Tag Archives: dundee

May 8 2012

Time Capsule Tuesday – THE Definitive History Of Games In Scotland

Did you know that Scottishgames was originally started in 2005 as a Yahoo Group?  That didn’t work.  It required people to get involved and contribute.  So in 2006, your editor took the decision to start a blog.  At that time, TypePad was a decent choice and allowed sophisticated content like words and pictures to be mixed in a new way which the ascended masters referred to as ‘multimedia’.

There’s over three years of content and updates on the original Scottishgames.biz (since it was primarily an industry blog in them days). It provides a snapshot of a smaller and more console focused industry.  It’s also the only record out there of the laughter, the tears, the events, the awards and the successes Scotland achieved in the world of games.

There was also, for a year, a Ning powered social network, which empowered every developer, every student and every participant in the whole interactive sector and allowed them to post their work, look for employment, post jobs, share news, find collaborators and link to their new games.  It wasn’t a success.  You want to be controlled editorially and told what’s important.  We get it…  We can’t link to it, since Ning has a policy of nuking any unpaid networks.

If you’re a researcher, student, journalist, politician, civil servant, event organiser, developer, publisher or fascinated observer, this is an invaluable resource, akin to the National Museum of Scotland (who we confidently predict would pay thousands for access to these ‘archives’).

Since then of course, the media empire has grown into the all new blog, a Facebook group, a Twitter account, Google+ group, fashion label, provides RSS feeds and of course a daily e-mail update, all in all reaching around several thousand people – important people, like YOU – per day.  Scottishgames has THE definitive company directory of interactive companies in Scotland and is recognised in the halls of power as the ‘industry bible’.

Believe!

Apr 23 2012

It Was 30 Years Ago TODAY – The ZX Spectrum – Dundee’s Second Favourite Export

Originally  released on 23/04/1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was arguably (very arguably) the machine which inspired the home computer revolution in the UK and inspired a generation of owners to start making games.

Even Google is getting in on the act with a clever dual Google Doodle, celebrating St George’s Day, PLUS the far more important and significant ZX Spectrum day.

Manufactured by Timex in Dundee, the wicked black box of infernal magic is more or less directly responsible for the games industry in Scotland.

Happy 30th birthday Spectrum.

Apr 19 2012

New From Digital Goldfish

The loveable scamps and Digital Goldfish have a slew of new titles heading for the iOS market, with The World’s Strongest Man out now and the adorably titled Chip Trippington And The Kwiff Frizz Quiz coming soon.

The World’s Strongest Man is a licensed game, based upon the gentleman of the same description.  A mighty fellow, he can, as Charlie Brooker so memorably put it, ‘lift a filing cabinet full of coal, over his head – with his eyelids’.  Which translates to a whole wild world o’ strength-based challenges including carry an entire car, pulling and entire lorry and, unless we’re mistaken, lifting Africa.  That’s quite strong.  It’s certainly stronger than Duke Nukem, Conan or NINE Yoshimitsu’s.

You can build a career, train your strongman and lead him to such a peak of strongness that he could pop a roomful of balloons and a monkey, by glaring.  The World’s Strongest Man is OUT NOW and can be purchased for a puny weakling price of £1.99, saving you money for protein shakes, a bullworker and an official World’s Strongest Man strength moustache.

Chip Trippington on the other hand is an entirely different sort of thing.  Entirely.  An old-school point and click style adventure, players must guide Trip through a variety of adventures and, we’re going to assume, mis-adventures (we’ll go further and guess they’ll be inadvertent and hilarious) as he attempts to track down his favoured styling product and secure the kwiff of ultimate stylishness.

Crude humour is promised, as is a hard-hitting and frank insight into  liquid rejuvenation engineering.

We’re so there.  Point and click – great.  Crude humour – smashing.  It’s like Digital Goldfish have come up with a new idea which excites them – and are now developing it into a game.  This could be a brave new move in the rapidly evolving mobile market – and one we’d like to see more of.

