Bristol Games Hub July Newsletter

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Below is news from the growing Bristol & South West games development scene. You’ll find news from BGH first, news from Bristol & SW developers then jobs, opportunities & events.

Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit space for games and play. We run this newsletter, host events including monthly socials and rent affordable desk space on a rolling monthly contract basis so you can focus on creating amazing games. Contactdebbie at aurochdigital.com for more information or with news items for the next newsletter by 15th August please!

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

Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 31st July, 7.30pm

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

Achromatic Postmortem

Bristol Games Hub resident Lukas Roper will be talking about his recently released Windows Phone game Achromatic and the lessons he learnt during the development of the game and will discuss whether targeting a market other than iOS and Android is really worth it. 

So join us on Thursday, 31st July at 7.30pm – we have a buzzer now! The entrance is off Thomas Street, just up from the junction of Jamaica St/Stokes Croft, above Dynamic Heating Services.

PS. Stokes Croft is getting loads more cycle parking!!

Dev Scene News

VoDo Far Out Bundle

Bristol Games Hub residents, Vodo, have a new and freaky bundle out! http://vodo.net/farout

Opposable Games

Opposable Games is helping to organise a VR meetup by the name of SouthWest VRon Tuesday 29th July featuring oodles of exciting guests. While the event is currently oversubscribed, joining the group will keep you notified of future events. Outside of SWVR, the team’s been working hard on Pesky gNats and a couple of as-yet unannounced projects. As ever, keep an eye on twitter and Facebook for updates as they come.

Force of Habit & Clockwork Cockoo

Force Of Habit & Clockwork Cuckoo’s collaboration project “Timmy Bibble’s Friendship Club” has an update coming on 25th July. It will feature a brand new arena – The Wonky Wagon saloon – where almost everything is destructible, and an updated Mexican Standoff mode. If you haven’t kept up to date with the progress of the game, check out the dev log, and as always if you haven’t already, please vote for it on Steam Greenlight. Much-o thanks! 🙂

Devlog: http://timmybibble.com/blog/
Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254848856

Auroch Digital

We were quoted in a recent Guardian article looking at how games developers cover war: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/15/war-games-developers-military-conflict

Plus… updates from the Facebook group…

Jobs & Opportunities

500 More: Game Artist

500 More are looking for a game artist to contribute to our small team and help develop and produce the visual artefacts for our new game ‘Walking Safari’.  The work required is to engage in the design process and produce mockups, develop a design style and produce completed artwork for screen elements (backgrounds, objects, animated characters, fonts, UI elements) for the game.  The 2D game is a simple, arcade style mobile app and is being developed across the major mobile platforms using cross platform technologies. The game targets phone users only (tablet designs are not required for this project).

500 More is a startup organisation which develops mobile app games for health and wellbeing.  Walking Safari is a game built around walking, and requires players to actually walk to play the game.  Game characters form avatars, based on safari animals, which react to players levels of activity.  The characters have to perform various tasks, arranged in levels of increasing difficulty and with occasional hazards to avoid.  Players can also compete with other players or in teams against other teams.  Because of the interaction between physical and virtual worlds, the game interface must be able to convey key information at a glance, players will not normally be looking at the screen during game play.

We are looking for an individual with experience of producing artwork for mobile app games and with an understanding of UI/UX. UI element design will be a significant part of the requirement so a familiarity with standard mobile UI components (scrollviews, tableviews, navigation bars, toolbars etc.) would be beneficial. You should be able to demonstrate a good eye for composition and colour .
Contact: Greg Smart – greg at 500more.com

Video Game Funding Guide

TIGA and Google have published a free guide to funding your video game. See here (PDF).

Entertainment on the move – Innovation Contest

Deadline – 29th July. IC tomorrow is offering 4 businesses up to £25k each to encourage digital innovation in the area of entertainment on the move in music, book and magazine publishing and games/interactive entertainment. More info.

 

Events

Monthly Unity Meetup

This month’s Unity meetup will be a slightly more open one – We don’t have a main speaker, so instead we will be opening up the Floor (a.k.a table with projector) to whoever would like to present something. This might involve showing off your latest game, showing off your utility project, showing off some fancy Unity related techniques or just plain showing off! If you have any issues you’d like to share, or questions about best practice, regardless of how much experience you have this will give us all plenty of opportunity to open up a discussion with the group. So if you have a topic you’d like to present a micro-talk on, get your powerpoint ready (3 graphs per slide minimum), if it’s a game get a less-buggy build together (see: adjective “Impossible”), or if your around just to chat, get your… vocal chords ready (recommend choir practice warmup), and after all the painstaking preparation if you have any time left at all, come along to the meet up, 23rd July 7.30pm at Bristol Games Hub.
More info: http://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Unity-Game-Developers-Meetup/events/195258072/

Bristol Video Games Social

Join up here:
http://www.meetup.com/bristolgamers/

Upstarter Bristol: Who’s the audience?

Monday, 28 July 2014 from 10am to 1pm Bristol
A workshop for people who have an idea for new businesses, social or for profit, to have a clearer idea of different possible product formats and would like to know how to get more users or customers..
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/upstarter-bristol-whos-the-audience-tickets-12149550633

Playable Cities Conference

Featuring Google Creative Lab’s Tom Uglow, architect Usman Haque, artist Luke Jerram, Ogilvy’s Tara Austin and academics from the University of the West of England, this two-day international conference will explore the theme of the ‘Playable City’, asking what it might mean for citizens, urban planners, tech giants, small companies, artists and designers in imagining and making the cities of the future. On10 and 11 September, we will be bringing together a brilliant group of thinkers, makers, planners and civil disobedients to look at cities as playable places and ask the question: how do we make and unmake our future cities? The conference will feature playful interventions, networking, debate and discussion, artist commissions and an academic strand convened by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE. For more information on the conference programme and speakers see; http://www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity/conference14/

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