Tag Archives: games

May 22 2012

Denki Is Hiring! Player Champion Required

The games industry is changing.  It’s a business which has always been driven by technology but, for many years, this meant that the gee-whizzery and eye candy aspects of games soaked up all the time, attention and column inches.  more polygons at higher frame rates and ever more elaborate rocket launchers were the order of the day.  And many developers were perfectly happy with that state of affairs.

However, time and technology stand still for no man (except Dr Who) and we now find the entire games market has evolved into an entirely different beast.  Developers can no longer focus solely and wholly upon making games.  Developers now have to market their titles, find distribution channels, support ongoing updates, figure out exciting new business models and explore what exactly players want from them.

This last activity has spawned more discussion, debate and fury than any other debate in recent years.  The idea of driving game design through data analytics and user behaviour has struck some developers as a hideous inversion of all that is good and true and right within the games world.

However, the reality is that developers who are producing any sort of content for an increasingly crowded market are going to have to explore and understand exactly what players want, how they’re playing the games and what they will respond to over a much longer period of time.

Kudos to Denki then, for their latest recruitment post, which outlines a role that stretches the definition of ‘game developer’ out into new areas.

The company is looking for a Player Champion…

…So much more that we now need our very own customer compass to help us get it; someone to ensure we’re no longer just delivering great games but, instead, delivering the right games and then scaling them into sustainable services through rapid, measured iteration.

Can we make the leap from award-winning ne’er-do-wells to chart-topping-game sensations? We absolutely believe we can because we know how we can. More importantly, you know we can – because you have the quantifiable evidence to prove it.

How do you know? Because you are Denki’s Player Champion!

It’s a challenging role, but one which promises a lot for the right person…

Your focus will be to run customer-focused experiments, reality checking our games against players and the marketplace then feeding the results directly back into development.

Skills including conceiving, facilitating, executing, measuring and drawing actionable conclusions from field experiments are mentioned, along with a challenge to show Denki exactly what you can do, combine to create one of the most interesting roles we’ve yet seen advertised.

Denki is the creator of a multitude of very good games from Denki Blocks! and Juggle to Quarrel.  They’ve won BAFTAs.  They very occasionally write blogs.  You’d like them.  Write to them and tell them you can help.

May 21 2012

Are You LinkedIn? Ultra Limited Exclusive Memberships Now OPEN

Yes, you can now join the Scottish Games debates, discussions and strategy planning on the professional social network LinkedIn.  Membership is by approval only and for strictly limited to professionals working within the digital media space (and students on relevant courses).  Join now for early bird incentives and unique super powers.

May 21 2012

Free Money!

The Prototype Fund, administered by the University of Abertay in Dundee has helped a wide range of digital media companies get started with grants of £25,000 and access to facilities and students from the university’s numerous games courses.

The next round of funding is due in the very near future and the prototype team are holding a workshop for individuals, teams and companies who are interested in applying.

Here are the details…

Prototype Fund Application Workshop

Are you a start-up games company based in Scotland?

The Abertay University Prototype Fund is providing grants of up to £25,000 for small games companies. We receive around 50 applications from across the UK and support 6-10 projects per open round of funding. We want to fund more projects.

If you’re a start-up games company, based in Scotland, and are thinking of applying to the Fund sign up now for our first ever Application Workshop taking place at Abertay University on the afternoon of Wednesday 20th June. We have limited space available for this event.

By signing up to the Workshop you’ll get:

•         Exclusive insight what makes a successful application (and what doesn’t)

•         Expert advice on how to improve your application

•         The chance to win £100 Amazon vouchers

Email Prototypefund@abertay.ac.uk to register your interest. Places are limited.

May 18 2012

Grown Ups ONLY

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a request…

‘Grown-up Gaming’ – Focus Group Series

This is a series of focus groups which will contribute to a new study into gaming culture being produced at the University of Glasgow.

These will all be held at the University of Glasgow campus. All participants must be 18 or over, have played games since youth, and currently indentify themselves as ‘gamers’. The research aims to identify aspects of the contributors’ memories of gaming and games culture, and analyse the ways in which it has contributed to their cultural identity. Each focus group will have six-eight participants, take around one-to-two hours, and will be audio recorded.

There are three planned upcoming times available for sign-up:

  • Sunday 20th May,  12-2pm
  • Sunday 20th May,  2-4pm
  • (Female gamers) Monday 19th May,  18:30-20:30pm

I am particularly interetsed in getting the perspective of female gamers in a female-only focus group, which will be co-hosted by my colleague Lesley-Ann Dickson.

