XNA Game Studio European Tour 2007 - Materials Available
/The slides and video recordings of the presentations are available here:http://www.codezone.fi/XNA_Game_Studio_Tour_2007.Codezone
IGDA Finland is the local Finnish chapter of the International Game Developers Association, our goal is to connect game developers, promote professional development, and advocate for the interests of the community.
Finnish Games Association joins ISFE
/Europe's Interactive Software Federation announced that the Finnish Games and Multimedia Association is the 26th member to join the ISFE.
FIGMA counts eleven members in its association, all of them big software companies operating on the Finnish market," said Patrice Chazerand, secretary general of the ISFE.
Its presence in the ISFE strengthens the industry's voice in Europe. It will help us do several things: push on with our mission to secure effective legislation for the protection of intellectual property rights, achieve adequate enforcement of the legislation and win unrestricted market access both on and off line.
I am delighted to announce that with the arrival of the Finns virtually the entire Nordic block is now on board."
ISFE membership will bring my member companies more scope to get their voices heard by the legislators in areas such as intellectual property, e-commerce, the fight against piracy, WTO negotiations, protection of minors and the environment," said FIGMA's Managing Director, Riku Olkkonen.
The members of FIGMA include AMO/Nintendo, Atari, Electronic Arts, K.E. Media, Microsoft/Xbox, Nokia, Nordisk Film/PlayStation, Plan 1, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Toptronics/PAN Vision, and Vivendi Games.
The ISFE was established in 1998 and represents the interests of the interactive software sector throughout the 27 EU Member States plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It has been running the Pan-European Game Information ratings system since 2003.
XNA Game Studio European Tour 2007 liveblogging
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14:30 Dave
* Dave explains the common things/tips to notice when starting a studio or just trying to get into game industry to make games * Dave moves on explaining goals of XNA * XNA goals as follows; Make it easier, Establish a vibrant community, low friction publishing channel for community games * XNA wants to establish itself as a tool to democratize game development * 700,000 downloads of toolset now, Adopted by more than 300 universities worldwide, More than 400 games (XNA Express 1.0) * Dave explains XNA as a robust educational platform & shows an example project (Aliens) that works from desktop computer using 360 controller * Dave explains XNA creators club, starter kit. Example games given with this kit, of all major genres. Shows off template functionality of XNA 2.0 briefly & shows off a template example project that users can dissect and modify freely. He continues showing a just compiled game deployed to 360 console. Looks and works exactly the same way in PC and 360.
15:00 Dave * Dave continues to explain minigames and samples provided in starter kit. Variety seems endless here. He shows off how to investigate components of the game in real-time, like a chase-camera and prototype how it works. * Dave shows off a visual game-like programming app called Boku that was made by Microsoft research, aimed towards kids. Apparently made with XNA, Boku allows you basically to create small games & interaction via a very simple programming interface. Microsoft wanted to use XNA to have fast iteration in the project. * Dave shows off Schizoid as an example. * He shows off examples from an XNA Dream.Build.Play competition, no Finland in competition apparently. Many of them games were done by one person or just a very small team. A lot of student projects also. * Dave said they will be doing the Dream.Build.Play again on December 08. * Dave showed off a Swedish made game Ragu, again wondering where is Finland. Ragu was one of the games in Dream.Build.Play competition. * Dave mentions about Imagine Cup 2008, a game development contest lobbying students to join since it's only for students. Game development is a new category in Imagine Cup 2008. * X360 XNA development will be free for students in near future apparently also and not only faculty members. * Dave thanks the university and wraps up * Jyri Ranki prepares his presentation > The presentation will be show with video and published to internet later on
15:30 Jyri
* Jyri explains his experience and agenda & the company he comes from * Jyri briefly goes trough an overview of Finnish game industry companies & famous games made in Finland. * Jyri moves into explaining about IGDA Finland. * He explains a basic cut-through of a basic console game development cycle & a sample org.chart with explaining roles in more detail. * Jyri talks on how to get into the industry and what is required to get in the industry.
16.00 Charles Cox
* Game in 60 minutes example
17:20 Break
17:45 Charles
* Charles goes more indepth with XNA 2.0 features * Button press deployment to XBOX360, builds and transfers it. * Allows you to use older "any" version of visual studio * Button press WINDOWS/XBOX live support * On Windows and XBOX you can store profiles (use it to save game and use other similar features) * Get the beta at creators.xna.com today! Final version avail. very soon!
* It's a wrap!
IGDA Finland gets a new student club - Score
/Score is an IGDA student club that goes deep into video gamedev and is also formally known as TAMK University of Applied Sciences Game Development Club. Score aims to be the very first Finnish Student game development club of IGDA.
The idea of Score was founded in the beginning of the year 2007 and the constitutive meeting, also as the first official meeting was held in August 18th.
The head of Score is called ”Scoreboard”, the members of which were voted in the first meeting. Scoreboard consists of four members: president, vice president, board member and secretary. Predictably, Teemu Haila, the founder of Score was voted as the president. Juho Hartikainen was voted as the vice president, Niko Kosonen as board member and Essi Nieminen as Score's secretary. The whole Scoreboard happens to consist of second year Interactive designers.
Score has almost 30 members, 15 of whom can be considered as active. The majority of Score members are from Tampere's universities and the age distribution is from 18 right up to 30. Score membership isn't dependable on being student. The most important thing is desire to work within games and especially gamedev.
Score aims high
Even though Score is brand new as an association and everything had to be started from the scratch, aims the first project reasonably high: 20-minute-lasting FP(S) horrorgame, Frayed. As most of the Score members study in TTVO (The School of Art and Media), setting for the videogame production is fairly decent.
Most of Score members creating Frayed have no formal training on gamedev. One of Score's main goals is to give its members a chance to improve and gather skills to become for example a game developer, game designer, producer or graphic designer for real – Score wants to make an effort to initiate its members into gamedev as a possible and desirable future career.
More information on Score itself and its projects and actions can be found on http://score.igda.fi
Writer: Essi Nieminen / Score secretary
From the web: IGDA proposes game credits standards
/Credits Standards Committee chair to speak at GDC 08 The International Game Developers Association is pushing for an industry-wide adoption of professional standards in game credits.
A public "beta" of the proposed IGDA standards was posted online for member feedback in September, but the issue has recently come to the forefront with the news that Rockstar Vienna was snubbed in the credits for Manhunt 2.
"Accurate, complete, and fair credits are essential to ongoing employment, professional development, and artistic fulfillment for all developers," said the IGDA's executive director Jason Della Rocca.
"Further, having accurate credits helps employers make informed hiring decisions."
The IGDA has established a Credit Standards Committee with the goal of establishing generally accepted guidelines that all studios and publishers can use.
John Feil, the chair of this committee, will be hosting a roundtable session during the 2008 Game Developers Conference entitled "The IGDA Credits Movement: The Revolution Is Already Here.
Article from GamesIndustry.Biz
