May Newsletter

Posted on May 20, 2015 Updated on May 20, 2015

Bristol Games Hub Newsletter

Below is news from the hub, news from Bristol & SW developers, jobs, opportunities & events.

Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit space for games and play. We run this newsletter, host events and also rent desk space at a cost price with no strings attached so you can get on and create amazing games. Contact jake at aurochdigital.com for more information or with news items for the next newsletter and let us news for the next one by 15th June please!

Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 28th May, 7.30pm

Join us for two great talks!  This month we’ve got:

Making Sense of Steam Greenlight & Hyper Thetical Games Demo!

Making Sense of Steam Greenlight; Join us for an informal panel looking at Steam Greenlight and how to get your game passed on it, as well some general thoughts about the process. Sam Chester from Owlbear looks at how they got Barbara-ian through in just over two months on the system, while Tomas Rawlings looks at the process of getting Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land through and Alexander Birke will talk about The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle. They will share hints and tips, then get you all to join in a discussion about the system.

There is also a demo from Hyper Thetical Games; “Designed in UE4 specifically for VR, CentraSphere is a checkpoint racing game set inside a sphere for 1 – 2 players. Single players race for extra time checkpoints while shooting targets for bonus points before running out of time and being plunged into darkness. 2 player pits players against each other battling for checkpoint supremacy, shooting will create slow bubbles on the arena to impede opponents. A full featured version is on our long term plans, but we have 3 other games planned to make first.”

So join us then…we’ve got a buzzer! We’re at 77 Stokes Croft on the 3rd Floor. The entrance is off Thomas Street, just up from the junction of Thomas St/Stokes Croft, above what was DHS Heating.

Games Hub News:

Also note; May Meetup – Intro to Procedural Mesh Generation is on 20th. More info below in Events.

SW Freelancer/Company Dev Directory
If you’re looking for people to help on a project, or you are available for work – put your details in.
Please only list info you’re happy to have in the public domain: http://bit.ly/bghdirectory

SW Game Dev Jobs Facebook page – Find roles and post new openings here…

Dev Scene News

Hyper Thetical Games

Ele-Mental is a fast paced arcade game of colour matching and enemy dodging available on  PSVita in the Playstation Mobile store, from the newly established indie game studio Hyper Thetical Games. A simple concept but with very challenging gameplay, requiring quick thinking and a high level of hand-eye coordination. Players must use the face buttons to switch elements to absorb enemies of the same elemental type. As a sucker for difficult games, Chris wanted to make this a challenge for anyone to play, but also make some modes accessible for any new player to get started. Each game mode includes a high score so players can keep on improving. Enemy absorption stats are tracked from each game and certain milestones will earn points which can be used to unlock more features, music and game modes. The games second version release saw the inclusion of PSTV compatibility.We are currently working on a third and final version which will add some very difficult challenges to earn medals. A special reward has been planned for the first person to collect them all and show us the proof. We are now working using Unreal engine and intend to bring a sequel that will graphically live up to the element nature of the name, and of course the mental part. The release of our game CentraSphere that was showcased at the South West VR conference is also just around the corner and we have another new project we intend to start working on and announcing soon. Check out our website for more information on our work. www.HyperTheticalGames.com

Creative Gaming Award

PLAY15 festival introduces the new ‘Creative Gaming Award’ You can submit concepts, alpha, beta for any game that deals with the medium in a creative way. Categories are;
– Most Creative Game
– Most Innovative Newcomer
Deadline is 15th July and there is no cost to enter. Winner gets 3000 euros! Full info on this PDF.

GAMe-ONe Show

GAMe-ONe is a new games exhibition here in Bristol at the UWE Exhibition Centre. It’s on October 24th and 25th 2015. There are lots of ways for developers to get involved and show their games to gamers. See here for the stand & signup info and here for thefloorplan. The Indie section is a table top allocation that is without charge to the small developers in exchange for them promoting the event to all their existing customers.

Kinect Testers Needed!

This is a request for interested female participants to take part in an investigation into how virtual avatar representation can affect perceptions of the environment & body. This experiment makes use of Microsoft Kinect and will involve a small amount of physical exertion, primarily using arms. Short semi-structured interviews will be given throughout the experiment, and the entire experiment will take approximately 45 minutes, total. The research has been approved by UWE’s research ethics committee. If you are interested, please visit: http://doodle.com/uwn5f8kvza4hu4bg
Or for more information, please contact: Sophie2.Pink at live.uwe.ac.uk

Auroch Digital

We’re running a competition for Chainsaw Warrior & Chainsaw Warrior: Lords of the Night where you can win an original copy of the game! Full info is here. The BBC game we did (with Demon Apathy and Force of Habit) is still live on BBC Taster, please give it a play and rate it! We’re also looking for an office manager/bookkeeper. Full info is here. Thanks!

Force of Habit

Friendship Club has had a few new releases on Early Access, including the Armour Update (http://timmybibble.com/blog/release-18-armour/)! We’ve also rigged the animation engine (Spine) with the ability to directly make calls to FMOD via marker keyframes which is blimmin’ great – sound event implementation without the need for extra programming (give us a shout if you want a little bit of insight into this – we can maybe do a blog post). Oh yeah, and you can now have unlimited bullets too, as if eight per player weren’t enough already…

Fundsurfer

Fundsurfer is a Bristol based funding platform for creative, social, and green projects. Raise money through crowdfunding, startup loans, peer-to-peer lending, and more.