All prospective participants are very welcome ask their gamer friends to come along with them, however as each group is going to be limited to eight people, this will have to be arranged in advance.

For those interested in attending – or if anyone has any questions – my email address is:

a.reynolds.1@research.gla.ac.uk

N.B. – the 10-15 minute survey qustionnaire for this project is still live. Anyone interested in taking part should check it out:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGZDZDFrMzVHdWh0ekpTVzgtSlg5Y0E6MQ

Kind Regards
Anthony Reynolds

Centre for Cultural Policy Research
University of Glasgow
9 University Avenue
Glasgow
G12 8QQ

May 18 2012

Qix Starter

Tracer is a brand new title from Dynamo Games for iPad – and very shortly – your other favourite iOS devices.  Then Android, just to make sure everyone is happy (bar Blackberry users of course, but there’s no helping some people…)

Tracer draws inspiration from classic arcade titles such as Qix and Xonix, taking players on a world tour, with locations around the world becoming arenas of wonder and delight, as players attempt to uncover each vista, panorama, setting or view as quickly as possible and without dying at the hands of a dastardly enemy intent upon your destruction and hideous agonising death.

Designed specifically for today’s touch screen devices, Tracer takes an old school idea and brings it bang up to date.

Dynamo is the company behind a number of critically acclaimed, highly praised and top selling mobile titles including The Crystal Maze and the Championship Manager series.

Tracer is a shockingly reasonable £0.69 on the Apple App Store and we would, of course, recommend iPad owners walk, quickly but safely, to their account and buy it.  Buy it now.

May 17 2012

World Exclusive – £1M Investment For Scottish Games Company

Development Studio Serious Parody has raised over £1M in investment to expand the studio’s games portfolio.  This will allow the company to establish a new dedicated studio, based in Dundee and recruit 18 new members of staff in the coming months.

Serious Parody has raised the majority of the money from private investors, with a further £230,000 coming from a Scottish Enterprise regional selective assistance grant.

The investment has allowed Serious Parody to begin an immediate recruitment drive, looking for multiple programmers, artists and animators.   Contact the company directly if you’re interested.

The company’s first title, Wrestling Manager was released for iOS devices several months ago.  The game has received critical acclaim and remains one of the only management games on the App Store which focuses on the hugely popular sport.

Serious Parody CEO, Dan Hinkles, told us:

“We need a number of highly skilled and highly motivated games professionals to lead the company to success, and we’re delighted that these investments allow us to hire these key people.”

“The company has a very clear roadmap to success, taking advantage of the transformational changes that have occurred with in the games industry of recent years. We have a number of highly ambitious new projects underway and we already have a ton of talent at the spine of the company with award winning artists and programmers on board. Now we’re looking for talented developers who can really help ‘raise the bar’ for the genre’s we’re working on.”

Lena Wilson, chief executive, Scottish Enterprise, said:

“The Scottish gaming industry continues to be one of the most recognised in the world and is ranked third in Europe’s top 50 games developer locations. This announcement is very encouraging and testament to our increasing reputation as the partner of choice in major projects.

“Regional Selective Assistance is a key source of funding we use to assist home-grown companies stay and grow in Scotland and equally, to help foreign investors view Scotland as the ideal place to locate and expand their businesses. These new jobs are a welcome boost for the local economy of Dundee and for the wider Scottish economy and we look forward to working with Serious Parody to help them realise their ambitious growth plans in Scotland.”

 Congratulations to Dan and the (growing) SP team.

May 12 2012

Minecraft Xbox 360 – Biggest Ever Day 1 Sales – Profitable In First HOUR

As the headline suggests, the Xbox 360 version of indie sensation Minecraft has been doing rather well.  Microsoft announced at the end of the week that the game had broken existing sales records for first day sales.  While no figures have been announced, the game was apparently making profit within the first hour of release, according to a tweet from Mojang supremo and game mastermind, Notch.

All of which is good – no excellent – news for the team at 4J Studios who developed the Xbox 360 version of the game (in their East Linton studio, fact fans, not their Dundee studio as some poorly informed news sources have been reporting…)

The game has already picked up critical acclaim worldwide, with Eurogamer making it their game of the week and giving it a whopping 9/10.

Congratulations (again) to Mojang, 4J and the happy players of Minecraft.

