The fine folks over at Stand Alone, Inc. who recently announced the multiplayer add-on of their game Crosswords have now been selected as Starbucks’ Free App of the Week!
Starting today, any one should be able to go to their local Starbucks and pick up a card for a free download of the app on iTunes.
Head to your favorite shop and support a local dev today!
We’d like to share some of the great things happening in the Chicago game development community in April:
Indie City Games is having their bimonthly meeting on Saturday the 20th of April from 1pm-4:30pm at Depaul.
IGDA Chicago will be at C2E2, which takes place April 26-28th. Look for us at booth 810, among the booths of our fantastic local indies. Additionally, there will be three panels featuring local Chicago developers.
Industry Night is on Tuesday, April 30th from 7pm-11:30pm at Haymarket Pub & Brewery. It’s put on by our friends at Chicago Game Developer Industry.
If you’re a studio interested in booth space at C2E2, contact Jay Margalus. We have an awesome deal lined up with C2E2, and some really great space next to the IGN booth area.
Here’s a preview of some of the panels we’ll be doing:
Building Your First Video Game: Have you ever wanted to build your own video game? Have you ever wanted to leanr what the first steps are? C2E2 is happy to get together some of the top game designers in Chicago to talk about what it takes to build a game from the ground up. Whether you are looking an independent or major game developer this panel will give you the tools to really know where to begin. We will be taking questions from the audience on game design, concept, and developing for the mobile market.
How do I get my Comic Book Character into a Video Game: Bringing together the best in Comic Books and Video Games this year at C2E2 we wanted to host a panel about getting your comic book characters into a video game. From design ideas, to buidlign games, to ways to talk with developers and publisher, this panel hopes to offer some guidance for game designers and comic book developers alike. The panelists are proven veterans from the game market who have worked on titles about superheores. We hope you walk away with some great ideas for games as well as new directions for your comic book characters!
Future of Gaming from Consoles to Online: C2E2 is bringing some of the top professionals in games to talk about the ever changing game market. From the switch to new consoles, to the rise in mobile gaming, these experts will outline what we will all be playing in the next decade. Also, the panel will focus on buying game vs. free to play and other changes coming to the market.
20 January 2013
Called to order at 10:21am and adjourned at 1:39pm.
Attended by Jay, Sheri, Neal, Jared and Heather in-person.
Absent board members: none
Game Jam Panel
30-40 people, room packed.
Was really beneficial to students. Tons of great feedback.
Power Dinners
Wednesday the 23rd, at Wideload, 9-10 game company execs, likely 2 of our board members to be present.
Discuss sponsorships, get ideas about who we can bring in for sponsors.
Get events ideas from studios, ask for support.
Budget Overview
2012 Final
We ended the year positive
Caution: more expenses next year as we transition to the chapter formally paying for Meetup and web hosting
We were off budget this year but it was the first year.
Board members should be sure to collect receipts for all expenses.
2013 Forecast
Planned for four sponsors throughout the year (Jared)
Planned for workshops
Charity mixer at the end of the year
Conference, Chicago Game Jam expenses, etc. based off last year.
Budgeted in board meetings, power dinners, etc.
To achieve this: get the workshops going, paid event every other month.
Motion to approve the budget made by Jay, seconded by Heather, unanimous.
2013 Events, first six months
January
Global Game Jam
Mentors: two types
Scheduled mentors Saturday (come talk to these audio guys from 12-2) get help, etc.
Friday Night mentors who go around and advise
Support GGJ
February
GGJ Play Party
Structure it so teams can demo their games, then open it up for people to play them after the presentations.
Educational content – Judges from GGJ, producers of studioheads give feedback
Ask execs at power dinner to come give critiques, offer to support a top game (space, mentorship, monthly progress meetings, etc)
Location: DePaul
Date: Thursday February 21
March
Avengers Alliance/OUYA
Avengers Alliance postmortem, OUYA gets 30 minutes of speaking
Location: 1871
Also in March: Game tourney for people not at GDC
April
C2E2 (Tech Week replacement)
Inc IGDA Chicago logo in brochures, website.
Event is shifting towards games. They would like to do panels with us, offered us an expo space for showing games (30 x 20)
Either C2E2 brings down costs or we look at sponsors to offset the costs.
