Building a better bot

Other than the winners of the Nullarbor contest the other big announcement from the Perth IGDA meeting was that of the The 2K Bot Prize.

ECU’s Philip Hingston took the stage to tell us about the comp to build a better bot.

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Nullarbor 2008 Prizes

It was a great pleasure last night to hand out the prizes to this year’s Nullarbor winners. The standard of the games this year was outstanding and it is a credit to everyone involved that due to the incredibly high quality, we had the closest results ever.

This year we also decided to have a judges prize, which we awarded to Jack Casey (aka Beetlefeet) for his outstanding game “LadyBug” (video, game). I’m sure his prize — a copy of Maya Unlimited from Autodesk — will be very helpful in crafting next year’s entry!

The music prize was also very close, with fewer entries but all of them very nigh quality. Congratulations and $250 narrowly went to Simon Whitber (Nxus7) for his winning entry, beating out the competition by just 1 point. The final results were:

As I mentioned, the people’s choice voting was the closest it has ever been, with only 3 points (potentially just one vote) separating the top 3 games.

Nullarbor Game Prize Results
Position	Screenshot	Title/Developer	Points	Links
1		Buttons’ Grand Adventures ECU ML Red Team ‘08	43	Game Video
2		The War of Art AH,MD,SM	42	Game Video
3		Morning Star Peter Alexander	40	Game Video
4		Ladybug Beetlefeet	38	Game Video
5		Thrust Harder Kransky Bros	24	Game
6		The Things NoTime	20	Game Video
7		Super Jesus Twelve Productions	19	Game Video
8		Space Pirates First Empire	19	Game Video
9		Retrovector Brad Power	18	Game
10		Column Breaker OneTwentyThree	11	Video

Mine the Creative Riches in Boom Landscape

Stephen Bevis wrote an interesting article today discussing Perth’s investment in the Arts during this mining boom.  Premier Alan Carpenter allocated $73M last year to government-supported cultural activities and compares himself to Adelaide’s Don Dunstan.  As a city and a state we definitely need to work out how to build a cultural base here; after each of the last mining booms were over St Georges Tce turned into a wasteland (it just needed tumbleweeds to complete the picture).  It’s possible to develop our non-mining industries but we need to focus on them.

As one of the “Tsars” nominated as someone that might be play some part in developing a sustainable artistic and cultural ecosystem in Perth, I would call on everyone that has any thought to helping on this front to focus on infrastructure. Fast internet access, support services and decent workspaces are difficult in Perth at the moment.  This is a temporary effect caused by the boom–soon fantastic office space with amazing views will be given away again–but it is having a terribly deletorious effect on Cultural activities.

Incidentally, to all those that say that this boom will be different to the last boom, I point you to the first Internet bubble.  Pundits were claiming that due to the friction-reducing effects of the ‘net the business fundamentals were different.  The Internet has changed business dramatically but every boom still has its bust.

It’s just a matter of time, so lets be prepared.

The Art of Independence – Presentation and Notes

Here are the slides (and my personal notes) from my Free Play keynote lecture. Being the keynote, the subject for my talk was pretty simple and to the point: “The paramount importance of independent games, and how they are crucial to games development as an art form.”

It should have been easy, right? Well, consider this: how do you tell the assembled artists and indie game developers making these games that what they are doing is art and important without it being condescending or obvious?

In the end I just dove in, added some stuff about founding Interzone (which is one big indie studio) and then threw in some extra business stuff to round things off. I went this way because most independent developers struggle with the money and project management far more than the actual code.

If you click here or on the link above you can check it out. If you turn off the pics it’s actually reasonably quick to load and fits everything on the page pretty neatly.

Free Play 2007

Free Play was fantastic. The panel discussion with Paul Callaghan and Jonathan Blow was very interesting, with several disagreements and some lively debate. It was great to have lunch with Jonathan and talk more about the intricate relationships of game design, martial arts and coding. I’m still convinced that we need to think more about narrative and games rather than giving up on them though Jon! It was also very encouraging to see groups of indy developers coming together after every presentation to talk about the ideas that were discussed and how they can be applied to their projects.

It was very interesting talking to some of the Next Wave organisers too; I really enjoyed the idea of a game conference as part of a wider series of art festivals and must write more on this at a later date. I’m hoping that Byte Me! will cover some of this ground but BEAP &/or Festival of Perth people please get in touch!

Looking for a new Assistant

My current assistant has just become an Associate Producer on our game, so I need a new super-capable problem-solver! A job ad is up on the Interzone Jobs page, so email jobs@iz if you think you’re ideal. A short list of requirements:

• Passionate about computer games.
• Capable of general office admin (you’ll be working with the Office Manager).
• Excellent Word/Excel/Powerpoint & very ‘net literate.
• Media-savvy (worked in media somewhere or have a relevant degree).
• Capable of running at a million miles an hour while juggling two dozen meeting requests and assisting with executive business reports and proposals.
• It helps if you don’t need to sleep much…

Nothing to it, really!

Free Play 2007

I’m honoured to have been invited to present a keynote address at Free Play 2007, the Independent Game Developer’s Conference (in Melbourne). Developed by the indy game community for the indy game community, Free Play provides a forum for Australian independent game developers to share knowledge, showcase their work and initiate new projects.

Cyber World Leader

Australian Anthill Magazine interviewed me at the BigWorld offices in Canberra during their tour of the country scouting out some of the highest tech companies in Australia and in the subsequent article they crowned me Cyber World Leader.

• Australian Anthill May 2006
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