Gamepolis Indie Zone: A Summary

Hi folks!

It's been too long since the last post, so first things first: sorry about the delay. As you may know, we're working hard to meet several deadlines with our game Breaking Fast, about which I'll write something more technically-oriented soon.

By the end of July we attended Gamepolis. But unlike in the previous years in which we participated as general audience, this year we were presenting our own game: Breaking Fast.

Our stand at Gamepolis. From right to left, Óliver, Manuela and myself

The Indie Zone, which was located close to the entry doors, consisted of a circular area in which 16 indie studios were showcasing their games, most of them, if not all, still in development. As usual, the two main benefits of attending an event like Gamepolis, which is targeted at a broad audience, are obtaining feedback and raising awareness of your game, and getting to know other professionals who have the same dreams and aspirations as us. As for the last point, we're very happy that we could meet the developers of great games like Cubotrox, Hive, Noahmund, Crimson Breath or Charlie Beard, among others. We even went out for a dinner one night after the show!

Pictures with some of the other studios that participated in Gamepolis

The other advantage of participating in this event, that is, exposing your game to a big audience, turned out a fantastic experience. People of all ages (although especially kids and teenagers) would play for a really long time, and they'd come back later bringing more friends to show that 'crazy game with breakfast food'.

People enjoying the Breaking Fast experience. Locomalito and Gryzor also enjoyed it!

We even organized a tournament in which the best three players would win an official Breaking Fast tee. The initiative was really welcome, and hundreds of participants signed up for it. Knowing potential fans of your game is very rewarding, and we took a good deal of pictures with them. Some of them covered Breaking Fast on their Youtube channels, which is something that we, as indie developers, always appreciate a lot.

Some of our more loyal fans. Thanks so much!

Finally, as part of the participation, we were eligible for different awards, and good news are... we won the Public Choice Award! Even when the economic value of the award cannot be dismissed for a low-budget studio, the real value comes in the form of motivation and inspiration to continue improving the game. It's a certainty right now that people enjoy Breaking Fast, and enjoy it a lot. It's just a matter of polishing it well. The other awards went to Noahmund (best sound), Hive (best game as chosen by the jurors), Crimson Breath (best visuals) and Cubotrox (most innovative game).

If you want to read something very cool (and deep) about Gamepolis and about the indie scene in general, check this out (in Spanish, sorry).

See you!

Gamepolis 2015: An Overview

Hi all!

As promised, here it is my experience during the 2015 edition of Gamepolis. (To check my course during the previous editions, click here and here). 

The event came this year with some interesting novelties:

1) More national and international projection: not only did the number of attendees increase, but also the variety of their origin, which encompassed many Spanish regions. Long lines, especially during the morning, showed the increasing interest in this event, as shown in Figure 1. Also, the invited speaker Petro Tyschtschenko provided the international flavour with his nostalgic speech about the Amiga in its 30th anniversary. 

Figure 1. Tons of people lined up to access the premises, and more than half of the line 

cannot be seen from this perspective!

2) GameInvest Forum: co-located with Gamepolis, GameInvest provided a forum where developers could show their games to investors. As part of the agenda, there were some interesting talks on game investment and financial aids. Particularly interesting was a roundtable discussion about the aspects that investors often examine when making investment decisions. The main conclusion was that the game developer experience is usually graded with the highest priority. Thus, when an investor is faced with whether to invest in an unexperienced game developer with a brilliant idea, or in an experienced developer with a not so good idea, the odds will mostly be in favour of the latter (in many cases, unfortunately). 

Figure 2. GameInvest Forum

3) Game Jam: MalagaJam is a young association targeted at game developers, which is based in Malaga physically and in Internet digitally. Two weeks ago, they organized their second Game Jam, the awards of which were announced during a Gamepolis session on Sunday afternoon. The list of games and their download links are here. One of the most successful games, Panspermia, achieved The Most Outstanding Visuals and to The Best Audio and Music awards, the latter of which was thanks to my friend Oliver (Figure 4). 

Figure 3. The auditorium was completely crowded during the jam awards ceremony

Figure 4. Panspermia team receiving The Best Audio and Music award.

