Category Archives: Trade shows & events
This month I have mostly been….
Travelling.
As I post this I am sitting in Vancouver airport at the end of a record breaking month for me – When I get back to London tomorrow I will have travelled a total of 23,000 miles by plane and train. In there somewhere was a trip to The Digital City (Tesside University) to do a workshop on “Managing your clients”, a talk at Games Republic in Sheffield and a panel discussion on “Bite Size Entertainment” at Vidfest in Canada. Add in a trip to Hong Kong for a couple of meetings and a visit to friends and I think it amounts to a pretty full month.
In October I will mostly be…. sleeping.
Polygons goes to Brighton
The Next Never Mind The Polygons is going to be in Brighton on the last day of the Develop Conference, Thursday 26th of July, 18:00 – 20:00. Sadly Iain Simmons can’t make it so we have a stand in captain for the evening. The panel this time will be:
Toby Barnes (Pixel-Lab) as the host
Dan Marchant (The Obscure Consultancy) as regular team captain
Nick Burton (Rare) as stand in captain
Rusalka Clarke (Disney Interactive Studios) as guest
Angela Fenge (Zoë Mode) as guest two.
The venue is Koba in the centre of Brighton.
For more details check out the press release at
http://pixel-lab.squarespace.com/polygons/2007/6/28/brighton-polygons.html
Never mind the polygons #6
Tuesday 15th May – Pixel Labs will be hosting the latest evening of beer and game dev discussion at Friargate Studios in Derby. Iain Simmons and I will be joined in the hot seats by Nick Burton (Rare), and Alan O’Dea (Business Development Manager, Monumental Games) for a light hearted industry quiz/rant followed by general networking/socialising.
For more details check out http://www.pixel-lab.co.uk/polygons/
Warm up North
I attended the inaugural Northern Exposure gaming conference yesterday, which took place at York Racecourse. The event was organised by North-based games networks GameHorizon and Game Republic and was focused on the future of games publishing and the impact of digital distribution. There were a number of interesting and lively talks given by a variety of speakers including:
Hugh Mason, (Pembridge Partners LLP) “Apocalypse? Success strategies for disruption and chaos:”,
Mark Morris, (Introversion), “Introversion Software: 6 Years, 4 Games and still playing with Pixels”
Martyn Brown, (Team 17) “Global Worming”
Ed Bartlett, (IGA Worldwide) “Generating Revenue”
George Bray, (MumboJumbo), “Go Casual or Go Home”
For me, the most interesting points were George Brays comments regarding the conversion ratio of the casual game Luxor on Live Arcade (5% of demo downloads converted to sales). Compare this to the norm for casual games, which George stated was between 0.5-1.5% and it seems that Live Arcade is a good place to sell casual games. However, if you compare it to the conversion ratio for Team 17s latest Worms outing (600,000 downloads, 200,000 sales – 33% conversion ratio) its clearly an even better place to sell non-casual games.
The one day event wrapped up with a very lively panel session in which traditional publishing went head to head with upstart indie/digital self publishing. After three rounds the fight was ajudged a draw. Standard publishing deals will continue and retail will not die any time soon, but digital distribution and indie self-publishing is on the up and will make up an increasingly important part of the business mix, especially for small indies.
Aftermath: The event itself was followed by a socialising/networking (drinking) event at the nearby Pitcher and Piano. I made the sensible choice of moving on from their to a local curry house for a civilized meal with Charles Cecil (Revolution), Darren Jobling (Eutechnyx), James North-Hearn (Sumo) and a number of the more sensible attendees. Charles Cecil’s jacket, on the other hand, went on a drinking spree with Martyn Brown (Team 17), Joe Lewis & Paul Smith (Strawdog Studios), Sean Crooks (3rd Dimension Creation), Graeme Boxall (Blast) and a number of others until three in the morning. The jacket was last seen floating off down the river Ouse (there is every chance that someone was wearing it at the time).
Quote of the morning after “[i'm] never drinking anything passed to me by Martyn Brown again!”
GDC 2007 tip for the British attendees
1. Take an empty suitcase/virtually no clothes.
2. On arrival head straight for the Mall (that seems to be the name they use for a shopping centre)
3. Buy all the clothes you need happy in the knowledge that they are half the price they would be back home
4. If you happen to be in Macy’s go to their customer service dept and ask for a tourist discount voucher (the branch in LA certainly does them) and you will get 10% off everything you buy – probably worth asking at any big stores you go to.