Thanks Digital Goldfish!

Apr 18 2012

The Physical Effects Of Audio In Gaming

GamaSutra has just posted a new piece of research commissioned by Euphonious and carried out by the team at Abertay’s H.I.V.E. facility, which looks at how audio in games physically affects players.

It’s an interesting read.  Across the board, with very different types of game, players experienced heightened breathing and heart rates when playing games WITH audio present.

There’s a brief excerpt from the piece below.  You can find the whole article on GamaSutra…

[What effect does in-game audio have on players? Audio expert Raymond Usher (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Crackdown) shares the results of a study in which players were monitored while playing three games -- Osmos, FlatOut, and Amnesia -- with audio and without.]

This study investigated the importance of audio in computer games. To do this an experiment was designed that compared groups of participants that played the same games with and without audio. Participants’ physical responses to the games were recorded via a bioharness that recorded participant’s breathing wave, heart rate, respiration rate and skin temperature.

Analysis of the heart rate and respiration rate of participants showed that those playing games with audio had a higher level of arousal (a combination of heart rate and respiration rate) and demonstrated the immersion capabilities of audio in games.

Which is why Euphonious started the off-the-shelf AudioSkins service, which provides smaller projects and indie developers with access to complete audio ‘packs’ for their online / casual / social or mobile games titles…

If you’re a developer, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Apr 16 2012

New Banner!

We have to thank the team at Neil Castle for their wonderful new banner.  It’s the first unashamedly personal banner we’ve had for a while and it’s nice to be able to support the indies out there.

Thank you Neil, it reminds us of something, but we can’t quite put our finger on it.

You can find Neil on Twitter.  Stop by and say hello.

What’s YOUR favourite castle, readers?

Apr 10 2012

The Quest – BAFTA Nominated Puzzler – Out Now For iOS & Android

The Quest is a brand new original – and BAFTA nominated – puzzle game from the Guerilla Tea team.  A new twist (that’s terribly clever, by the way) on the Rubik’s cube mechanic, The Quest challenges players to guide the bold knight, Sir Steve, on an epic quest (so not just a clever name…) to find the favourite mug of the lord, thy God.  Who’s misplaced it in a fit of absent mindedness after intelligently designing life as we understand it.

Steve is a rugged and hardy knight, very much in the Lancelot tradition.  It’s gallantry and valour and rescuing maidens left, right and cetre for Steve on very much a daily basis.

Now however, he has you to help him. Won’t that be nice?  So, as a reasonably omnipotent being, at least as far as Steve’s concerned, you can help him navigate, hither and yon across his cubic and distressingly changeable world.

The problem is that Steve is so chivalric, that he can’t possibly move from one type of terrain to another, without the appropriate vehicle or contraption to allow his passage in the sort of style and grace of which Merlin would approve.

So to move Steve onto a vertiginous mountainside, you’ll need his lordly balloon.  To move upon the face of the waters, Steve will clearly need his canopied canoe of paddling.  That sort of thing.

So you tap on a square to move Steve onto it.  You can rotate the Rubik-esque world across multiple axes (not the chopping kind) and you have to pop Steve into the appropriate conveyance in order to lead him to the glorious triumph and wonder that is the end of the level.

Clear?  Smashing.  The Quest is available now for you iOS device(s) for a grail questingly low price of £0.69.  Go buy it.

Guerilla Tea has also created a medical training game called Ward Round, which is also up on the App Store and the team is promising ‘lots more’ in the near future.

Mar 26 2012

World Exclusive – Moops – New From Red Radiant Media

The past weekend saw the ever awesome Game In Scotland event take place in Dundee.  A recruitment fair, networking opportunity, platform for new talent and general shindig for the games industry in Scotland, it introduced a whole range of entirely new companies, working across a huge range of new and interesting areas of interactive entertainment.

