Edinburgh Interactive Festival

‘Expanding the Creative Culture of Games’

including an industry panel.

12-14 of August, 2007

http://www.edinburghinteractivefestival.com/

The sandbox symposium on games will run alongside Siggraph, San Diego, CA in August 07.

Focus is the theory and practice of game desgn.

http://sandbox.siggraph.org/about.html

20 June 2007 –
9am – 2pm:
Alexander Hotel, Merrion Square, Dublin 2

The IIA in partnership with Texthelp Browsealoud present an Information Day dedicated to ensuring that websites are accessible to all.

Accessibility is becoming increasingly critical to the Internet experience. Web accessibility is about designing for everyone, independent of who they are or how they access the Internet. It specifically addresses the needs of disabled people, giving them the opportunity to use your site. This half day seminar will focus on the key issues of accessible web applications, the print disabled community, issues faced by the private sector as well as measuring accessibility.

You will have an opportunity to put your questions to our panel of accessibility experts.

Speakers and Agenda

9.00am: Registrations and Coffee

9.30am: Welcome and Introductions by Texthelp

9.45am: Creating Accessible Web Applications using Modern Technologies – Des Traynor, Usability Analyst, iQ Content

10.15am: Digital Inclusion for the Print Disabled Community – Nigel Cunningham, Business Development Manager, Browsealoud
10:45am: Accessibility in the Private Sector – Eamon Martin, Online Content and Development Specialist, permanent tsb

11.15am: BREAK

11.30am: Accessible Websites – Common Misconceptions – Brendan Spillane, MD and Co-Founder, ilikecake

12.00pm: Measuring Accessibility with Auditing & User Testing – Dr. Mark Magennis, Founder and Director, NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology

12.30pm: Panel Q&A

1.00pm: Lunch & demonstrations

Full details and speaker biographies are available here

Venue

The Information Day will be held in The Alexander Hotel, off Merrion Square, in central Dublin. Parking is available in the nearby Setanta Carpark, Molesworth Place, and there is also on-street, metered carparking on Merrion Square. The nearest DART station is Pearse Street Station.
Cost

€35– IIA Members and Texthelp clients
€65 – Non Members

Places are limited, book now to avoid disappointment.

To register, view the full agenda and details, click here or email events@iia.ie

Our friend Ernest Adams sent this in to me. He is looking to showcase commercial and non-commercial game designs this summer in London. For more read on.

Aphra.

****************

Ernest is looking for examples of groundbreaking game design work to show off at the Develop Conference this summer in Brighton. He is chairing a workshop
called “Emerging Issues in Game Design,” which is deliberately modelled on
the Experimental Gameplay Workshop that takes place each year at the Game
Developers’ Conference.

The idea is to show off wildly innovative ideas, whether they’re commercially practical or not. It must already be implemented as running code, even if it’s only a prototype in Flash. You have to have something the audience can see. Also, you have to be able to explain it in ten minutes maximum! The workshop is a two-hour event, and I’m trying to get in as many people as possible.

The workshop will take place sometime on Thursday, the 26th of July at the
Develop Conference in Brighton, UK — the exact time has not been scheduled.

If selected you will get you a one-day pass for the 26th. All travel and other expenses are your own responsibility.

Students are welcome! If I get a large number of applications I will decide
who gets in on the basis of what I think is the most innovative/unusual and
give the Sincere Handshake of Condolence to the others. SEE “WHAT YOU NEED
TO SEND ME” BELOW.

SUMMARY

What: Emerging Issues in Game Design workshop
When: July 26, 2007.
Where: Develop Conference, Brighton
Compensation: One-day pass to the Conference.
Your part: A short presentation of your extremely innovative design work

WHAT YOU NEED TO SEND ME

– The name of one person who will present the work.
– That person’s affiliation if any. Students are welcome.
– Complete contact info, including E-mail AND phone number, please.
– A ONE-PARAGRAPH summary of the work to be presented.
– (Optional) a link to a place on the Web where I can see something.
– No executables or large files in the mail, please.

