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March Bristol Games Hub Newsletter OUT NOW!
The March edition of the Bristol Games Hub newsletter is out now for your reading delectation.
We’ve got RICO action, Mars Horizon card game kickstarter success reports, and some news about the upcoming Pitch Event we’ve got coming to Bristol.
Have a read yourself right here!
Fancy signing up to get the latest news from the Bristol Game Dev scene fresh in your inbox every month? Sign up here!
Unofficial UK Games Fund Workshop – Monday 11th April, 7pm
Note: this is not an official UK Games Fund event, nor will anyone from the fund be present.
The UK Games Fund is a newly established grant from UK Games Talent and Finance CIC with the aim of helping to develop the UK games development industry, particularly those in the early stages.
Grants of up to £25,000 will be awarded to help new and young development businesses create working prototype games. If you have a project which is further along the development process which needs support, they are also going to be awarding a limited number of grants for up to £50,000 and will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis.
For full information and how to apply click here.
To support this, Bristol Games Hub is running a one off workshop for applicants and those interested in applying.
UK Games Fund Workshop – Monday 11th April, 7pm
The UK Games Fund recently held a series of workshops in Edinburgh, London, and Manchester, James Parker of Ground Shatter and the Bristol Games Hub was able to go along and hear in more detail the assessment criteria for applications. With the cooperation of the UK Games Fund itself, he has been able to get hold of the slides from the presentation and will be doing a “bootleg” version of the workshop at the Bristol Games Hub. If you are applying or thinking or applying, then this is an ideal opportunity to ideal more about how best of focus your time and effort when it comes to making your application.
If you are planning to attend, please familiarize yourself with the details of the fund and how to apply the link below first. We will be looking more closely at the assessment criteria and rather than covering the publicly available information here, so an understanding of what is required before attending the presentation is essential:
www.ukgamesfund.com/how-to-apply/
If you have any questions please bring them along with you and James will do his best to answer them.
For more information or to RSVP go to the Meetup Page.
June Newsletter
Bristol Games Hub Newsletter
The latest updates 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 debbie at aurochdigital dot com for more information or with news items for the next newsletter and let us know if you have any news you would like sharing in the next one by 15th July please!
Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 27th August, 7.30pm
We’ll give you more info on what they will be closer to the time, but stick the date in your diaries! If you have a suggestion for a talk, drop us an email!
Games Hub News:
BGH Marketing Group Meetup
The Hub marketing group, an informal meet-up of people to talk about the means and ways to market games, is meeting on Wednesday 17th at 7.30pm. We’re talking Reddit & Facebook this time plus a general chat. If you want to come along, please email tom at aurochdigital dot com so we know you’re coming as numbers are limited! If you can’t make it, we’ve got an email discussion group too here.
Going to Develop: Brighton?
We’re putting together an informal dinner for developers, on the evening of the Tuesday 14th. If you are interesting in coming for some food, drop us an email to debbie at aurochdigital dot com. Spaces are limited, so we can’t promise anything!
Monday 22nd June: Unity Meetup – More Procedural Meshes!
Full info is below in events. Info page is here.
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
Pocket Gamer Connects – San Francisco
After successes in London, Helsinki, and Bangalore, Pocket Gamer Connects is going stateside and bringing the premier mobile-focused B2B event to San Francisco on the 7th and 8th of July. More information is available at pgconnects.com, and you can keep up with the event on #PGCSanFran. If you’re headed out there, contact Bristol-based journalist Peter Willington, who will be in attendance.
More info links:
http://www.pgconnects.com/
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23pgcsanfran
Or contact Peter on; peter.willington at steelmedia dot co dot uk
Creative Gaming Award
PLAY15 festival introduces the new ‘Creative Gaming Award’ You can submit concepts, alpha and/or 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 and winner gets €3000! Full info on this PDF.
Auroch Digital
First off, a huge thanks to all who have signal-boosted the news of Dark Future: Blood Red States. We had great coverage from PC Gamer, Kotaku, Game Debate, Rock Paper Shotgun, Pocket Tactics and many more! We’ve also announced the winner of our Chainsaw Warrior: Lords of the Night competition – to write the best 80s action movie style review! We’re also recruiting and have a jobs page on our site now, which can be found here and below.