5. Lobby Bar – Marriot Hotel 55, 4th St looks like the best bet as the “new Fairmont”.
Polygons update
Never Mind the Polygons #5 took place in Derby on Tuesday the 20th of February at 6.30p.m. With audience members from most of the region’s developers (plus some from Yorkshire) the latest event was animated, insightful and surprisingly intelligent. Topics under the microscope included User Generated Content, representing women in games, controversy for the sake of controversy, the need for violence in games, digital downloads, and how to improve the media’s view of the industry.
Regular team captains Iain Simmons and myself were joined by Rob Yescombe (Free Radical Design) and Matt Sansam (Covert Media) for a news quiz/discussion of current industry topics which, as usual, spun out into an audience wide discussion. This was followed by general networking/discussions fueled by a free bar sponsored by Derby based developer Strawdog Studios (www.strawdogstudios.com)
Check out more photos of the event on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubberdreamfeet/tags/nmtp/
Find out how to join us for thext event at http://www.pixel-lab.co.uk/polygons
Never Mind the Polygons…
Bi-monthly networking event Never Mind the Polygons #5 will take place in Derby on Tuesday the 20th of February at 6.30p.m. The event will be a topical discussion/panel quiz with Iain Simons (Writer and Creative Director, GameCity Festival) and myself as team captains. This month we are joined by Rob Yescombe (Screenwriter, Free Radical Design) and Matt Sansam (Ex-Rebellion Derby and now Founder, Covert Media).
Due to the popularity of the last few events, Polygons has moved to a swankier venue at Friar Gate Studios, a little closer to the centre of Derby than the Courtyard Pub (Just up the road, in fact: Google map). A free bar has been kindly sponsored by Strawdog Studios (www.strawdogstudios.com). If you are in the Derby area make sure you come along and join in the fun.
Do you speak sixaxis?
London’s Science Museum is currently (21 October 2006 – 25 February 2007) hosting the Game On exhibition which explores the history, technology and culture of computer games all the way from the PDP-1 of the 1960s to the latest consoles. The exhibition covers a wide range of video game related topics including Early Arcade Games, Game Audio, Games Culture, Multiplayer Gaming and much more. Best of all visitors can play on a whole alphabet of games all the way from Asteroids to Zelda. (There are over a hundred playable games at the exhibition).
If you live/work in London or are planning a visit the exhibition is well worth a visit but while you are there spare a thought for all those unfortunates who don’t speak our language. Many of the visitors to the exhibition aren’t gamers. This is obvious from the way they struggle to get to grips with the controls of many of the games. Some of these people might well be tempted to become gamers (after all they were interested enough to come to the exhibition), if only they could actually play the games. The problem is that they don’t understand the language of games that many gamers take for granted. They don’t understand O X Δ D-Pad Left and so they miss out on many great games, just because they don’t speak our language…. or to be more precise, because we don’t speak their language.
If we really want to sell games to the mass-market we need to make games that they can understand. That means simpler controllers (Wiimote ftw) and easier control systems. The mass market will never learn our language so we are going to have to work a lot harder at learning theirs.
More info on the expo: [Link deleted as content now removed]
Publishers at GDC…. book early to avoid disappointment
Following the ESA’s decision to revamp E3 (which will probably result in some uncertainty about the new format), I think it is safe to assume that GDC will be the main developer networking/business event of ’07. Where previously there were two main events at which to meet publishers, this year only one will be meaningful and this will put pressure on developers to ensure they plan properly in order to meet with all the companies they wish to. At every trade show I attend I like to play spot the Muppet. That’s the person who spent money on a flight, hotel and show pass… but didn’t book meetings with the publishers. You will see them hovering around the reception desk at the publishers booth/suite/meeting room while the receptionist consults various schedules, before apologising because everyone is fully booked. They then dejectedly hand over a business card, brochure or demo CD (which will doubtless get lost before it ever reaches the hands of its intended recipient) before wandering off to try again at the next stand.
There are more developers than there are meeting slots at GDC so book early to avoid disappointment.