We’re back again from the largest games trade fair in the world! One of the many ways in which we try to highlight our students and their projects from the Gotland Game Awards is to offer them floor space in our booths at various events. Largest of these by far is the annual Game Developers Conference and GamesCom. Let me throw some figures at you from this years event: 5 days and a total of 505 companies from 33 countries. More than 200 premieres. Over 4400 media representatives from 49 countries. A gross floor space of 120 000m² and a total of 254 000 visitors – 18 900 of whom were trade visitors.

Among them were 28 women and men from Gotland University, GAME. Our troop may have been somewhat smaller than for GamesCom 2009 but our presence was definitely not diminished. Our students got to build and man the 56m² booth right next to Blizzard, Square Enix, Crytek, EA, Bethesda, BioWare and LucasArts, where we showed off some of our most ambitious projects to date; Abzolium, Colorless, Fumbies, Gods of Steel, Midnight, Pawns and the game of the year-winner Dwarfs, alongside several monitors looping computer generated animations.

Jonathan Lester over at dealspwn.com concluded:

it doesn’t get any more independent than Gotland University [...] they’ve crafted some immensely promising experiences. Pay close attention, because these unsung games are quite unlike anything else you’ll see in the show.

Agreed.

For more photos, check out GamesCom 2010 official photostream.

Game Developers Conference Europe 2010 was larger than ever with record high attendance not only from the industry and media, but from speakers and exhibitors as well. GAME – a seasoned veteran – shared the 650m² exhibition space with more than 40 companies from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Our booth was right next to giants like Intel, Crytek, Bigpoint and Epic, and while it is called “GDC Europe” the 1,500 game professionals attending this year represented more than 45 different countries!

Speakers ranged from famed game developer Warren Spector of Disney’s Junction Point, to Hermen Hulst of Guerilla Games – the full schedule offered a selection of 170 international speakers, covering game development on PC, social networking sites, distribution, consoles and mobile platforms. 3 days chock-full of learning, networking, and inspiration – what’s not to love?

Video, audio, and presentation recordings from GDC Europe are available at the GDC Vault.
For more pictures, see the official GDC Europe photo set.
Gamasutra covered GDC Europe this year too.

For those of you who missed his excellent talk at the Gotland Game Awards, Professor Richard Bartle is coming back for a new lecture the September 2nd!

This marks the first of a series of public lectures hosted by GAME this autumn in our course Human Rights and Diversity in Serious Games 2010. Like last year we’ll invite speakers from the industry, arts, academia, press, government and more, to discuss human rights and diversity in the context of modern interactive technology. All lectures are free and open to the public!

Bartle is a professor and game researcher at the University of Essex. He’s most famous for having created MUD (multi-user dungeon) – the first of what would later evolve to become massively multiplayer online role-playing games. He’s one of the regular writers over at the popular science blog Terra Nova, with a focus on the study of virtual worlds and he was the examiner for our own doctor Mirjam Eladhari’s dissertation.

He will be talking about human rights in virtual worlds and his work with the European Council to create an HR-manifest for games.

Time: Thursday, September 2nd, 16:30-18:30
Location: E31

What do you get if you gather all political parties, all lobbyists, non-governmental organizations and more than 350 journalists and television crews in one place? You get Almedalsveckan (The Almedalen Week) – Sweden’s annual rock festival for politics – right here in Visby.

With 2010 being an election year the city will be absolutely packed for next week – there’s already more than 1041 events on the program, one of which happens to be GAME and our drop-in exhibit of the Best Of Gotland Game Awards.

Our Motion Capture studio will be open for the public 16:00 – 20:00, Monday to Friday. We’ll be showing Abzolium, Chubby Chase Race, Colorless, Fumbies, Gods of Steel, Midnight, Pawns, Sage & Walkabout. There will also be a drop-in cinema showing computer generated animations and movies.

The exhibit will be manned by our students so whether you’re interested in studying here or just want to take a break and play some games or watch some movies – you’re very welcome.

Welcome!

DreamHack – with it’s more than 12 000 participants – is the worlds largest computer festival, held right here in Sweden twice a year. DH Summer 2010 is underway as we speak, and as always we have a bunch of students displaying their work and representing our education at the DreamHack Expo. Make sure to drop by, try our games and hang out if you’re at the event.

And if you’re not (for whatever reason…) in Jönköping right now – don’t fret! Swedish Television is broadcasting live from DreamHack and the stream is available online! Daniel Hagström – one of our first year programmers was interviewed yesterday and did a great job! Check it out for a glimpse of what we do and were this education can take you.

Starts at 00:52:20. The interview is interrupted for a segment about game music, and continues at 01:24:00.

Unfortunately no subtitles for our international visitors.

Want more DreamHack goodness? Check out their Flickr stream and YouTube channel!

The 2010 edition of the Swedish Game Awards is over. The winners were announced at the Grande Finale on the 12th of June, and the prestigious Game of the Year went to GAME students!

Dwarfs is a third year project, an arcade strategy game for PC and Xbox360 putting you in charge of helping a computer controlled tribe of Dwarfs to excavate randomly generated mountains. You must help them gather juicy minerals and valuable gold, all the while protecting your Town Hall from harm. The SGA Jury motivation read: “Charming graphics, well thought out and fun. An overall solution that really works with an excellent tutorial that introduces a fun, tactic and strategic gameplay.” .

