Stephen Knightly's blog

In May 2009 we decided to move the Game Meetups back to the Media Design School's awesome Queen St venue and instigate a more structured format with a monthly guest presenter.  And things have exploded in the year since.  195 people interested in game development are on the mailing list, on average 30 people attend each month, and the Meetups are consistently rated 4/5 or better by attendees.  

It's also led to the formation of Playmaker - the Indie Game Developers Association of NZ, the online www.playmaker.org.nz community, participating in the Global Game Jam, and at least four people (that I know of) finding employment in New Zealand's growing games industry.

We've had no shortage of guest presenters in the last year - proof that there is a active and healthy indie gaming scene in New Zealand if you know where to look (hint: look here).

Looking back, here's a summary of the last year's Meetup topics.

June 2010 - www.DinoSawUs.com and www.PrimalCarnage.com + Windows Phone 7 

This month the Game Developers Meetup (Wed 2 June, 6pm at Media Design School, Queen St) is being invaded by Dinosaurs!

Here's what's on the Agenda:
DinoSawUs
Chris Bulman and Nathan Smith from DinoSawUs will showcase their fun and education online dinosaur world for kids. They’ll talk about virtual worlds, Flash development and the business challenges.

Primal Carnage
Hamish Bode will show-off the Dinos vs Humans shooter, Primal Carnage and discuss their use of DirectX11 and managing collaboration with an international team.

XBox Live game hub on Windows Phone 7
Nigel Parker from Microsoft will talk about Windows Phone 7 integration with the Xbox Live game hub (avatars, acheivements, gamer profiles). Game developers can start now building applications now using XNA or Silverlight in preparation for the worldwide launch of a new online marketplace.

To register go to http://gamedev.meetup.com/155

 On Auckland Anniversary Weekend 2010 we held the Auckland leg of the Global Game Jam - a global 48-hour challenge to create games.

69 game developers, artist and musicians gathered at the Media Design School in Auckland, University of Waikato in Hamilton and University of Otago in Dunedin to make games - fast! Thrown together with people they didn't necessarily know before, 'Game Jammers' were given 48 hours to make a game around the theme of 'Deception'. They also had to include at least one cake, snake or lake.

The games made in 48 hours are often short and experimental but might be made into longer games in future. For the Global Jam over 3,000 Jammers in 130 locations around the world worked on over 800 game projects on the same weekend. New Zealand was the first timezone to kick off, with 69 Jammers making 21 games in under 48 hours. You can check out some of the results here.

TVNZ's Media7 show also came along for a look:

 The excellent AnimFX conference for Gamers, Animation and Visual Effects industries is back by popular demand.  It's in Wellington (at Te Papa and Museum Hotel) from 5-7 November, with optional Master Classes including a Gaming one on the Thursday.

It's a good mix of international speakers and local stars from Weta, Parkroad Post and Sidhe.  

It's $590 for a two-day pass. More details at: http://www.animfxnz.com/index.php

The PlayMaker portal is a community site dedicated to game development in New Zealand.

Established by Pixelati and GameMold after meeting via the Auckland Game Works Meetup that AGW runs, the PlayMaker portal's purpose is to provide an active and engaged social site offering information, support and community to established and up-and-coming developers - both professionals and hobbyists. There's a good level of conversation going on there already, so check it out.

Besides the obligatory forums, the PlayMaker portal has its own group Twitter of sorts in the form of The Wire; Members and Groups functions with dedicated calendars and forums for companies and informal teams to interact; tag-based categorisation, and detailed member profiles with links to individual Twitter feeds.  There is an Auckland Game Works group in the community too, so if you join Playmaker join our group too.

July's Auckland Game Developers Meetup has taken a serious gaming twist - with two games for health presenting their projects.

They're both professionally funded projects, based on academically-rigourous designs, but with gaming principles added on top.

Maru Nihoniho of Metia Interactive will talk aboutthe Sparx e-therapy game.  This is a 3D fantasy world 'serious game' designed to teach young people self-help skills for depression. The game was developed for the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences of the University of Auckland and funded by the Ministry of Health New Zealand.

Brightmind Labs fuses gaming principles with Cognitive Behavioural Theraphy to get results for kids with mental health issues. Their first game FriendQuest helps kids on the austistic spectrum better recognise emotions.

For the full agenda check out http://www.agw.org.nz/meeting

 At June's Auckland Game Developers Meetup, Jeff Nusz of www.custom-logic.com shared some of his flash games.

I described some of them as 'art games', which may not be totally accurate. They're all very playable and fun, definately well themed but most don't take the obvious route.  They're not as arty as experimental games by the likes of Daniel Benmergui at www.ludomancy.com. 

Here are links to the games Jeff showed:

Sprout
http://www.kongregate.com/games/customlogic/sprout

Anika's Odyssey: Land of the Taniwha
http://www.anikasodyssey.com/

Kaleidoscope Reef
http://www.kaleidoscopereef.com

Waiting for Go Bus
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/486095/

At our June Game Developers' Meetup our guest speaker was Kevin Toms: creator of the original Football Manager game; responsible for an entire genre of computer game; seller of over 2m game units; former Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Addictive Games.

A copy of Kevin's presentation is now up on his blog. It's just the slides so you'll miss some of the humour, Kevin's good nature and you won't be able to tell how tall he is (very).