A few boring rules:

– One speaker per idea, sorry!
– I’ll only pick one idea per company/institution, I want to spread the joy.
– There must be running code, even if only in prototype
– TEN MINUTES MAXIMUM. Really.
– No thinly-veiled marketing pitches!
– No coy references to confidential material, you must be willing to answer
questions!

Remember Bruce Sterling’s dictum: “Woo the muse of the odd.” That spirit
informs this event.

For more contact Ernest at ewadams at designersnotebook.com

Website: www.designersnotebook.com

Demonware are searching for top Computer Science / Computer Applications students to join their Internship programme 2007.

The purpose of the programme is to bring recent computer science graduates up to games industry standards. Students will work on a project of their own choosing or choose from projects suggested by Demonware, and will also attend lectures by games-industry professionals. They would have all the resources available to them to allow them improve their levels of C++ and, at the same time, get a feel for the games industry as a possible carrier choice.

Those that complete the course may then consider graduating to the Demonware NetCode Training Program, an Activision-sponsored course specifically designed to train recruits for jobs in Activision studios supporting Demonware products.

We’re looking for graduates who:

* are willing to relocate to the US/Canada to work on AAA games
* have completed a Bsc or Msc in Comp Sci, Engineering or Games Development
* have excellent written and verbal communication skills
* are self-starters and can work independently
* have a passion for programming and for learning

The Internship program is a paid three-month project, based in Demonware (Dublin), and will run July – September 2007.

Interested parties should forward their CVs & sample code/applications to jobs@demonware.net with the subject line “Demonware Internship” and a brief cover note suggesting how you meet the requirements above.

Please submit your applications as soon as possible as places are strictly limited.

So, for a summer of challenge and learning get in touch with us now.

The seminar will be showcasing the latest technology from Autodesk 3D S Max 9 with extensions and Maya 8.5.

Tips and Tricks for visualisation, games developers and VFX will be done

Senior 3D specialists will be on hand to showcase the in depth technology behind both new versions of the most widely used animation/VFX packages.

Movies such as Apocalyto, Blood Diamond and Casino Royale embrace Maya technology meanwhile Superman Returns, Pursuit of Happiness and Pirates of the Caribbean rely on 3D S Max technology.

Also at the seminar leading Irish post production companies will be hand to showcase work they have created in the high end commercial market using Autodesk 3D technology. There will be two seminars which will run at 12 noon and 3 pm

The event is scheduled for May the 29th. The venue is the Morgan Hotel, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.

This event to free and open to all 3D enthusiasts.

To register for the event please email 3D@eurotek.ie

For more information on the event see www.eurotek.ie

Eurographics 2007 Game Physics Innovation Competition

Following in the footsteps of the successful Eurographics 2006 Graphics meets Games competition, Eurographics is delighted to announce the Eurographics 2007 Game Physics Innovation competition which aims to showcase innovation in the use of physics technology in games.

Physics has always played an integral part in the development of computer games, since the very earliest games like Space War which featured gravitational wells and inertial movement. More recently physics in games has become mainstream, with many commercial offerings from companies now pushing the boundaries of what is possible in top games. This competition aims to focus on what is next; what new physics techniques might be employed in future games, can physics help redefine the interface with the user or can entirely new game-play paradigms emerge when full physics simulations are employed?

The competition, organised by Dr. Steven Collins (founder of Havok and Graphics Research Group manager, Trinity College Dublin) and Ladislav Kavan (Czech Technical University in Prague) which forms part of the Game Track in the forth-coming Eurographics Conference in Prague, September 3-7, 2007, aims to inspire a sharing of ideas and discoveries relating to physics innovation, and through the generous sponsorship of Sony Computer Entertainment US R&D, is offering prizes totalling over €2000 to the winning entries:

Overall Prize: €1,500 – awarded to the entry that in the judges opinion exhibited the best combination of innovation and technical achievement

Collada Prize: €500 – awarded to the entry that makes the best use of the Collada standard.

