The Irish Symposium on Game Based Learning (iGBL2013) will be held in the Dublin Institute of Technology from Thursday 6th to Friday 7th June.

The conference has a varied programme of presentations, interactive posters and showcases spanning educational and corporate sectors.

This year’s programme will also feature interactive workshops, presentations powered by PechaKucha and some gamification novelties! There will be plenty of opportunities for networking and collaboration with educational practitioners, researchers, students, exhibitors and industry professionals.

View the conference website at igbl2013.wordpress.com or follow us on Twitter: @igbl2013.

REGISTRATION
Registration for iGBL2013 is now open with registration closing on Friday 10th May.

Register online at: http://igbl2013.wordpress.com/registration/

KEYNOTES
We are delighted to present our two keynote speakers:

Dr. Nicola Whitton is a game-based learning expert and researcher in learning innovation at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is passionate about enhancing and rethinking the ways in which teaching, learning and assessment are carried out, particularly in higher education, in order to create more equitable and engaging experiences for students. She is particularly interested in the use of games for creating active and experiential models of learning. See bit.ly/URnXYy for more details.

Fiachra Ó Comhraí is a gamification expert and CEO of Gordon Games [gordongames.com], a company making people happier at work through software game techniques. The company uses gamification to bond people together, make progress clearer and make good work addictive. See bit.ly/XEu1lP for more details.

WORKSHOPS

For the first time, this year’s conference will feature a series of interactive workshops where delegates will get the opportunity to gain hands-on experience of game-based learning and gamification. Workshops will cover a variety of themes including:

· How to design cheap and effective games for learning

· Gamification: using gaming techniques to motivate and engage

Workshop details will be announced shortly and places will be limited so early registration is advised.

Indie Dev Showcase 2013 at Develop, Brighton, July 2013.

As part of the Indie Dev focus, Develop is also running The Indie Showcase again from 10 – 11 July in the Develop Expo – which will feature 10 independently developed games unpublished by a third party, shortlisted by a panel of experts.

Delegates will have the chance to play all the games on display, and one of these games will go on to be judged overall Indie Showcase winner by our panel. All delegates will have a chance to vote for their favourite game in the Showcase via a “People’s Choice” ballot at the event.

“Unity are proud to once again be sponsoring the Indie Game Showcase at Develop 2013 in Brighton. We were blown away by the quality of last years entries and look forward to checking out what the very best of the indie development community has to show-off this year.” David Helgason, CEO, Unity

How do I enter?

It’s free to enter and the closing date for all game submissions is Monday 13 May 2013.

If you’re an indie developer who’d like to submit a game all you need to do is read the Guidelines and How to Enter sections, then complete the online entry form and send in your game by 13 May. It’s that simple.

Enter at http://www.developconference.com/Content/Indie-Showcase-Submissions

Winners of The 2012 Indie Showcase Awards were:

Editors’ choice – Qube, Toxic Games
People’s choice – Missing Ink, Red Bedlam
Judges’ choice – Lume, State of Play

So EI seems to be involved in the Quo Vadis games event taking place shortly in Berlin, Germany where there is a special focus on the games industries in Ireland, Spain, Israel, Poland and Malta.

See
http://die-entwicklerkonferenz.de/en/program-2013/intern-cooperations

23-25th April

http://die-entwicklerkonferenz.de/en

VS-Games 2013 (extended submission deadline)

http://www.vsgames2013.org/

(– Please note that the deadline for all submissions has now been extended to Monday the 22nd of April –)

The fifth outing of the International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications will be hosted at Bournemouth University, UK between the 11th and the 13th of September 2013. With the conference organized in previous years at locations such as Coventry (UK), Braga (Portugal), Athens (Greece) and Genoa (Italy), it will take place, for 2013, at the state of the art Kimmeridge House building of Bournemouth University, situated at the main Talbot campus of the institution.

The development and deployment of games with a purpose beyond entertainment and with considerable connotations with more serious aims is an exciting area with immense academic but also commercial potential.

The VS Games 2013 conference aims to address this variety of relevant contemporary challenges that the increasingly cross-disciplinary communities involved in serious games are currently facing. This will be achieved by, amongst other ways, the comprehensive dissemination of successful case studies and development practices, the sharing of theories, conceptual frameworks and methodologies and, finally, the discussion of evaluation approaches and their resulting studies.

For VS Games 2013 we are therefore seeking contributions from researchers, developers from the industry, practitioners and decision-makers which aim to advance the state of the art in all of the technologies related to serious games. The following listed topics are particularly encouraged, though it should be mentioned that they are not the only ones of interest to VS Games 2013 and that the list below is not exhaustive by any means:

• Game design
• Virtual environments
• Game-based learning methodologies
• Mixed and augmented reality
• Computer graphics
• Gamification
• Case studies/user studies for serious games and virtual worlds
• Mobile gaming
• Interactive storytelling
• Application areas
• AI for serious games
• Educational/learning theories and their application
• Visualization
• Pervasive gaming
• Human-computer interaction
• User modeling
• Alternate reality
• Simulation
• Platforms and tools

The following are the dates of submission for the different tracks of the VS Games 2013 conference:

• Full Papers (8 pages): 25th March 2013 extended to 22nd of April 2013
• Short Papers (4 pages): 25th March 2013 extended to 22nd of April 2013
• Poster Papers (2 pages): 25th March 2013 extended to 22nd of April 2013
• Call for Workshops (2 pages): 25th March 2013 extended to 22nd of April 2013

The authors of the best papers will be invited to write an extended version for inclusion in the Elsevier Entertainment Computing journal (subject to additional review) and IGI Global’s International Journal of Game-Based Learning.

Authors of selected technical articles with a focus on computer graphics will be invited to submit extended versions of their works to be considered for publication in Elsevier’s Computers and Graphics Journal.

Further proceedings and other journal special issue details for the VS Games 2013 publications are being finalised and will be announced as soon as possible.

Juice Jumpers, the new puzzle game from Little Bee Studios, has arrived and is launched today in the iTunes store.

Juice Jumpers is a match three puzzle game that turns the genre on its head, instead of sliding rows or swapping gems, you spin fruits to match them and rather than the pieces simply disappearing when you make a match, in Juice Jumpers you feed your characters with your every move.

There are three modes of fruity madness….

Classic : Perfect match three arcade experience.

Evolve : Feed, Evolve, Multiply.

JumperWare : Series of microfast lightning games to test your reflexes.

The ultimate goal here is to evolve your juice jumpers into their upgraded forms, giving them useful powers which will help you in eradicating those pesky fruit chomping worms. As you advance you will need to plan ahead and be efficient with your moves in order to defend against the wormly horde while blasting your way to blockbuster score bonuses.

There are several ways to build your score, complete bonus challenges by matching fruits in a given order, or even, by filling the board with juice jumpers of the same family, get the ultimate score bonus, the JUICEPACK.

It has taken the team two years to reach this point so help to support them by going to https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/juice-jumpers/id555099920?ls=1&mt=8

*Download the game, its 79 cents well spent

*Rate it if you enjoy it, even if you don’t they would be super grateful for the stars

Well done all!