Interactive Fiction is alive and well and being written in Scotland. Yes, the purest, most literate and graphically rich form of gaming has not died and been buried in an unmarked, unregarded grave, unmourned, dismissed and forgotten. If you're not 'au fait' (literally 'with brains') with Interactive Fiction, it's the old fashioned kind of game …
Scottish Government Responds To Creative Industries Report
It's been a tumultuous and busy 24 hours. News of the research into Scotland's creative industries has spread throughout the global games sector and into the mainstream media... Now, the Scottish government has been in touch to tell us that they know it's wrong and they're working on better figures and more reliable information. Here's …
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No Revenue, No Value, No Students – Videogames Sector In Scotland Doesn’t Exist
Yesterday we reported that the digital media and interactive sectors had been inexplicably omitted from the 2012 Year of Creative Scotland awards. Today the reason may have become a little clearer. The games industry in Scotland does not exist in any significant way. It contributes nothing to the economy, there are only 200 people working …
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Multi-disciplinary Software Construction Workshop
There's a new code-based event coming up in central Edinburgh and the organisers have asked us to pass it onto the clever people in the games industry... The Technology Strategy Board is looking into how it can support better software engineering in the UK. All UK companies rely on software to work and Specialist workers …
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Compendium Of Interest – Turing & Technology & The World Of Tomorrow
A week ago, the second Turing Festival took place in Edinburgh. The inaugural event in 2011 was astonishingly good. Diverse, eclectic and expert, it pulled in speakers and participants from a huge range of disciplines and, almost uniquely, seemed to focus on a speaker's ability and knowledge, rather than job title or employer. I spent …
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Lurching Horror Of Zombie Flick Fun For Dynamo & Black Camel
Outpost Defense, the latest iOS release from the team at Dynamo Games has been created on conjunction with Scottish film production company Black Camel Pictures. Based on the newly released movie: Outpost II: Black Sun, which was released last weekend at Fright Fest, the game is part of a whole transmedia experience which features Nazi Zombies. Thousands …
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Exhibiting At A Festival – Lessons For Indie Developers
After a jaunt to the frozen North, visiting the far frontier of UK games development, we return with a guest post from the astonishingly resilient Colin Riley (aka @Domipheus) who took part in the first ever Dare to be Digital Indie Showcase at this year's Protoplay event. We say resilient because Colin ran his entire …
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Bad Hotel Good Game
We are, of course, entirely objective here at Scottishgames. We love all of the developers and games companies in Scotland without favouritism or preference. There are a few companies though, who do get us quite excited when we hear they're working on a new game. We were lucky enough to see Bad Hotel in development, during an …
Dragons, Zombies and A Day in the Life – Edinburgh Interactive (Session 4)
Yesterday Edinburgh Interactive closed, with a Dragons Den type affair; the idea concerning a pitch of a game or interactive experience to a panel of Ian Livingstone (Life President Eidos), Rob Woodward (CEO Scottish TV), Bill Liao (Co-founder coderdojo.com), Mark Phillips (Harbottle & Lewis) and chaired by Sean Dromgoole (GameVision/Some Research). The event was done …
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Art, Squirrels and the New Reality – Edinburgh Interactive (Session 3)
Back from lunch and into the fray with Are Computer Games Art? Chris Bateman @SpiralChris International Hobo and Ren Reynolds (@RenZephyr) Virtual Policy Network got a good response from the audience. Hell, yes! We thought computer games were art. Hosted by Ren, he posed the question to Chris who started with Ernst Gombrich’s Meditations …
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