Finished!

We've just come to the end of our Masters in Professional Games Development at Abertay. What an interesting and intense 12 months its been. Our final game project has been very successful and we got some fantastic feedback on it at Dare Protoplay. The feedback, good times with the whole class (courtesy of some lubrication provided by a Rockstar North free bar) and overall the sense of achievement at completing a very polished games prototype were all a brilliant payoff for twelve months of hard work.

Now its find a job time. There appear to be some good options, but lets hope everyone in the class makes the right choices and heads of to develop some cool games. : )

For me, right at this moment, my focus is Next Level Dundee! Please follow the event @nextleveldundee and tweet any related news on #NLD2010. Hopefully I can make the event as much of a success as it was last year!

July Update

The end of week 5 of development has just passed. We have mechanics rapidly tightening up and we’re looking to get our collision-complete level done for the end of this week.

Art are now kicking into full modelling swing, and we’re looking to get a refined animation pass into the build this week. In addition, there is progress on the 2 player, single player AI and single player time trial modes.

All very good progress! On other fronts- the hype for Next Level Dundee is just about to kick off. I’ve created a teaser video which I’m about to publish to everyone via the website just after I’ve tidied the whole layout over there. Having a little trouble making what looks nice in Firefox look good in other browsers, but I’m sure I’ll manage!

Cheers, and stay tuned.

Semester 3 begins...

Hi all,

So semester 3 has officially commenced. I'm now the producer on a 14-person student team, developing a game over the course of our 3 final months in our MProf Games Development Degree. I'm working hard to create some really cool working structures within the team; already in place are some team leads who can really boost the communication (and as they're students, they're not directors or god-emperors!). We'll see how the project goes. With hard work, inspiration and confidence (and maybe some luck), which the team all have plenty of; we'll make a great game.

Stay tuned!

Projects Finished and More to Come!

So, I've just wrapped up with the two second semester games and we're quickly moving into Semester 3...about a week early too! Our new brief drops on Friday. In the mean time, enjoy the highlight videos from Digital Native's NJA game below, and the Trap Inc video to come shortly!

Coming to the End of Semester 2

I'm a few weeks away from the end of semester 2 now, with two more games almost ready to submit. This time far more substantial than the games that were on offer in semester 1.

In between working with the teams on these two games, I've been writing up my Pre-Production paper and Narrative in Videogames paper, which will hopefully turn into seamless and joyful theories over the next two weeks! Time is against all of the class now, with most of our module submissions coming on or around May 10th.

Running alongside this, I've had my contract extended at Cohort Studios as their Assistant Producer intern so I've been balancing professional with academic. By the time I post to this blog again, I imagine I'll be able to give much more in-depth analysis of this term's projects with hindsight (and more free time available!)

Remember to follow @DigitalNative_ and @Trap_Inc on Twitter!

Catchup Blog

Much has been happening already for me in 2010!

I'm continuing to study MProf Games Development in Abertay and will be all the way until September (even thought my Undergrad graduation is somewhere in July...!)

We're into Semester 2 now and the pressure is again on to balance module completions with our games development projects. I have two papers to write at the moment concerning production methods and narrative in games respectively. In addition I'm studying a small business management class and a class on web 2.0 technologies and communities.

Our development projects are again moving at a fast pace, and I'm working as producer across two different seven-man (and woman) teams. We've currently just moved past the pre-production stage and we're pushing to get a first playable for the beginning of April. You can follow the team's progress here:

Trap Inc:
Blog: http://guineapixels.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @Trap_Inc


NJA:
Blog: http://digitalnative-nja.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @DigitalNative_









My contact time with the teams is fairly intense and condensed into Monday, Tuesday and Friday as I managed to secure part time industry experience with Cohort Studios as an Assistant Producer. So far combining the academic with the professional has been invaluable despite the long hours involved. There are elements of both which are lending pretty interesting insights to the other.



I'll update with specifics (well...what I can be specific about!) and maybe a bit of reflective stuff fairly soon!