For full details regarding the competition go to http://www.cgg.cvut.cz/eg07/gpic

The competition closing date is August 24th 2007 with the winners being announced during the Game Track of the Eurographics Conference in September. Winning entries will be displayed in the Intel sponsored Game Physics Lobby on the very latest Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor based systems, and will be available to be played by conference attendees. The Game Track will also feature keynote presentations from game industry leaders.

Eurographics 2007 Annual Conference

The Annual Conference of the European Association for Computer Graphics, EUROGRAPHICS 2007, will take place from the 3rd to the 7th September 2007 in Prague, Czech Republic. The conference location is the campus of the Czech Technical University in Prague. The event is organized by the Computer Graphics Group under auspices of the Mayor of the City of Prague, Dr. Pavel Bém.

Friday 27th April saw 40+ game developers and students gather in a lecture room in Trinity College to celebrate Gamedevelopers.ie fourth birthday. The event was hosted by the newly established GV2 research group in Trinity College headed by Steve Collins.

Demonware’s Dylan Collins gave a short overview of the current middleware market as well as providing a backdrop to the recent Activision acquisition. He also hinted at an important Activision announcement due this week.

Mike Brown from Darkwater Studios (formerly the games dev studio of Torc Interactive), updated us on the studios’ recent set up in new offices in Derry, which they are currently hiring for, but unfortunately was unable to release any details of the project they are working on for the NI DETI.

Steve Collins, co-founder of Havok, and now back lecturing and researching in Trinity College announced details of a new Msc in games development starting later this year. Given his industry credentials, the scope of the course material and the significant industry backing, the course looks likely to set a new benchmark for games development education in Ireland and the UK.

The 2007 gamedevelopers.ie award winners on the night were:-

* Newbie Award – sponsored by Manpower
eDen (aka Paul Murphy – student in Ballyfermot on the LUDO course, joined Sept 06)

* Stamina Award – sponsored by Skillground
Nooptical (aka David McGovern, PopCap Games, joined Feb. ’04, 1,571 posts!)

* Salmon of Knowledge Award –
sponsored by Demonware
Gizmo (aka Simon, student, computing, DCU, joined March ’05)

* Person/Group of the Year Award – sponsored by Manpower
Demonware

After the awards were handed out, the merriment continued late into the evening at Mahaffeys’ on Pearse Street, a familiar haunt to those who had attended previous Shindigs.

Thanks to all our speakers and our sponsors (Aphra).

For more on GV2 see http://gv2.cs.tcd.ie/joomla/

Skillground – http://www1.skillground.com/sg/index.do

Manpower – http://www.manpower.ie/

Demonware – http://www.demonware.net/index.html

DarkWater – http://www.dark-water-studios.com/jobs.htm

————–
June 11-12, 2007
New York, NY, USA
http://www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2007/

——–
June 13-15, 2007
Salzburg, Austria
http://www.ace2007.org/

Some people on the boards maybe interested in this.

Aphra.

Paper proposals are sought for the Theory & Design postgraduate digital game studies conference at Brunel University in Uxbridge, London to be held on 14/9/2007. Any postgraduate Masters or PhD student is invited to send a proposal.

The deadline for abstracts to be submitted is 30/5/2007, and the review committee will notify successful candidates by 15/6/2007. An abstract should outline the central argument, focus and study area of the proposed paper, and be no longer than a page, along with a brief biography. A paper presentation should be 20 minutes long, allowing 10 minutes for Q&A. Papers will be published on the conference website and in Isambard Kingdom, the university Second Life web presence.

The theme of the conference is “Theory & Design”, and some sample areas of interest are listed below: Fun, history of games, game theory, combat systems, socio-cultural issues, community, gaming culture, genres, design possibilities for the next generation, ethnicity, sound, character, immersion, play, widening markets, sex, casual games, agency, serious games, time & space, education, economic and industrial analysis, narrative, game auteurs, graphical styles, empirical analysis, gender, intermediality & transmediality, localisation, cultural differences, violence. Other topics related to Digital Game Theory & Design are also welcomed.

Please submit your abstract to Tanya.krzywinska at brunel.ac.uk