GDC Europe 2010

Game Developers Conference Europe 2010 was larger than ever with record high attendance not only from the industry and media, but from speakers and exhibitors as well. GAME – a seasoned veteran – shared the 650m2 exhibition space with more than 40 companies from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Our booth was right next to giants like Intel, Crytek, Bigpoint and Epic, and while it is called “GDC Europe” the 1,500 game professionals attending this year represented more than 45 different countries!

Speakers ranged from famed game developer Warren Spector of Disney’s Junction Point, to Hermen Hulst of Guerilla Games – the full schedule offered a selection of 170 international speakers, covering game development on PC, social networking sites, distribution, consoles and mobile platforms. 3 days chock-full of learning, networking, and inspiration – what’s not to love?

Video, audio, and presentation recordings from GDC Europe are available at the GDC Vault.
For more pictures, see the official GDC Europe photo set.
Gamasutra covered GDC Europe this year too.

dealspwn.com: Unsung Indie Heroes


Jonathan Lester from dealspwn.com met us at GamesCom and spent a significant amount of time in our booth, talking to our students and playing the games. They’ve just published a review and they’re saying some awefully nice things. 🙂

The Indie scene is one of the last true bastions of creativity left in the gaming industry after years of reprocessed sequels- and it doesn’t get any more independent than Gotland University.

It’s a Swedish game design school that holds an annual student competition, and as such, they’re free to explore new concepts and art styles without constraints from publishers and the sequel culture. The competition winners have the opportunity to show off their wares at Gamescom as well as various cash prizes… and frankly, they’ve crafted some immensely promising experiences.

Pay close attention, because these three unsung games are quite unlike anything else you’ll see in the show.

Read the rest of Jonathan’s reviews here.

Richard Bartle on Human Rights in Virtual Worlds

For those of you who missed his excellent talk at the Gotland Game Awards, Professor Richard Bartle is coming back for a new lecture the September 2nd!

This marks the first of a series of public lectures hosted by GAME this autumn in our course Human Rights and Diversity in Serious Games 2010. Like last year we’ll invite speakers from the industry, arts, academia, press, government and more, to discuss human rights and diversity in the context of modern interactive technology. All lectures are free and open to the public!

Bartle is a professor and game researcher at the University of Essex. He’s most famous for having created MUD (multi-user dungeon) – the first of what would later evolve to become massively multiplayer online role-playing games. He’s one of the regular writers over at the popular science blog Terra Nova, with a focus on the study of virtual worlds and he was the examiner for our own doctor Mirjam Eladhari’s dissertation. 🙂

He will be talking about human rights in virtual worlds and his work with the European Council to create an HR-manifest for games.

Time: Thursday, September 2nd, 16:30-18:30
Location: E31

Sundsvalls Tidning: Tove brinner för spelen

Photo: Mathias Johansson, Sundsvalls Tidning

The summer holidays has just begun and many students return to the mainland for some well deserved rest and relaxation after the trials of Gotland Game Awards. Sundsvalls Tidning did a piece on local girl Tove as she got back from her first year at GAME – follow the link to read about her experiences.

(machine translation)