Game, Plaid Hat Games’ Dead of Winter, Five Tribes from Days of Wonder, Sheriff of Nottingham, One-Nigh Ultimate Werewolf, Marvel Dice Masters, and Mascarade. Julia Keren Detar will also give a speech called “History Shaping Design: Tales Told By Early American Board Games.” You can read more details about this and other talks on the GDC 2015 Session Scheduler. Be sure to visit the show’s website for the latest information on the event.

Disney Imagination will have a panel at GDC 2015

sirpaul54
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Disney Imagination will have a panel at GDC 2015

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) will happen this year in San Fransico, CA on Marc 2nd, 2015. There were a variety of panel announced this week, and one of them is a virtual reality (VR) panel by Dinsey Imagation. This panel is about the use VR in Diseny’s themeparks. Bei Yang, the creative techinal design lead for Disney Imagineering, will be leading the panel.

The panel will take place on March 5th, 2015 at 10:00 AM PST. Yang will be discussing the use of Disney’s VR over the past 20 years. He will aslo be foucing on head-mounted displays (HMDs) and the design features. Other topics include the cause of nausea in VR HMD as well as other problems developing and using content. This was the exact message on the GDC website:

“Attendees will learn about some of the pratical problems when creating VR experience for the real world. This will include what causes nausea, what gives a sense of immersion, and the problems that arise when techinally implementing VR from both a software and hardware perspective.”

Vist the GDC website to learn more about the Disney panel:

http://www.gdconf.com/

 

PAX South 2015 in Photos

Mathew Anderson
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PAX South 2015 in Photos

PAX South 20105 in Photos. We attended PAX South 2015 and came away with a great deal of photos to share! This was the inaugural event in San Antonio, TX.

Just like any other PAX, you had a wide open show floor with larger booths that receded to smaller ones, and then eventually the tournament and competition areas. Upper floors had food services and meeting rooms, the diversity lounge, and several other areas of activity.

Click the image below to check them out:

PAX South 2015 in Photos

Speakers and Panelists announced for D.I.C.E. Summit 2015

sirpaul54
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Speakers and Panelists announced for D.I.C.E. Summit 2015

D.I.C.E. Summit 2015 will commence on February 3rd, 2015 at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. Brandon Beck, CEO of Riot Games, announced to the press that he will be the keynote speaker at the event. Here is the list of other speakers that will discuss topics related to video games:

  • Mark Deloura, Previous Senior Advisor at White House Office of Science and Technology (“The View from Washington, DC”)
  • Michael de Plater, Design Director, Monolith Production (“Player Stories vs. Designer Stories”)
  • Jeri Ellsworth, Chief Hardware Engineer/Co-Founder, castAR (“The Shape of New Realities”)
  • Mohamed Fadl, eSports Director, Wargaming (Sustainability in the eSports Landscape”)
  • Tommy Francois, New IP Editorial Director, Ubisoft (“Creative Maturity Through Life Experience”)
  • Alan Gershenfeld, President and Co-Founder, E-Line Media (“Games Thousands of Years in the Making”)
  • Robin Hunicke, CEO and Co-Founder of Funomena (“The Shape of New Realities”)
  • Kevin Lin, COO, Twitch (“Sustainability on eSports Landscape”)
  • Bob Lowe, Game Director, Avalanche Software (“Disney Infinity” a Platform Without Borders”)
  • Gloria O’Neill, President and CEO, Cook Inlet Tribal Council (“Games Thousands of Years in the Making”)
  • Alexey Pajitnow, Tetris creator (“Secret Origins of the Tetris Phenomenon”)
  • Henk Rogers, Managing Director, Tetris Company (“Secret Origins of the Tetris Company”)
  • Chris Sigaty, Executive Producer, Blizzard Entertainment (“Sustainability in the eSports Landscape”)

The panels will be streamed on Wednesday, February 4th at 9:30AM until 5PM PST. You can see the streams again on Thursday, February 5th at 9:30Am until 4PM PST. The D.I.C.E. awards will be aired on Twitch on February 5th at 7PM PST. Visit the D.I.C.E. Summit website for more information at the event:

http://www.dicesummit.org/

Mobile Growth Summit 2015 Confirms Keynotes and Agenda

Paul Philleo
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Mobile Growth Summit 2015 Confirms Keynotes and Agenda

The first ever Mobile Growth Summit now has its agenda all lined up and ready to go, keynotes and all.