Perhaps partner with similar groups/retailers/etc
Perhaps run a suburban event in April, as well, for those not going downtown for the conference.
May
Microsoft/Xbox
Would like to talk about devs bringing their games to the platform (Bizspark)
Sponsored event (30 minute presentation, possibly pair with a postmortem)
June
Taste of Chicago Games – Games Showcase
Picnic/showcase
Location: suburbs?
2013 second half:
Late September / October – Chicago Game Jam
December – Charity Mixer
More Ideas:
Arcade event where past and present industry leaders in Chicago talk arcade biz
Jared will talk to the Temple Run folks about possibly coming out for an event.
Student event with classes for resumes, etc.
Working Group Status
Use Basecamp!
We should seek someone to be in charge of suburban events and take ownership of it (High Voltage.) We should address this at the next power dinner.
Sponsored by OUYA
Friday, March 1st from 6pm-9pm at 1871 in the Merchandise Mart.
IGDA Chicago is proud to host Wideload Games and OUYA for our March event From Console to Mobile, and Mobile to Console.
The game platform landscape is changing rapidly, and with it, how we consume media.
Join us as Julie Uhrman, CEO of OUYA, hosts a Q&A for developers curious about what OUYA does and how to publish on their platform. Following this, Wideload Games talks the transition from console to mobile and the release of their recent title, Avenger’s Initiative.
Purchase tickets here.
Thursday, February 21st at 7pm. IGDA Chicago hosts the second annual Chicago GGJ Play Party. Come out to play the raw experimental games made at GGJ sites all around Illinois.
Starting at 7pm on March 7th, come out to play with fellow gamedevs at The Starter League in 1871 (Merchandise Mart)!
Special thanks to Games.com for sponsoring Game Jam Survival Techniques this evening!
5 December, 2012
Meeting called to order at 2:00pm CDT and adjourned at 2:32pm CDT.
Attended by Jay, Sheri, Neal, and Heather via Skype.
Absent board members: Jared
North Star
Thought: Moving Chicago toward a community of studios who aren’t dependent on
outside money to sustain themselves, thus ensuring that we won’t have another EA/
Midway implosion.
To Keep in Mind
Community outreach with local schools, press, investors, other professionals
Bringing in a speaker
Increasing our volunteer base
Old Business
Power Dinner
Chicago Toy and Game Fair Review
MK Game Night
New Business
December or January Event – How to Survive a Game Jam
January – DePaul Global Game Jam
February Event – Play Party
Budget Overview
Volunteer Progress
Updates
Jay
Sheri
Heather
Jared
Neal
Agenda update: focusing on helping studios become more self-sustaining.
Power Dinner
We can also use it as an opportunity to reconfirm GGJ volunteers.
Maximum 14 people. RSVP, first come first serve.
ChiTAG
Everyone thought it was very successful! It looks like we’ll be able to have a presence next year, as well.
MK Game night
Rescheduling this… try to avoid other events.
How to Survive a Game Jam
Late December event, or perhaps in January. This will be at DePaul.
January
DePaul GGJ runs the 25-27th – support the event (ensure they have mentors, sponsors, getting the word out.)
February
GGJ Play Party
Teams demo their games, then everyone can play them.
Budget
Some slight revisions to accommodate event changes, but otherwise looks solid.
Volunteers
All board members are working on securing two volunteers to assist with chapter tasks.
From DePaul’s Website:
A Game Jam is an event which brings together artists, programmers and designers to spend a weekend working together in intense game development and design. Why? To work with people you might not otherwise meet, to show off your skills and creativity and to get respect for making great and innovative games under extreme time constraints!
The DePaul Game Jam ’13 is the sixth annual game jam in Chicago and it will be held between Jan 25 – Jan 27 2013. The event is non-profit and it is organized by the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University.
Once again, the DePaul Game Jam is part of the IGDA Global Game Jam that takes place all over the world during (mostly) the same 48 hours. The Global Game Jam will start at 5:00p Friday, January 25, 2013 through 3:00pm Sunday, January 27, 2013, (all times local). All participants in the Global Game Jam, including those in the DePaul Game Jam, will be constrained by the same rules and limitations, with each time zone having one distinct design constraint.