Contrary to the previous editions, in which I tried to turn up at almost all the conferences, this year I could barely attend any one. The reason is that I participated in GameInvest with a project called GalaxyNumbers (Figures 5 and 6), for which I'm the programmer. The game combines match-3 mechanics (Tetris) with a Candy Crush aesthetics and presents an interesting mathematical twist. According to the people that could play the game during the event, it is fun and addictive, and these people would repeatedly ask us whether the game was already available for download. Unfortunately, we always had to answer "not yet". Precisely the idea of participating in GameInvest was to request investment to polish the last details and to integrate the last features, and also to cover marketing efforts. For now, we are happy to have received very positive feedback from a broad range of users.

Figure 5. The stand of Galaxy Numbers

Figure 6. The presentation of Galaxy Numbers

As a wrap-up, this edition of Gamepolis has provided a bigger focus on developers and has widened its impact by bringing an international, well-known speaker, which were two aspects that remained uncovered in the two previous editions and which I criticized in those posts.

Figure 7. A 3D printer making cool stuff. Actually, the game jam awards were printed!

Something to improve? Well, there are some sources that have complained about the lack of respect of a reduced number of attendees during some conferences, who would not stop their chattering. I would therefore suggest enforcing a bigger control during the presentations, as well as continuing the effort towards a wider internationalization.

Figure 8. A minute of silence was observed in memory of Mr. Iwata, followed by a huge ovation.  RIP.

Gamepolis 2015 is coming!

Hi all!

Gamepolis 2015, the biggest and most important videogames event in Malaga, is coming back this weekend. 

As I did in the 2013 and 2014 edition, I will cover my experiences along the days of the event. This year, Gamepolis brings along a nice novelty: GameInvest, a forum where investors will evaluate different projects and will finance the best ones. And guess what! A project in which I'm working will be there! So wish me luck! 

In the next post, I'll tell you more about this project and about my course during the event. 

See you,

FM 

To Granada Gaming Festival!

Hi all!

This weekend will take place the Granada Gaming Festival, and I've just bought the tickets to be there. Among other activities and interesting lectures, the organizers promise to let the audience test Oculus Rift. Let's see if I'm luckier than in the last edition of Gamepolis. As I did in the latter festival, I'll try to cover my impressions, so stay tuned.

See you!
FM

Gamepolis 2014: An Overview

Hi all!

As promised, I'm eager to share with you my experience during Gamepolis 2014, the second edition of this videogames festival held in Malaga from last Friday to Sunday. 

As last year, I arrived on Friday afternoon due to work, so I missed some of the morning talks. As I set foot on the entrance, I saw some Disney Princesses around (ok, not so videogames oriented, but quite of a surprise anyway).

Disney princesses; probably colluding against their princes... or no 

Then I walked around the stands in order to cover myself with the spirit of the festival. Graphics cards brands were presenting their last products, people gathered around games, like FIFA 2014 and Mario Kart 8, and shops were showcasing some very interesting and geeky products. 

People walking around the place. The surface of the event was bigger and clearer than in the previous edition. This allowed for a a clearer space. 

Gigabyte and Nvidia presenting their last products.

People gathered to play FIFA 2014 and Mario Kart 8. 

Tournaments for these and other games were also organized.

Geeky T-Shirts and videogames products were sold in the shops.

The first afternoon session was about legal issues to take into account before and after developing a game, including raising funds and protecting the product. I couldn't attend this one though because I arrived later (thanks Oliver for your notes).

The first session I actually attended was about the importance of music in videogames, where the speaker pointed out that the audio must adapt itself to the player, and that it should know its place in the game as a whole, not wanting to show off over the rest of the game. 

 While the session about music in videogames started, Pong was exhibited

After this talk, I decided I would walk around a bit more, and that's when I found a magical corner where all wishes come true: the retro area. There, old tiles would bring joy to all types of players: from the oldest ones to the youngest kids. 

The retro area was fantastic, as in the previous edition. 

Do you recognize the games in this pictures?

Then, I went back to the auditorium to enjoy the talk "Indie: origins and revolution", where the speaker provided an overview of some of the most relevant games in the indie scenario. The author also pointed out the importance of addressing game reviews rigorously and with actual insight, as it is done in his high quality magazine Deus Ex Machina.  