Twice Circled
Twice Circled, “I released the Big Pharma beta earlier this month. It’s a game about running your own pharmaceutical company. I’ve been astounded by the response from Youtubers/streamers with some really high profile people covering it, including Northern Lion and Sips from The Yogscast. Despite a few graphical bugs and some performance problems, the general reception has been overwhelmingly positive and I couldn’t be happier. The full release on Steam is planned for later this year. For further information, head over to the official website.”
Jobs & Opportunities
Auroch Digital
We have now filled the Producer role (and welcome Kelly Venables to the team!) We’ve still got open vacancies for an experienced programmer and an office manger/book keeper! http://www.aurochdigital.com/jobs/
Creative Youth Network
Creativeyouthnetwork.org.uk do great work with young people and are looking for a paid mentor to help a talented upcoming game developer – anyone interested?
Events Diary
Games Hub Marketing Group (June 17th 7.30pm)
Join us at Bristol Games Hub for a peer learning session about how to tell fans about our games. We’ll be looking at social media and Reddit. Email tom at auroch digital dot com if you want to come along!
Lunchtime Talk: Bringing computing into the real world (1pm Friday 19 June – Pervasive Media Studio)
We all love our computers, but generally they are mostly something we keep indoors. In this week’s talk, the PM Studio are delighted to welcome digital artist and creative coder Seb Lee-Delisle to the Studio. Seb will be showing us that really amazing things can happen when we take our computers into the elements.
http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/events/fri-19062015-100pm
Wales Games Developer Show (June 19th)
Pop over the border to see what the great devs in Wales have been up to and make some new connections! Info is here: http://www.walesgamesdevshow.org/
Unity Meetup – More Procedural Meshes! (June 22nd 7.30pm)
At Bristol Games Hub: The Unity meetup is back, on a Monday no less! This time around we have the second instalment on how to create 3D models from code ready for you. In this final part of his talk, Alexander will cover the following topics:
- A short recap on creating procedural meshes to introduce newcomers to the topic and provider a refresher to everyone who attended last time
- UV coordinates & Texturing. How to put pretty pictures on the surfaces of your meshes.
- Bezier curves. Create smooth curves to define surfaces or paths
- Delaunay Triangulation. Turn an arbitrary series of points into a surface with Triangle.Net
Signup to the meetup can be found on our meetup page:
http://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Unity-Game-Developers-Meetup/events/223161687/
Board Game Night (1st July, 7.30pm)
Join us at Bristol Games Hub on 1st July to play amazing board games. Bring a title along and/or join in another game. All welcome – email tom at aurochdigital dot com if you want to come along.
Lunchtime Talk: Hardware Startups, Manufacturing, and the Far East: a how to (1pm Friday 17 July – Pervasive Media Studio)
This week the PM Studio welcomes back product designer, maker, manufacturing engineer and 3D printing enthusiast Richard de Lancey. He was nominated for Stuff Magazine’s Design of the Year award for his work on AlphaSphere and is currently running his third startup business; DELCO – a design and manufacture agency based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/events/fri-17072015-100pm
Quick Links
- Why start-ups fail. Learn from those who have.
- Moral codes in gaming.
- The making of Lemmings
- The quiet growth of the games industry
Thanks all!
News Update! Raise Finance for your Creative Business
A couple more bits of news! First is this…
Helping you to raise finance for your creative business
Turning a bright idea into a commercial success can be a challenge, especially for a creative business. Creative England and the Creative Industries Council are running a free event to help you learn how to access different forms of finance and grow your company.
The event features:
Revolution Software’s Charles Cecil MBE. Find out how he raised £100,000s through crowd funding.
- Panellists include:
Phil Geraghty – MD, Crowdfunder – Crowdfunder has raised £1.5m for campaigns since launching, and has the potential to help you too.- Darren Westlake – CEO, Crowdcube – With Crowdcube, Darren is determined to solve the lack of financing options for small businesses. He started his first company aged 26 and has since successful built and sold two companies
- Jenny Tooth – CEO, of the UK Business Angels Association. Jenny has over 20 years’ experience in helping SMEs access investment.
- Irene Graham – MD of the British Banking Association. Irene works specifically with SMEs to help them navigate the financial landscape.
- Caroline Norbury MBE – CEO of Creative England, an organisation that has invested over £14,400,000 into the games, TV, film and digital media industries.
- Sarah Thirtle – Head of Business and lending programmes for Creative United, specialist in finance for the creative industry.
