DreamFeel

I've now returned from an incredible week in San Francisco for GDC, and before that a couple of inspiring days in London. I'm sure lots of writing will come of this ("Paranomical and the divine", "Found futures in Lost Levels", "Kachina, or how to transforms jokes into poetry" and other similarly glib titles). First, I'd like to bring to bring everyone up to speed with some of these recent events to warm the blog up.
At the top I'd like to mention BAFTA Scotland's New Talent awards in which I was awfully honored to have Fuaim nominated. These awards recognise recent gradutes or new practioners who have made an impact across all arts & media from animation and film, to composition and interactive entertainment. It meant a lot to have my little game considered next to 'The Rig' and 'Mr. Montgomery's Debonair Facial Hair', the Dare 2012 game from the fine folks at Dapper Hat Games. Here's a ten second video I made for the event of the game (which I should add has been much improved since the original version that hit in December).



For a few more things, including another award nomination, follow after the jump.

Two days before the BAFTA ceremony I attended the Power-Up! Windows 8 awards for which 'Vikings!' was nominated. This was held at Dolby's HQ in Soho Sq., London and it was a really interesting night. We had a reception, were treated to the powerful Dolby Atmos sound system and then presented each of our games. The other nominees really covered the gamut from students and hobbyists to small studios that have existed for well over a decade. I was really impressed by the quality of games like Mortar Melon.

The following day I found myself at a great event organised by NESTA and AHRC to promote collaboration between games studios and the humanities. It was great for the interesting cross-section of people attending, and a chat with an experimental poet got me excited to be creating games at this moment once again. I just hope I can do justice to what we talked about and my own goals, immediate and farther away.

And then GDC. GDC was an incredible experience, I met so many people and met up again with so many I knew as well. To talk about one event Lost Levels was definitely a highlight. This was an 'unconference' organized by Harry Lee, Ian Snyder, Robert Yang, & Fernando Ramallo held on Thursday in Yerba Buena gardens. What it entailed was a hugely diverse crowd of people spending an afternoon giving impromptu talks, usually related to games in some way, and listening to others in the park (for most of it there were three speakers at a time).

The organizers thought it was really important that there existed a free outlet during such a huge event as GDC for anyone to talk about what was important to them, albeit on a smaller stage, and I'm glad they made it happen. I'm already looking forward to next year's. I actually gave a 5 minute talk on "Technology is the opium of the masses. Why computer games are killing us and why we need to make more. Also, tea.". After my write up of my IGDA Scotland talk on 'Free' this is the next piece I'll be posting.

You can see some footage from the afternoon here recorded by Alan Hazelden (including mine, which is nice to have). It's a huge shame more of the event wasn't recorded, there were a lot of great, evocative talks. Stephen Altamirano gives a great write up of his talk about the Taste vs Ability gap over on his blog: Evil Robot Stuff.



Better shoot off, finising the trailer for Shu now. It's been some time to get this point, but I'm excited for what's next. The dream of the 90's is alive in Portland.