As examples of relevant indie games we find World of Goo and The Binding of Isaac.

Saturday morning started with tons of people lining up to buy their tickets. Fortunately, I had already bought a 3-days pass by Internet. 

Long queue on Saturday morning. 

I also took advantage of this great audience to advertise Chubby Buddy. For this purpose, Manuela designed an eye-catching flyer and we handed them out.

Yeahh! Our dear chubby friend was also in the conference. Some people (including bloggers and press staff) were actually interested and asked us about it

People tried to get pictures with their favorite game characters, including Altair or the scary Slenderman. 

As in the previous edition, people have made a great effort to look like their games counterparts. 

Do you recognize them all?

The first session in the morning presented a game that is being developed by Brainside, a Spanish game company based in Sevilla. The game is Embrion, which was already in last year edition. Last year, the developers presented a sensor that could be attached to the player in order to measure heartbeat and change the gameplay accordingly. This idea by its own is fantastic, but now they also revealed that they're using Oculus Rift to gain a bigger immersion. I didn't have the chance to try it, but I presume that the experience must be really frightening (actually, as a curiosity, the team mentioned that one person who was trying the game didn't have the courage to go beyond the first room of the game). 

By the stand of Brainside, people would line up to try Oculus Rift in Embrion

The next talk was about the presentation of a book and a new publisher: "Ediciones Arcade", which promises to bring from abroad and translate the best books on videogames. As as first notice, they announced that they would publish "La Legende Final Fantasy VII", a special edition for collector book that was not available in Spanish. 

Presention of Embrion

Next session I attended was "From videogames to gamification", where the speakers discussed the foundations of gamification and how it can boost productivity in boring tasks and at the workplace. They showed how big companies such as Coca-cola have understood the importance of gamification  as as marketing strategy.

Speakers during the gamification talk

Next session was: "Hidden treasures of MSX". The speaker, Gaby López, who was also in the last edition, revealed lost of curious games for MSX and MSX2. A funny part of this talk covered some erotic games that, contrary to what one may think, had a great quality.

MSX had lots of curious titles, but the erotic ones deserve a special mention... 

The first talk of the last day (Sunday) was a presentation of Bitton, a game-making company. In addition to presenting their last products, the speaker also reflected on marketing issues important to gain some audience in a competitive market such as the mobile one. 

Bitton presentation. Note the second picture: we employ around 3000 millions of hours per week playing online games... Awesome!

The name of the next talk was: "Metal Gear Solid: When Hideo Kojima met the movie industry". The speaker showed some of the films that inspired Kojima while creating this super mega saga. The speaker also presented his book: "Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy of Big Boss", which of course I bought :)

Me in the possession of this amazing book. Preparing myself for MGS5...

Next talk was about artificial intelligence in videogames, and the speakers, researches at University of Malaga, provided an overview on procedural contents generation and on the need for "artificial stupidity". This last term refers to human-like (error-prone) behaviour for bots, which is necessary in order to provide a more engaging and realistic experience.

Researches from University of Malaga talking about artificial intelligence

The final presentation was actually very special, and probably the most original presentation I've ever seen, because the flow of the presentation was driven by a game itself. The speaker, Locomalito, was playing a side- and top-down perspective game he had developed (very much like the first 8-bit Zelda adventures), and the issues on game development that he was discussing were intertwined with events in the game. For example, typical stumbling blocks (like lack of skills at the beginning) were represented like final bosses. 

A game-based presentation. Yes... I'll have to do this at some point :)

As a conclusion, my experience in Gamepolis has been rewarding: not only the atmosphere was great, but I also met people with the same interests. Last year, I suggested some improvements that can still be implemented for next year, so I'll copy-paste them: 

"There should be some more technical workshops or meetings where developers and artists could interact in order to open the possibilities of forming potential development teams. [...]. Please, free WiFi! I would've loved to comment the talks on this blog with my laptop while being there, but I could only do it by Twitter using my data plan".

I would like to specially suggest the organization committee to make an effort and try to bring some important international celebrity in the area of indie game development. I think designers and developers would love to be able to talk to Jonathan Blow, Derek Yu, Edmund McMillen and the like.

That's all, see you soon!

FM