Run by Jose Zagal and DePaul University, the DePaul Game Jam is the longest running and largest annual game jam in Chicago. Come on out and make some games with fellow developers!
Speakers: Ryan Wiemeyer (The Men Who Wear Many Hats), Kevin Zuhn (Young Horses), Dave Fulton (Jacksmack), Dan Loane (Wideload).
Want to participate in a game jam? Looking for tips and tricks on how to survive one? Or maybe you just want to hear old war stories from seasoned game jammers…
Come check this event out, where game jammers and game devs will talk shop on how to get through a game jam with a finished game and your sanity intact (sort of)!
7 November, 2012
Meeting called to order at 2:02pm CDT and adjourned at 2:40pm CDT.
Attended by Jay, Jared, Neal, Sheri, and Heather via Skype.
Absent board members: none
North Star
Make Chicago a game development mecca by bolstering the community: bringing
people together, promoting community events, helping game developers make better
games, and bringing up the nascent indie community in Chicago.
To Keep in Mind
• Community outreach with local schools, press, investors, other professionals
• Bringing in a speaker
• Increasing our volunteer base
Old Business
1. Power Dinner – Late December
New Business
1. November Event – GREE
2. Chicago Toy and Game Fair
3. MK Game Night
4. December Event – Jared
5. Workshops
6. New Volunteer Structure
7. Updates
7.1. Jay
7.2. Sheri
7.3. Heather
7.4. Jared
7.5. Neal
Power Dinner in December
To be hosted at Wideload, finalizing details.
GREE
Everything is go for the GREE event.
ChiTaG
We have five studios for Indianapolis and Chicago involved.
MK Game Night
We will add this event to Meetup.
December Event
Holiday party with charity aspects.
Consider not running with food to lower ticket cost.
Workshops
Jay would like to reach out to more individuals to see if they’d like to host workshops.
New Volunteer Structure
Each board member gets 2 volunteers to assist with specific aspects of chapter upkeep. We should have volunteers appointed in January.
Working on a mobile game? Pitch us your latest build or GDD on the spot, for a chance to win swag and other cool prizes.
Gree is a leading mobile social gaming company that recently launched the open beta of their GREE Platform, a global platform that brings together developers and players.
Want to know more? Email us at greelovesindies@gree.net
Dave Engelberg (Director of Developer Relations) of Gree speak about their new “Gree Loves Indies” program!
Schuller Heinz, former art director at Day One Studios, will talk about developing the Top-20 XBox Live Indie Games title “Avatar Lazer Wars 2.”
Craig Stern will talk numbers for Telepath RPG: Servants of God. What worked to drive sales? What didn’t? What impact did pricing have? We’ll find out!
Kevin Geisler will talk about free and cheap tools for collaborating with other developers, and Jake Elliot and Tamas Kemenczy will discuss how they used Unity, Github and Dropbox to develop Kentucky Route Zero.
Open Play! Bring your laptop with a working copy of your game; we’ll be setting up around the edges of the room and playing each others’ games!
We’ll also be holding a raffle for a Nexus 7! (bring your business cards)
WHERE: 243 S. Wabash, 9th floor
WHEN: November 10, 2012 at 1:00 PM – 4:30 PM
(As always, we’ll be sticking around afterwards to socialize and network after the meeting proper. Bring business cards if you have ’em!)
3 October, 2012
Meeting called to order at 1:58pm CDT and adjourned at 2:37pm CDT.
Attended by Jay, Jared, Sheri, Neal, and Heather via Skype.
Absent board members: none.
North Star
Make Chicago a game development mecca by bolstering the community: bringing people together, promoting community events, helping game developers make better games, and bringing up the nascent indie community in Chicago.
To Keep in Mind
Community outreach with local schools, press, investors, other professionals
Bringing in Money: Paid events, event sponsorships, organization sponsorships
Bringing in a speaker
Increasing our volunteer base
Old Business
Next Power Dinner
“Why Live in Chicago” website page
New Business
Chicago Game Jam Post-Mortem
Chicago “Summer of Arcade” Post-Mortem
October Event – Scholarships Presentation (Heather)
November Event – Paid
December Event – Holiday Party (Jared)
Workshops
Updates
Jay
Sheri
Heather
Jared
Neal
Next Power Dinner
Planning next power dinner, in progress.