(and thanks again for the world exclusive banner, chaps…)

May 10 2012

Denki Announces New Plans – Exciting Plans – Secret Plans…

The team at Denki have released a filthy teasing hint that they’re working on their next new game.  Following the success of Quarrel on iOS and Xbox Live, Denki’s next move has been the subject of intense speculation in and around the digital media and interactive industries globally.

Now, the first tiny wisps of insubstantial information have emerged.  The project will be, according to Denki’s very own blog:

  • The game will launch exclusively on the super sexy Turbulenz platform, allowing us to deliver console quality in the convenience of your web browser.
  • It’s probably the most action-orientated thing we’ve ever made.
  • It features the winning combination of naked flames, bold heroism AND fluffy bunnies.

Given the company’s titles to date, that’s pretty exciting.  The key thing here is ‘console quality gaming’, but ‘in your web browser’.  So Denki can be Denki, but in the world’s biggest market – the one without the several million competing products.  Hmmm… intriguing.

And you, yes YOU.  You can be part of it.  Early.  BEFORE the hordes of hipsters and Zynga designers looking for ideas.  Sign up now and you can be kept abreast of the latest happenings from Denki HQ.  (Or of course, you can read your fabulous daily Scottishgames.net)

God speed Denki!

May 9 2012

Minecraft For Xbox 360 – Made In Scotland

We’re aware that Minecraft was intelligently designed, by the Mojang hero team and has its roots very firmly in Sweden.  However, today saw the release of Minecraft for the Xbox 360, created by the team at 4J Studios’ development office in East Linton (for our readers in Dundee – that’s NOT where you live…)

If you’re not a gamer, or if you only read news sources which totally ignore digital media and the interactive industries (the Scottish media for example) you may not be familiar with Minecraft (yes, that is Edinburgh Castle.  No, Dundee readers, that’s not in Dundee).


It’s a cross between LEGO and The Walking Dead.  You have to mine resources and build things, in some modes, without getting killed by scary blocky monsters.  It’s a wonderful example of sandbox gaming, in which that player is encouraged to build and create and experiment.  It has over 25,000,000 registered users.  It’s sold over 5,000,000 copies on PC/Mac and some people, as happens on the Internets, have taken it too far.  Famous buildings and locations or fairground rides are one thing, working processor units, insanity and life size starships are quite another:

It exemplifies the emergent ‘indie’ spirit in the games world and proves that the lowest common casual denominator is not always the most popular creative decision.

4J Studios are no strangers to the Xbox market.  The company is responsible for the critically acclaimed Xbox 360 versions of titles including Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie and PS3 conversions including Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.


Minecraft for Xbox 360 is already receiving a lot of love from the media and critics worldwide.  It gets the perfect 100% from the UK’s Official Xbox Magazine and Gaming Age.  It scores 83 out of 100 on the influential Metacritic, while the game gets 4/5 from The Guardian, which also says:

It is strangely profound and meditative experience, aided by the wilting piano score and the soft, simple sound effects, which lend each action a naturalism that works within this universe even when resembling nothing in our own. And don’t be fooled by the chunky docile appearance of the monsters – Minecraft manages to create a creepy, jumpy atmosphere during its night-time hours, with the green, staring Creepers peering through your door and zombies reaching in through the windows. This is a game that replicates every element of solitude and the human imagination – it scares as well as intrigues.

Or you can read an interview with 4J’s Paddy Burns over on Now Gamer.  Alternatively, Paddy also spoke to the team at Hookshot about the project, telling them:

When the subject of translating Minecraft to console came up, Microsoft put forward 4J for the project. “I visited Mojang at the end of April 2011,” says chief technology officer, Paddy Burns. “I questioned Notch in detail about the software architecture of all the different parts of the game– I wanted to get a high level understanding of what it would take to convert to the Xbox 360. At the end of the grilling, Notch said: ‘That was great! No one’s ever asked me questions like that!’ I then put a proposal together showing what we would do, how we would do it, and a project timetable.”

Minecraft for Xbox 360 is out now and costs 1600 MS points.  Or there’s a trial version if you’re tight.

May 9 2012

Mapply – Now Recruiting


The team at Mapply (the project formerly known as MyWorld) is recruiting.  There are roles for software engineers and QA, as well as a couple of intern positions.

As you can see from the video above, the technology looks incredible.  The potential for MapplyWorld is huge.  So you could be onto a winner getting involved.

You can find all of the details over on the Mapply website.  Or follow them on Twitter…