Keynoting both days of the conference are, respectively, Dan Morris, Head of Publisher Gaming at Facebook on February 5th and Mike Ng, Head of Mobile App Promotion at Twitter on February 6th.

A sizable number of gaming-focused mobile developers and publishers on the marketing, monetization and sales side, at the heavy-hitter level, are represented here, including Sega, Electronic Arts, Glu, Storm 8, Zynga and so on and so forth. Unsurprisingly the focus of this two-day summit is on monetization, user acquisition and growth in mobile.

To view the complete agenda, including speakers and topics, for the Mobile Growth Summit, visit the link here.

Mobile Growth Summit, which takes places next week in San Francisco, also has extended to Events for Gamers an exclusive discount code to cut the cost of the gold pass to $95, until January 30th.

Microsoft Build 2015 Sells Out Like a Big Name Concert

Paul Philleo
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Microsoft Build 2015 Sells Out Like a Big Name Concert

Microsoft’s Build 2015 conference moved all its tickets in record time.

Maybe it was all those fresh announcements at Microsoft’s January 21st Windows 10 press event, such as the HoloLens augmented reality/holography headset paired up with the recently acquired Minecraft franchise and the integration of Windows, Xbox and mobile gaming. Or, maybe it’s that Microsoft has a history of giving out hardware, like the Xbox One in 2014, and other perks at their Build conferences as an incentive to drive both attendance and software development.

Either way, the Microsoft Build 2015 conference sold out in about 45 minutes, on January 22nd, the day after the major press event, according to Mashable. Microsoft Build will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on April 29th to May 1st.

Microsoft has joined the ranks of rock star developer conferences, like Apple WWDC and Google I/O, both of which have had to set up lotteries after registration sites have crashed and to manage fairer ticket distribution to all interested parties a la the Burning Man festival.

Still, fear not. If you have the $995 for the academic rate or $2,095 for the full pass rate, you may be able to attend yet, by joining the waitlist and crossing your fingers that Microsoft may be able to release more tickets.

 

2015 Game Developers Choice Awards Honoring Veteran Brenda Romero With Ambassador Award, Elite Co-Creator David Braben With Pioneer Award (PR)

Paul Philleo
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2015 Game Developers Choice Awards Honoring Veteran Brenda Romero With Ambassador Award, Elite Co-Creator David Braben With Pioneer Award (PR)

SAN FRANCISCO – Jan. 27, 2015 – The 15th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA), the peer-awarded highest honors in video game development, has revealed its first two special award winners for this year.

The Ambassador Award, honoring someone who is helping video games “advance to a better place” through advocacy or action, is going to game designer and academic Brenda Romero, who has been a key figure in video games throughout more than three decades of standout game design, teaching and advocacy. The Pioneer Award, honoring breakthrough tech and game design milestones, is being awarded to David Braben, the co-creator of seminal 3D space exploration title Elite – now in resurgence with Elite: Dangerous – and co-founder of the foundation for the popular ‘hobbyist computer revival’ Raspberry Pi device.

Ambassador Award winner Romero, whose honor was bestowed after open nominations from the game development community, and voting by the Game Developers Choice Advisory Committee (http://www.gamechoiceawards.com/advisory.html) is an award-winning game designer and academic who entered the video game industry in 1981 at the age of 15.

She is the longest continuously serving woman in the video game industry and a 2014 Fulbright fellow for her work with Ireland’s game industry, game academics and government to improve the industry overall. As a designer, she has contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series. Away from the machine, her analog series of six games, The Mechanic is the Message, has drawn national and international acclaim, particularly Train, which has been demonstrated at GDC on multiple occasions, and Síochán Leat (The Irish Game), which is presently housed in the National Museum of Play. Brenda’s work advocating passionately for games – and the role of women in them – over the past three decades made her a natural choice for this award. Romero co-owns Loot Drop and Romero Games, and is also program director of the UC Santa Cruzmaster’s program in Games and Playable Media.

Pioneer Award winner David Braben co-developed the seminal ‘open world’ 3D space trading game Elite with Ian Bell while at university in the early 1980s. The best-selling, startlingly expansive title had revolutionary 3D graphics and let the player make all kinds of intriguing moral decisions as they flew the known universe. Elite saw a number of sequels, including the crowdfunded, currently much buzzed-about Elite: Dangerous, and went on to be a big influence on games in the genre it helped create – from Wing Commander to No Man’s Sky and beyond.