“Why Live in Chicago” website
Page in progress. (Jay is on it, will ask for help writing it up)
Chicago Game Jam Post-Mortem
The Game Jam went awesome! The judges were impressed by the quality of the games! Write-up coming soon.
Summer of Arcade
Summer of Arcade event went very well, too. Tons of great feedback!
October Event
Reaching out to volunteers for promotion, promoting to schools.
November Event
Planning in progress.
December Event
Networking/social event.
Workshops
Workshops were suggested: encouraging groups/individuals to hold workshops that we would help publicize and market
we have the precedent on this from Keith Fuller having previously come in for a Project Management workshop the chapter endorsed.
another chapter did an Unreal workshop, so we could consider doing topic-specific workshops as well
Students and educators: please join us for a presentation on the IGDA Scholarships program, including details about the program itself and how students can put their best foot forward when applying! Former IGDA scholars will be giving you their advice and hard earned knowledge.
Join us on Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at Flashpoint.
“Time is the thing we have the least of… I don’t want people to waste their time on something they’re not going to enjoy.”
That’s what Arthur Gies, the reviews editor for Polygon says at the outset of the publication’s latest episode of its navel-gazing web series, Press Reset. The episode, the series’ seventh, is titled “FunFactor™,” which I assume is a nod to the jargon and useless lingo game critics have invented to articulate to readers whether a game is good or bad. At the end of the day, that’s all we really care about, right? Traditionally, games are supposed to be fun, and they either are or aren’t.
I doubt anyone will disagree with me there.
But the problem I have as a game critic, a member of the media, and as a regular human being is the implication that Game Critics somehow know more than the people for whom games are made: players. Regular Joes. Whatever you want to call them. There are far more of them than folks who will bemoan shouldering the thankless task of reviewing a video game.
Look, what’s fun for me may not be what’s fun for you. That doesn’t mean that either of us are right or wrong. It’s just a fact that life is subjective. When we look at the same banana, we aren’t registering the same shade of yellow in our eyes. One of us might be color blind. One of us might be allergic to bananas. One of us might not be able to see at all. But just because I have a louder megaphone and have “studied” bananas, does that mean I’m somehow more right than you are?
No. Of course not.
And yet, this mentality remains.
There’s a literal divide that exists, of course, on every article online. My name will be at the very top of this piece. Your name will be at the bottom. That’s just the way these things are laid out. And either my piece (review, preview, whatever) will be used to spark a conversation or you’ll ignore it and move on. That’s fine. It’s just my opinion.
There’s nothing wrong with reviewers. As a consumer, I think they do a thankless task. As a critic myself, I feel we are largely unnecessary and peripheral. I am grateful to get the work and feel I bring a different take to the stuff I write about than some folks out there shaking down money doing the exact same stuff.
But I would never get the audacity to claim that I know best for how you should be spending your time. Games critics are not curing cancer. In a thousand years we will be forgotten and dead. And I don’t know about you, but I would much rather be spending the limited time I have on earth living my life and pursuing my goals — not strong-arming others with my opinions on video games. It’s my opinion. It doesn’t have to be yours.
Because ultimately, we are just older (and not necessarily more mature) versions of this kid:
David Wolinsky can be followed on Twitter here and he also tweets wildly inaccurate facts about cats here. He likes you and thinks you’re cool.
by D20 Studios
Hero Mages is a free online game where players command a band of mighty heroes fighting to control the fate of Papillion. Equipped with traditional board game elements -a set of dice and a hand of cards representing magical spells- players must leverage skill, luck, and social politics to emerge victorious in this exciting battle of turn-based strategy that can be played from any Flash enabled web browser.
A Night Forever is a short game that explores the emotion of desire by approaching games as poetry.
Link: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/603561
There was a time when Kickstarter was fresh and new and exciting. It was the Old West: a little bit dangerous and a lot bit uncharted territory. Folks wanted to get their obscure out-of-print camera parts made or a super-powerful bike lock produced. That made sense. They’d more than meet their goals, and with it, a concept known as “super-funded” came about. It’s when people ask for, say, $20,000 and make $20 million.