We really want to help some game projects! Our crowdfunding fees are normally 5%, but we are slashing that to 2.5% for all game projects that go live before the end of June.

There’s more information about what we do at https://www.fundsurfer.com/crowdfunding/for/games

Duel Launches!

PM Studio-based Duel has now launched in the UK; check it out here – http://duel.me/ – they want feedback!

Opposable Games

Greenlight Greenlight Greenlight! Opposable Games is preparing for launching a Salvaged Greenlight campaign right now. We’re looking to launch in a couple of weeks so please keep an eye out and give us a vote when it goes up. The link won’t work until we publish the Greenlight but you can have it anyways, here it is, don’t say we never give you anything.

We’ve been in the studio recording dialogue with the excellent Kate Davies for the Salvaged multi part audio log Salvaged prologue, which has been rather fun. The logs are proving to be a wicked intro to the game and are lovely and atmospheric due to the efforts of audio extraordinaire Joe Charles AKA LabGrownMusic AKA Gizmode. Check them out right here – Part One, Part Two, Part Three. Part Four will be up tomorrow so keep an eye out on our social feeds for news of that one.

We’ve also been getting pretty blog-happy with a series of explorations of the Salvaged development process, here’s a selection from the excellent Salvaged writer-designer Daniel Dowsing.

A Control Room, VR and Dual Screening
‘Guardian’ – Thaddeus and Contracts
‘Angels with Machine Guns’ – Agents
‘How We Roll’ – Gameplay
‘Bang! Bang!’ – Weapons

There’s even more beautiful promo art from the very talented Lewis Gilliard up on the Salvaged site so go check that out, sign up to the Salvaged newsletter if you want more info and do keep an eye our for our Greenlight! Cheeeers!

Jobs & Opportunities

Aardman

Here at Aardman we have some particularly meaty and exciting projects in the pipeline at the moment and need more talented and enthusiastic devs to come and join our steadily-growing team of awesome.
We are looking for:

• Good HTML5 / JS game developers, particularly those familiar with Phaser to join our team working on a chunky and highly creative project which is all about inspiring the next generation of game makers. Would be ideal for any ex-Flash game devs who have graduated onto JS.
• Unity devs who like an interesting technical challenge to work on a game project for some innovative and rather cool new hardware (may involve sheep).

For more info please contact digital at aardman.com

Watershed

Graduate Job opportunity at @wshed as a Researcher, funded by @JerwoodFworking across creative team, marketing & PR: http://wshd.to/14e The successful participant will work with colleagues across the organisation, supporting the creative producing teams, marketing and PR and the Head of Development with insight, research and ideas. They will work with Watershed’s Talent network to capture their stories for wider sharing – offering them a unique way into a thriving network of creative economy collaborators and partners.

Auroch Digital

Auroch Digital is a small, friendly, creative company that makes innovative computer games.  We have a staff team of 13 plus freelancers and partners. We’re centrally based in Bristol with offices in Bristol Games Hub on Stokes Croft. We are looking for an experienced, qualified bookkeeper and office manager to take care of our finances, ensure the office runs smoothly, efficiently and effectively and  provide personal assistant support to both the Directors. We need a highly organised and friendly person to be at the heart of our business! No experience in the games industry is necessary. Full info and how to apply is here.

Bristol Data Dome Commissions

Bristol now has a 3D immersive data dome in the At Bristol Planetarium in Millennium Square. It’s going to need content and there are up to three development commissions available to produce prototype works that will profile the potential of the dome for Bristol audiences. The estimated total budget for all the commissions is £60k. After the workshop, teams will be invited to complete a short and simple proposal document and attend a pitching session on or around Tuesday 2nd June when the commissions will be awarded. If you are interested REACT invites you for lunch and to an afternoon workshop at Watershed Friday 22nd May to explore the potential of this exciting new environment for your company and for communities in the city. If you want to go please email joanna.lansdowne at watershed.co.uk

Events Diary

GamesAid (May 11th)

GamesAid’s sell-out Comedy night, ‘Stand Up for GamesAid’ returned to the world-famous London Comedy Store on May 11th, marking its third year. The previous two years have seen great success as the event has established itself as a favorite in the industry calendar.

Unity Group May Meet Up – Intro to Procedural Mesh Generation (20th May, 7.30pm)

Hello fellow Unity heads! We had a really good turn out at the last meetup so we hope to see just as many of you this time around. Alexander Birke will give the talk on how to create 3D models only with the use of programming, a bit of cleverness and a hefty dose of math. As always we follow the talk with a show and tell session where you can ask for feedback or help with whatever you are currently making with Unity. After the meetup we head of to the Bell for a relaxing pint or two. Signup to the meetup here.

Ken Eklund: The Future is an authentic fiction (6pm, 3rd June @Watershed)

Ken Eklund designs immersive play experiences about socially relevant issues like climate change and the environment. He’ll be speaking about his previous projects including World Without Oil, FutureCoast and Giskin Anomaly, as well as new cross-media works designed to engage people by playfully shaping positive futures. Ken is an internationally recognised game and experience designer, creating “immersive stories that seek to write themselves.” His socially relevant alternate-reality games explore real-world issues through collaborative play. His work springs from deep beliefs about the transformative effect of participation and the power of play to open people up to true inquiry and learning. More Info & Tickets

Quick Links

• Are violent video games better for us than blockbuster films?
• Launch Conference does meet the press on 28th May
• What’s happening in venture capital and games?

Thanks all!