In addition to his work on Elite and his more than 30 years as a game developer – latterly at his major UK studio Frontier Developments – Braben was also involved in the genesis of the Raspberry Pi, a ‘hobbyist computer’ which enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to program in languages like Scratch and Python. Braben helped to found the Raspberry Pi Foundation and guide the program through to mass production – with more than 4 million of the devices now manufactured.

Finally, as part of the awards evening that includes both the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards, the team behind the Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’? video series, Ashly and Anthony Burch, will once again contribute brand-new videos to the Independent Games Festival this year. They augment the efforts of ceremony favorites, the video game sketch anarchists Mega64, again returning to make videos for the Game Developers Choice Awards this year.

The Game Developers Choice Awards are produced in association with the Game Developers Conference® (GDC) and will take place on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 6:30pm at the San Francisco Moscone Center and is open to all GDC badge-holders.

More information about the 15th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards can be found on the official website athttp://www.gamechoiceawards.com – and for information about the 2015 Game Developers Conference, please visithttp://www.gdconf.com.

The Inaugural PAX South 2015

Mathew Anderson
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The Inaugural PAX South 2015

Our team has traveled to hundreds of game industry events from all across the world, and have to say that the inaugural PAX South was special for several reasons. 2015’s event was obvious our first year attending this local Texan convention. We came away fulfilled that a weekend was well spent, and still admiring the great art statues, game key cards, and t-shirts that now fill our office.

What happened at PAX South 2015? A lot! Here’s our take…

THE SHOWFLOOR

We can’t avoid starting with the most obvious presentation at the event – the sprawling show floor and cosplay. We managed to sneak in a few minutes early before it started, so got a good look at what was on display. It may just be our imagination, but the entire convention was packed with games, games, and more games. There was also a vendor presence, extravagant cosplay roaming around, and developers ready to answer questions by eager fans.

We’ll describe one end of the vendor hall and then move to the other, starting at where the bulk of the food vendors resided on the halls outside. Any event attendee knows that a meal at the start of the day is required for the energy to walk all day long. There was a sufficient selection of snacks and dinner menu items to satisfy even the most ravenous comic fanatic. There’s nothing like snacking on healthy pile of fries as you shop for a Pop! character, or randomly running into a Deadpool cosplayer.

PAX South 2015

The main hall proper was filled with row upon row of gameplay booths. One of the most prominent right at the entrance beyond the t-shirt tables was the Grey Box booth. A massive 50×50 booth that contained two of their latest games; Grey Goo and Dreadnought. Just around the corner was the Twitch booth. These two mega presentations greeted you to so many more interesting PC, console, card, board, and more type of games within.

While computer games dominated most of the showfloor, there was everything from card and board games, comic books, Pop! characters, and of course an amazing array of trinkets and art pieces on display. Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dr. Who memorabilia were sprinkled throughout. We even happened across several interest booths promoting regional LARP events and tournaments. Did we mention Pop! characters? Yes, we’re a fan…

PAX South 2015

COSPLAY & GUESTS

Whether it’s comic, anime, or computer game themes, cosplay costumes were all across the board this year. Cosplay isn’t just for showing off on the showfloor either, as anyone can do that with a little bit of string, duct tape, and a can of spray paint. There was also a cosplay promotions and a couple of events where judges evaluated your costume and awarded the top winners some hefty prize money.

PAX South 2015

A PLETHORA OF GAMING AREAS

If you didn’t read the extremely prominent signs upon entering the main floor area, or the well designed guidebooks handed to at registration, you may have missed all the other cool activities that PAX South, and all other PAX events, tuck away in the bowels of the San Antonio convention center. The space itself is so large, it’s a bit daunting to get around.

Unlike with PAX Prime and its multiple floors, PAX South is mostly on a single ground level. A vast area that had way more room than was actually used, but perfect for space hungry events like League of Legends tournament, Dungeons & Dragons outings, and virtual reality glasses combat.

The Omegathon is also a special part of the event. It’s a three-day elimination tournament between randomly selected attendees who compete in games from any and every category (tabletop, console, PC) culminating in a live championship match on the big stage during PAX closing ceremonies. The final round is always out of left field and is completely insane.

PAX South 2015

SHOULD YOU ATTEND PAX SOUTH 2016?

In a word with a large exclamation point after it… YES! As we’ve already shouted out, PAX South is for all types of game fans. From PC, console, to card and board games, there is so much to see. We can confidently say that even if you dislike a certain type of games, there’s enough to enjoy elsewhere to appease you for the entire weekend.

Look for more about PAX South from us in January as next year’s event ramps up. We were so excited by this year’s turnout, that we plan to cover next years event in all its PAXY details!

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