GAME has never had a big presence at SGA, largely due to scheduling conflicts. Our students are smack in the middle of production when SGA requests final submissions. But every now and again student teams have an early playable ready in time and enters the national competition. Thus Dwarfs can proudly join Promqueen (2005), Sumo (2006) and Vertigo (2009) in the list of GAME productions recognized at the Swedish Game Awards thus far.

Well done everyone!

PS. It might be worth noting that the Game of the Year-award came hot on the heels of the team’s well deserved Pwnage Award at Gotland Game Awards less than a week ago.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The player needs to keep the Fumbies happy by making sure they are clean, well trained, feel good, and go to their job. The main goal of a Fumbies life is to “lovel”, when a Fumbie lovels it passes on its genes to the Fumbie’s children. The children will inherit the parent’s looks and attributes.

Attributes depend on how the player has trained its Fumbies, and determine if the Fumbie is an intelligent, strong, or charismatic Fumbie. Fumbies earns unique items and visual parts for each specific attribute. Thus; by changing a Fumbie’s attributes the player is able to give the Fumbie a unique personality.

Fumbies was awarded “Almedalen Library Award” and “Best Game Graduating Class” at Gotland Game Awards 2010.

Creators:
Producer: Max Tiilikainen
Graphics: Jona Marklund , Rickard Jonasson, Povel Gulin, Sebastian Larsson
Programmer: Johan Norberg, Sebastian Svensson
Sound: Josef Falkensköld (external)
Website: http://www.meowentertainment.com/
]]> http://game.hgo.se/projects/3d-games/fumbies/feed/ 2 http://game.hgo.se/projects/3d-games/band-of-brawlers/ http://game.hgo.se/projects/3d-games/band-of-brawlers/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:10:18 +0000 Ulf Benjaminsson http://game.hgo.se/?p=5245

Click here to view the embedded video.

Band of Brawlers is a 3 vs 3 combat game, requiring teamwork and tactics in a king-of-the-hill scenario. On a colorful planet somwhere in space brawlers have started to gang up and are battling each other for control of an abandoned Tivoli. Gang up with your friends and see which team has the greatest cooperation and tactics while you try to take over and hold as many of the zones as possible. While fighting you’ll also get to experience an innovative combat interface that lets you perform attacks with the mouse.

Creators:
Project Management: Natalia Mekras
Graphics: Ted Edin, Kalle Henningsson, Monica Kreitz, Tobias Källkvist, Daniel Ohlsson
Programming: Olof Ahlberg, Gunnar Carnbro, Peter Sjödin
Sound: Nicolas Leventorp
Website: http://sim4devblog.blogspot.com/

Click here to view the embedded video.

While players move around freely in the world, the camera pans out when the players are further away from eachother. The two main characters have different skill sets and they need to be combined in order to overcome obstacles and take care of enemies. Basic skills are running, jumping, kicking, sliding, opening doors and climbing. Leveldesign force the players to split up but, the only way to regenerate health is to stay close to eachother, the most effective way of recharging energy is by hugging!

Colorless was awarded “Best Serious Game” at Gotland Game Awards 2010.

Features:
- A romantic, multiplayer, 2D side-scrolling, co-operative, platformer game.
- Played on classic 8-Bit controllers ported to a PC.
- Black and white versus colored backdrops, 50-ies retro inspired.
- Dark humour with increadolous plot twists.

Creators:
Albertinna Sparrhult – Producer
Niklas Åhs – Lead art / Lead designer
Pernilla Sparrhult – Art / Lead designer
Björn Bergren – Programmer
Mattias Bertilsson – Programmer / Assistant designer
Pontus Granström – Sound Effects
Mattias Lissmyr – Music Composer
Website: http://zamarkand.com/

]]> http://game.hgo.se/projects/2d-games/colorless/feed/ 2 http://game.hgo.se/projects/2d-games/pawns/ http://game.hgo.se/projects/2d-games/pawns/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:50:15 +0000 Ulf Benjaminsson http://game.hgo.se/?p=5158

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pawns is a 2D side scrolling co-op action game for the Xbox360. You and a friend must work together and combine your powers to defeat the human invasion!

Pawns won “The Award for Human Rights” at Gotland Game Awards 2010.

Creators:
Producer: Nina Moritz
Graphics: Esteban Soto, Jonatan Hagström, Alexander Oltner, Ruben Johansson, Simon Öhman
Programmer: Mikael Gullberg, Thommy Siverman
Sound: Mikko Jokela
Website: http://pawns-northerngate.blogspot.com/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pawns is a 2D side scrolling co-op action game for the Xbox360. You and a friend must work together and combine your powers to defeat the human invasion!

Pawns won “The Award for Human Rights” at Gotland Game Awards 2010.

Creators:
Producer: Nina Moritz
Graphics: Esteban Soto, Jonatan Hagström, Alexander Oltner, Ruben Johansson, Simon Öhman
Programmer: Mikael Gullberg, Thommy Siverman
Sound: Mikko Jokela
Website: http://pawns-northerngate.blogspot.com/

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