Chief amongst these was Red Radiant Media.  Regular readers of Scottishgames will have come across the company before.  They let us know about a new augmented reality app towards the end of 2011, as well as looking for new staff.

At Game In Scotland however, Red Radiant emerged, as if from nowhere, with a number of fantastic announcements about new games, new projects, new partners and major plans for the rest of 2012 and much of 2013.

The first of these was Moops, an original new title being developed in conjunction with Darkside Animation.  Moops is somewhat platform-y, in which the player has to hunt and ‘thwack’ critters, so your trusty companion can vacuum them up and rid Barrel City of the nasty things.

From what we saw, the game uses a combination of gestures and physics-based gameplay, to create a cross between a classic platform game, with elements of Luigi’s Mansion.

Moops is due out in May 2012 for iOS devices.

A second title – Kitchen Games is due out later in 2012, though fewer details on this title were given.  iOS again and a cartoon style variety of indoor athletic events from what we could see.

Tahir, the head of Red Radiant also dropped a number of hints and showed a couple of screenshots for several new projects which the company has in the pipeline.  Another Moops title was mentioned, but the biggest reaction from the crowd was for a game based in the  underwater city of Atlantis.  Since Red Radiant boasts team members who are former members of Realtime Worlds and Irrational Games, with titles under their belts including Crackdown and Bioshock (I & II) – with sales of over 20,000,000 games and four BAFTA awards between various team members.

Only a single screenshot was shown, but the style and atmosphere was very reminiscent of everyone’s favourite underwater dystopia.  We won’t lie.  We’re excited.  Very excited.  Expect this one to get a rapturous welcome (sorry).

We hope to have more news and updates from Red Radiant Media in the near future.  In the meantime, Moops is coming to an iOS device near you soon.  We recommend you pick a copy up…

Mar 24 2012

Game In Scotland – On Now…

The 2012 Game In Scotland event is happening NOW in Dundee.  If you’re not here, you’re missing out.  LIVE on stage they have speakers from many of the country’s most rapidly evolving games companies.

Colin MacDonald, commissioning editor for games from Channel 4 opened proceedings and outlined how far ahead of the curve Scotland is in the interactive world.

You can follow the action on Facebook or over on Twitter.

Mar 21 2012

An In At Outplay

Prior to this weekend’s festival of games-related recruitment opportunity and wonder, Dundee’s own venture-backed social gaming outfit Outplay Entertainment is looking for a variety of summer interns.

Covering roles from art and programming through to community management, marketing and data analysis, there’s something for everyone.

The words ‘talented’ and ‘creative’ were mentioned, which certainly covers most of our readers.  If you’re interested pop over to Outplay’s jobs page and find out more.

Mar 20 2012

Tickets Going Fast For UKIE Scotland Launch Event

If you’re in central Scotland on March 27th (next Tuesday), you owe it to yourself to come along to the first UKIE Scotland event focusing on accessing finance.

Key speakers include Jo Twist and Andy Payne – the CEO and Chair of UKIE as well as representatives from a number of other organisations offering practical and specific advice on how companies working within the games industry can find funding from a number of different sources including venture capital funds, prototype funding and market flotation.

Euan Mackenzie, the UKIE representative for Scotland told us:

“The response to the event has been phenomenal.  We’ve offering entirely practical and currently accessible routes and funding opportunities for developers and publishers.  We’ve pulled in experts from across the business and financial community and we want to emphasise to participants that all of these opportunities are available now and offer games companies new ways to approach financing projects.”

Euan also told us he’s thrilled to bringing the first UKIE event to the Scottish games sector:

“I’m thrilled to be bringing the first UKIE event to the Scottish games sector,” he told us.

The event is free, but space is limited.  Tickets are moving fast, so to ensure you have a place at this exciting mini conference, you need to hit the Eventbrite page and reserve a ticket NOW!  Flying out the door we hear.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Any questions, post them in the comments, visit our Facebook page, or tell us on Twitter.