Taking place at Facebook, London, on March 19th. Click here to see the full schedule and to book your place: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/finance-your-creative-business-tickets-15974293542
Second is:
Bristol Media have a survey up – help them out if you can by completing it! https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BristolMediaBarometer
Editor Extensions talk at the Unity Developers Meetup
Editor Extensions talk at the Unity Developers Meetup – June 18th 6.30pm to 10pm
At Bristol Games Hub, 77 Stokes Croft, Bristol – Entrance on Thomas St.
Unity is one of the most user friendly game engines out there – but you can make it even better than that! This talk will focus on improving the Unity Editor with your own custom plugins. This allows you to improve your workflow, create new intuitive ways to build your games and automate repetitive tasks. The talk will be given by Alexander Birke who is currently working on the adventure game Bertram Fiddle where editor extensions are utilized extensively. The prerequisites for the talk is that you have a basic understanding of making games in unity but have yet to delve into writing editor code. Sign up is handled through our meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Unity-Game-Developers-Meetup/events/187900822/
Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 26th June, 7.30pm – newsletter coming soon!
DiGRA Launches UK Chapter in Bristol!
Some great news from the Digital Cultures Research Centre and DiGRA!
We are delighted to announce the UK Chapter of DiGRA will be launching on 17th June at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of West England. The Chapter covers all of the UK, and we have a series of events planned already after two successful preliminary events earlier this year at the London Knowledge Lab, IoE and the Update Show at MediaCity, Manchester.
The chapter has a mailing list, accessible by joining:
http://mail.digra.org/mailman/listinfo/uk
We encourage everyone to sign on and take part. We are currently also in the process of setting up a webpage on the main DiGRA site, which will reside here: http://www.digra.org/the-association/chapters/united-kingdom-digra-chapter/
The launch event, entitled ‘Pervasive Provocations: The State of Games in the UK’, at the DCRC at The University of West England, Bristol, will interrogate key issues in Games Studies in the UK. You are encouraged to come along with a short provocation and get involved. Pop-up speakers throughout the afternoon already include Greg Foster (Larking About), Dan Hett (BBC Children’s Gaming), Prof Tanya Kryzwinska (University of Falmouth), with others to be confirmed. The afternoon will be followed by a DiGRA inaugural meeting in the DCRC and a launch party in the Watershed. Please sign up for the event here as places are limited:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pervasive-provocations-the-state-of-games-in-the-uk-tickets-11446255057
The second event will be a DiGRA games track at Fascinate 2014:
FASCINATE 2014 27th – 31st August is an annual conference staged at Falmouth University, Cornwall. It is an interdisciplinary conference investigating the current and future applications of ubiquitous computing technologies in visual and performance arts, games, architecture, craft, design and interactive media. There is a specialist games track focused on the application of art and craft in games (30th and 31st August). This includes a two-day game jam preceding the conference (28th and 29th August). Rex Crowle from Media Molecule and BAFTA winner for Tearaway and Dr Esther McCallum-Stewart will give keynotes for the conference’s Games track. For more details please go to http://www.fascinateconference.com/. There will be a DIGRA UK meeting on the evening of 29th August in the AIR sandpit on the Tremough Campus.
The third event will be held as part of the University of Bedfordshire’s annual Under the Mask conference in November 2014. This year’s conference will provide an opportunity for discussion of Game Policy, Game Regulation, Communities of Gaming and LARPing, amongst others. Details to be announced in June 2014.
Bristol Games Hub/SW Mobile Crossover Event
Join us at Bristol Games Hub on Wed 16th October from 7pm to 9pm for an amazing event where the communities of game and mobile developers are going to be coming together to share idea, technologies and experience. Jointly organised by Bristol Games Hub and SW Mobile it promised to be a fascinating evening, including:
- A talk by Natalie Griffith. Natalie runs Press Space, a provider of affordable, bespoke PR and brand-building for indie game developers and technology start-ups, will be giving a talk on the subject of “Demystifying PR”
- Tomas Rawlings, cofounder of Bristol Games Hub and Auroch Digital will be giving a talk on “How to be an indie games developer”.
- A 15 minute ‘Demo Camp’ where members of both communities SWMobile can share things they’ve been working on, provide tips on games development and generally shout about what’s interesting to them! Including brief demos of games from Survivalist Games with Shelter and Large Visible Machine with The Battle for Hill 218.