IGDA Finland gets a new student club - Score

Score is an IGDA student club that goes deep into video gamedev and is also formally known as TAMK University of Applied Sciences Game Development Club. Score aims to be the very first Finnish Student game development club of IGDA.

The idea of Score was founded in the beginning of the year 2007 and the constitutive meeting, also as the first official meeting was held in August 18th.

The head of Score is called ”Scoreboard”, the members of which were voted in the first meeting. Scoreboard consists of four members: president, vice president, board member and secretary. Predictably, Teemu Haila, the founder of Score was voted as the president. Juho Hartikainen was voted as the vice president, Niko Kosonen as board member and Essi Nieminen as Score's secretary. The whole Scoreboard happens to consist of second year Interactive designers.

Score has almost 30 members, 15 of whom can be considered as active. The majority of Score members are from Tampere's universities and the age distribution is from 18 right up to 30. Score membership isn't dependable on being student. The most important thing is desire to work within games and especially gamedev.

Score aims high

Even though Score is brand new as an association and everything had to be started from the scratch, aims the first project reasonably high: 20-minute-lasting FP(S) horrorgame, Frayed. As most of the Score members study in TTVO (The School of Art and Media), setting for the videogame production is fairly decent.

Most of Score members creating Frayed have no formal training on gamedev. One of Score's main goals is to give its members a chance to improve and gather skills to become for example a game developer, game designer, producer or graphic designer for real – Score wants to make an effort to initiate its members into gamedev as a possible and desirable future career.

More information on Score itself and its projects and actions can be found on http://score.igda.fi

Writer: Essi Nieminen / Score secretary

IGDA Finland Gathering

It’s that funky time of the month again!This time we will be packing the house full again with he help of Recoil Games sponsoring drink tickets and snacks for the first ones to arrive. Recoil Games will be presenting some concept art in the gathering from their upcoming next-gen action-adventure game “Earth No More”! Enough said, see you there! Remember, doors open at 19.00 sharp!

Recoil Games was established a year ago and since then we have come a long way. The development of “Earth No More” - a next-gen original IP action-adventure game - together with 3D Realms Entertainment has proceeded extremely well. We thought this would be a perfect time for us to show our friends in the Finnish games industry what we have been up to. But don’t expect to see screenshots; we’re not there yet :)

-Miikka Luotio

From the web: IGDA proposes game credits standards

Credits Standards Committee chair to speak at GDC 08 The International Game Developers Association is pushing for an industry-wide adoption of professional standards in game credits.

A public "beta" of the proposed IGDA standards was posted online for member feedback in September, but the issue has recently come to the forefront with the news that Rockstar Vienna was snubbed in the credits for Manhunt 2.

"Accurate, complete, and fair credits are essential to ongoing employment, professional development, and artistic fulfillment for all developers," said the IGDA's executive director Jason Della Rocca.

"Further, having accurate credits helps employers make informed hiring decisions."

The IGDA has established a Credit Standards Committee with the goal of establishing generally accepted guidelines that all studios and publishers can use.

John Feil, the chair of this committee, will be hosting a roundtable session during the 2008 Game Developers Conference entitled "The IGDA Credits Movement: The Revolution Is Already Here.

Article from GamesIndustry.Biz

XNA Game Studio European Tour 3.12.2007

Microsoft and Helsingin Yliopiston Tietojenkäsittelytieteen Opiskelijajärjestö are organizing an XNA Game Studio presentation in Helsinki. It is part of the bigger XNA Game Studio European Tour. The event will be held on Monday December 3rd, from 14.30 to 19.15. It is open for all and free but you do need to register for it online.

More information and online registration available here.

Digiexpo 07 coverage

On games side in this years Digiexpo EA, Sony, Microsoft & Nintendo were strongly present. EA had the biggest expo area of all and second biggest was Sony's area.

I visited Digiexpo on Saturday mid-day and the place was packed full. You had to wait to play all the games, thus my coverage ended up pretty slim since my stay in Messukeskus mostly involved watching others play. Otherwise the event gets thumbs up in my book.

In Nintendo's expo area, people were playing Wii Sports and the usual stuff along with some new Wii & DS games like Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime - Corruption & Zelda - Phantom Hourglass. I got my hands on Mario Galaxy and i can tell you, the controls felt very intuitive and the visuals looked great as i expected.

Microsoft was displaying their latest games and i could not spot any pre-release games in a quick glance.

EA was running the show. Displaying tons of new games & even titles not released yet. Amongst the games there were, My Sims, The Simpsons games, Crysis, New sport titles & other coming soon titles. EA was showing off games on almost all gaming platforms.

In Sony's area Playstation 3 & PSP games were most prominent. Playstation's Home service was quite visible in their expo setup and decoration & was perhaps the most innovative set decoration in the whole expo area. Their set had different areas for different types of game genres and actually these areas were filled up with gamers typical of that genre. EDIT: Apparently Sony had some pre-release games that you could play also.

Some of the games magazines from Finland were also present, at least Pelit & Pelaaja. Near Pelaaja area the biggest attraction seemed to be Guitar Hero III.

Click here for photos from Digiexpo 07