VisionSoundMusic @ South Bank Centre

Wednesday, 3. August 2011 - 23:47 | Comments Off

We’re deep into production on GameCity 6 at the moment,of which more later, but I wanted to tell you about another festival I’m working on with the extraordinary Andrew Missingham at the South Bank Centre this September.

VisionSoundMusic is a new festival which was originally pitched to me as a ‘festival of sync’ed music’ some months ago by Andrew, and it’s a brilliant concept. ‘Sync’ed music’ didn’t make it into the final marketing copy (quite rightly) so now it’s the UK’s ‘first festival of music for visuals’.

Andrew has assembled an amazing programme for the first year, for which I’ve been contributing to the videogame part. Now, ‘amazing’ is an adjective that gets thrown around a lot in these parts (especially in the forthcoming frenzy of press releases we’re drafting) – but in this case it’s really deserving.

Daniel Pemberton, Nitin Sawnhey, OK GO!, Scorsese and Carpenter interviews, Richard O’Brien (?!), Richard Jacques… It’s a genuinely brilliant line-up – (and don’t forget there’s a a brilliant SoundCloud ‘audio-ad- remix’ on the site too..) and I really hope you can make it.

Early-bird tickets are now available for the whole event and we’ve just published details of how to get them over at GCHQ.

Hope we see you there!

Categories: Events, notes

Trailing

Sunday, 17. July 2011 - 20:49 | Comments Off

Lee has made a new GameCity showreel.
’tis thus:

Categories: notes

All things must pass… @ Develop

Saturday, 16. July 2011 - 16:17 | Comments Off

It’s been an insanely busy few weeks leading up to the festival launch, and now I’m about to head down to Brighton for the Annual Develop Conference.

This year, Jimmy and I are trying out some new preservation ideas – a few of which we kicked around with the National Archives folk earlier this year.

‘All this must Pass’  is on Thursday 15th @ 3pm, hope you can make it!

 

Categories: nva, talks

GameCity 6

Saturday, 9. July 2011 - 09:53 | Comments Off

Last Thursday evening we launched the sixth GameCity festival, announcing a  few special guests and generally moving into full-on production for the event.

You can read more details at Eurogamer, The Independent and The Guardian.

Allstar

 

Things are feeling a lot more solid already this year. I think we might be getting close to what we actually want it to be this time.

 

Here’s a lovely pic of Eric Chahi, Rich Lemarchand and Robin Hunicke proving that 4-way Skype conversations *do* work sometimes…

 

Categories: GameCity

GameCityNights S02E06

Friday, 24. June 2011 - 16:06 | Comments Off

Off up to Newcastle next week to the brilliant Gamehorizon conference (at least, it was the last time I went which was a few years ago…) – looking forward to catching up with a few people.

Back next Thursday then for another instalment of GameCityNights, which this month features the amazing Chris O’Shea who does this…

 

Little Magic Stories from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

And this…

 

Air Guitar prototype with Kinect from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

 

..as well as lots of other brilliant stuff.

Dr Sketchy’s are also going to be there – it’s shaping up to be a good one.

See you there?

 

Categories: Events, GameCity

Eurogamer : The Keepers of all Games

Thursday, 2. June 2011 - 10:22 | Comments Off

Simon Parkin has posted an extensive write-up / interview of the ‘all things must pass’ gig Jimmy and I did at the National Archives recently.

Following the comment thread responses is illuminating, highlighting the emotional weight that this subject holds for (some) people and the nuance we need to express rather better than we are now in order to navigate this investment.

We just found out we’re going to be doing a version of this at Develop in July, which should provide a particularly interesting context to deliver the ‘dead games’ message.

 

Categories: Events, notes, save the videogame, talks
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Media Molecule / Rob Yescombe @ GameCity 1

Tuesday, 24. May 2011 - 21:19 | Comments Off

There’s a paucity of footage from 2006, so it was fun to see these which I’ve never seen before. Filmed in the Paul Smith cinema at the Broadway, where we staged a lot of the talks in year one.

Alex and Mark came up and did MM’s first ever public appearance at our first ever festival…

Not only that, but there’s an interview with former FRD / Crytek scribe and festival best-friend Rob Yescombe…

Categories: GameCity, notes

No-one left behind.

Tuesday, 24. May 2011 - 14:49 | Comments Off

Rob Fearon has just said some lovely things over on GameCity.org about our work which has reminded me why we are bothering to continue to turn up…

“I like that if GameCity were a text adventure it wouldn’t be “You are in a dank, sweaty hall. To the left is a stinky man, to the right is a stinky man”. It would be “You are in a massive open city. As Frankie Goes To Hollywood once said, the world is your oyster. Go forth and play, my friend. To the north, lego. To the south you see a windy path with a man dressed as a hedgehog, to the west you see a conference hall and to the east you see someone dancing on a mat”. You see a sign and it reads “Everyone welcome”. You smile.”

It matters because the more we contain games in a nerdhole, the more of a narrow path we carve out. The less we get as a whole. The less progress we make and the less fun everyone gets to have.”

Pretty much sums it up.

Categories: notes

Newman, Hannigan, Jacques

Monday, 16. May 2011 - 08:39 | Comments Off

Jimmy is chairing an event this Wednesday 18th May with festival alumnus (and noted videogame composers) James Hannigan and Richard Jacques at the Barbican.

Professor James Newman, Bath Spa University, chairs a discussion on the role of music in video games: its evolution from the Commodore 64 era to the present day and its impact on popular culture. The panelists, including composers andJames Hannigan and Richard Jacques, also explore how old video game systems have been repurposed to create music. The event features an interactive music demonstration.

 

Tickets and details here!

Categories: Events
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GameCityNights S02E05

Friday, 13. May 2011 - 13:47 | Comments Off

Good news for fans of brilliant speakers – this month Jonathan Smith is going to making the journey up the M1 to headline Episode 5 of GameCityNights.

I think Jonathan is brilliant, having first met him when I approached him to talk about the first LEGO Star Wars project at NTI* back in 2005. At the time LSW was still a gamble, the LEGO format being something that people had only really seen through the beautiful animation previews and not yet the game itself. Seven years on and at least two buy-outs later, Giant Entertainment as it was then is now part of a global megacorp and churning out LEGO franchise titles with a surprising regularity. More surprising than that for me, is that TT are managing to buck an expected trend of diminishing quality. They’re not just putting out projects to a template, but tangibly evolving it with each iteration (mostly, anyway….).

Jonathan is one of the festival’s best friends and a brilliant speaker.

You should come along if you can make it.

Details and Tickets are here!

Categories: Events, GameCity, notes
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