That’s a hypothetical.
And then, invisibly, that’s when Kickstarter began to mutate from a crowd-funding DIY love-fest to what it’s slowly becoming for some more disingenuous entities: a marketing platform. That is, people (or companies, mainly) started using Kickstarter not really caring whether they met their goal. What they were striving for was attention in the gaming media that they’ve reunited and are interested in making something new — a sequel to a game that was originally released in 1994.
That’s a little less hypothetical.
Earlier this month, Revolution Software announced it wanted to make a new adventure game, Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse. They were asking for $400,000, which it handily exceeded. And that’s when another controversial Kickstarter practice came into play: stretch goals. It’s to help further motivate people to keep investing after the initial goal has been met, with extra carrots being dangled in front of the consumer. In this case, Revolution Software said that if its Kickstarter hit a million bucks, it would help them write Beneath A Steel Sky 2, a sequel to its 1994 hit: “But, to be clear, all money raised through this Stretch Goal will be spent doing even more amazing things in Broken Sword – the Serpent’s Curse.”
Revolution didn’t hit that million-dollar mark, but it announced that it’s working on the sequel anyway.
Would Revolution have gotten the same amount of attention had it just announced it’s working on a sequel anyway without getting some (read: a lot) of its fans money? Maybe. It’s just interesting to watch Kickstarter starting to be used in this way by developers.
And it isn’t just indie developers who are using Kickstarter. Platinum Games, the folks behind the very excellent Vanquish, told The Verge that “it would be great if we could do a Kickstarter and gather enough money for a [PC] game to be released on Steam.”
Something here is broken, and it’s easy to point fingers at the developers. But when you have big-name studios and little guys alike on Kickstarter, it means whoever is holding the purse strings to these companies isn’t letting the money fly where maybe it should. But who’s to say where it should go? Everyone has a different opinion and bias depending on where in the industry they are.
If you’re an indie, you’re likely irritated to see Platinum crying poverty with an up-turned hat for people’s scraps. If you’re a major company, you likely feel a little funny about asking for money from your public when you’re used to a publisher fronting the bill.
But a single post won’t and can’t solve this sort of issue. The short of it is: If you’re on Kickstarter and have plans to make your product regardless of the outcome, it’s skeezy and dishonest. The platform implies that you can’t do something without everyone’s help, and that everyone’s help will benefit the greater good. That’s why it’s called kickstarter and not wedontreallyneedthemoneybutitdbenicestarter. Unless your name is Penny Arcade, in which case, nobody seems to mind for some reason.
5 September, 2012
Meeting called to order at 2:04pm CDT and adjourned at 2:38pm CDT.
Attended by Sheri, Jay, Neal, Jared, and Heather via Skype .
Absent board members: none.
North Star
Make Chicago a game development mecca by bolstering the community: bringing people together, promoting community events, helping game developers make better games, and bringing up the nascent indie community in Chicago.
To Keep in Mind
Community outreach with local schools, press, investors, other professionals
Bringing in Money: Paid events, event sponsorships, organization sponsorships
Bringing in a speaker
Increasing our volunteer base
Old Business
1. Next Power Dinner
2. Iron Galaxy + Robomodo Event – September 26
2.1. Sponsors
2.2. Event Promotion
3. Chicago Game Jam – Nerdery (Sept 28-30)
3.1. Sponsors
3.1.1. The Nerdery
3.1.2. Iron Galaxy
3.1.3. Wideload
3.1.4. Cloakworks
3.2. Volunteers
3.2.1. social media
3.2.2. team mentors
3.2.3. checking people in
3.2.4. help with running event
3.3. Speakers
3.4. Judges
3.5. Event Promotion
Next Power Dinner
Jared is on it
Iron Galaxy + Robomodo
Further promotion
General Sponsorship
Food for an event
Sponsor the chapter directly
Software
Chicago Game Jam
Jared created a Facebook event
Will need more volunteers
Sponsorship is pretty solid for this event
Why Live in Chicago page
Find volunteers to populate this
Volunteers
Find ways to help our volunteers continue to grow our volunteer base
October Event
Get IGDA Scholarships talk
Heather
Sheri?
(more people?)
Contact Flashpoint
Year-End Events
November event
Holiday Party