Royal Society Summer Science Deadline is Upon Us!
I did a brief talk at the London Unity Users Group – really nice bunch of people who made me feel very welcome which was hosted at Mind Candy’s offices. I was talking about opportunities for games/science development opportunities.
For the Royal Society event the deadline is only a few days away – get your application in!
Get £2K+ to Game Jam Cutting Edge Science into Fun: Royal Society invites game developers to bring research to life at Summer Science Exhibition
The Royal Society is looking for experienced games development studios to take part in a new initiative that will turn some of the research on show at its annual Summer Science Exhibition into video games. The Royal Society will host a 12 hour game jam on 24th May that will see developers work with the scientists behind exhibits to produce five exciting new games. Five development teams of up to 4 developers will be partnered with the selected exhibitors for an all-day game jam from 10am – 10pm. Each development team will receive £2,000 to further develop their games after the game jam so that they are ready to be played at the Summer Science Exhibition which runs from 1st – 7th July. The games will be available free online and at the exhibition itself so that the public can cast votes for their favourite game. The team that receives most votes will receive an additional £2,000 to further develop their game once the Exhibition closes.
This is a great opportunity to get your name known, make some amazing games and get paid too! Reasonable travel costs, food and refreshments will also be provided. Interested developers can find out more about the competition and how to apply from the Royal Society’s website at http://bit.ly/RSgamejam – Applications need to be in by the 1st May.
There is a list of the press coverage on this event over on Auroch’s site.
I’m Speaking at Quo Vadis in Berlin on 24th April
And looking forward to it! If you’re attending and want to hook up, do let me know.
Gaming the News by Tomas Rawlings of Auroch Digital and the GameTheNews Project.
11:00 AM — 11:45 AM, April 24 2013
Tallinn (OG)
Games have become ever more a mainstream form of entertainment but what about of serious commentary? GameTheNews.net is a project turning news into games that has become a global talking point following the release of their controversial title Endgame: Syria, exploring the ongoing conflict through the medium of a game. The story has been given major mainstream and games press coverage from Wired to the BBC, The Economist to Al Jazeera, Rock Paper Shotgun to Edge, from Russia Today to Yahoo News. Through the release of this game it has become a mirror to the mainstream media’s view of what games are and could be. In this session the game’s designer, Tomas Rawlings, will discuss the challenges of creating such a difficult topic into a game form in 2 weeks and assess the media storm that followed.
Link.
More on NarcoGuerra and the War on Drugs
So I’ve posted about the new game from GameTheNews.net and I though I’d share a bit more about the ideas behind it. The War on Drugs is a huge area and our game is not going to cover all of it, much as we did with Endgame:Syria, the aim is to cover a part of it. The issues this game explores is about the framing of drug policy as a ‘war’ and also the relationship between policing and drug use levels. On the first point, games are a good medium to explore this as there are soooo many strategy games, so you expect them to deal with a situation as a conflict, and we work with that dynamic. The way we do it is something you’ll have to play it to explore for yourself! On the second point in a normal war you can (sometimes) win by defeating the enemy – but when the enemy is people’s desire to get high – how can a gun defeat that?
It seems it can’t:
Drug adiction vs spending to stop it (source theatlanticwire.com)
Which is key in the game. Also if interested check out:
NarcoGuerra by GameTheNews.net (click for full sized image)
Sneak Preview of GameTheNews’s New Game:NarcoGuerra
Over at GameTheNews.net we’ve been working on a new title. This time we’re looking at the War on Drugs. Here’s how the game is looking:
NarcoGuerra by GameTheNews.net (click for full sized image)
This is an amazing opportunity being funded by The Wellcome Trust. Basically you get £10K to help you develop a new game IP and then you get to pitch it to a panel of industry experts including people from the worlds of publishing and crowdfunding at Develop 2013. Not only that but they are not looking for any of the IP or the money back – the criteria is that you need to be UK based and the idea needs to be inspired by biomedical science. That does not mean it has to be ‘Theme Hospital’ far from it. Here’s the info:
Do you have an idea for the next ‘Deus Ex: Human Revolution’, ‘Pandemic’ or ‘Splice’?
Developers are invited to apply for the chance to receive up to £10,000 each to develop a high-impact pitch for their game to help secure a distribution platform and funding. The ideas for your game need to draw on or be inspired by contemporary or historical biological or medical science in an innovative and accessible way. The games can be developed for any mass-appeal genre, platform or business model. Those who are successful will go on to pitch their developed game ideas to a panel of publishers and funders at a live event at Develop in Brighton on Wednesday 10 July 2013. Panellists joining the Wellcome Trust include Sony XDev and crowd-funding platform Indiegogo. Participating developers will be invited to receive additional pitch training ahead of the live event.
Note that you’ve got until the 26th April to apply, but don’t leave it till then – I strongly urge you to ensure that you give the application process time to go though right, so get on it now! Get started now and good luck.
Royal Society Goes Game-Jamming
The Royal society is the oldest science body in the world, the home of Newton, Darwin and other greats. So it is really exciting that they are turning to games as a means of engaging people with science! It is doubly cool that the project is also being supported by Unity and IndieCity!
Get £2K+ to Game Jam Cutting Edge Science into Fun: Royal Society invites game developers to bring research to life at Summer Science Exhibition
The Royal Society is looking for experienced games development studios to take part in a new initiative that will turn some of the research on show at its annual Summer Science Exhibition into video games. The Royal Society will host a 12 hour game jam on 24th May that will see developers work with the scientists behind exhibits to produce five exciting new games. Five development teams of up to 4 developers will be partnered with the selected exhibitors for an all-day game jam from 10am – 10pm. Each development team will receive £2,000 to further develop their games after the game jam so that they are ready to be played at the Summer Science Exhibition which runs from 1st – 7th July. The games will be available free online and at the exhibition itself so that the public can cast votes for their favourite game. The team that receives most votes will receive an additional £2,000 to further develop their game once the Exhibition closes.
This is a great opportunity to get your name known, make some amazing games and get paid too! Reasonable travel costs, food and refreshments will also be provided. Interested developers can find out more about the competition and how to apply from the Royal Society’s website at http://bit.ly/RSgamejam – Applications need to be in by the 1st May.
There is a list of the press coverage on this event over on Auroch’s site.
Yes indeed. Endgame:Syria has been updated on PC and Android. We’ve also ported the original version on o Facebook. However was rejected a third time by Apple and we had to remove references to ‘Syria’ itself to get the game on iOS. There has been a lot of coverage of this so far, including articles on Polygon, Pocket Gamer and VentureBeat:
In January, GamesBeat reported that Apple blocked a game called Endgame: Syria from its iOS App Store. That strategy title explores the nation’s civil war and aims to inform gamers about the many possible outcomes of the conflict. Apple refused the game based on the sensitive nature of the content.
Today, developer Tomas Rawlings, who produced the game as part of his Game The News series, revealed that the title is finally available on the App Store under a new name. Rawlings changed the game to Endgame: Eurasia and wiped all other references to Syria and its war.
We reached out to Rawlings to see how he feels about ripping out the overt political statement of his game.
“[I’m] very disappointed,” Rawlings told GamesBeat. “It’s a long, drawn-out process that costs time and money to go though, [Apple’s process] is a major hindrance to our art as game creators.”
Michael Peck over at Forbes were very scathing of Apple over the decision:
I wish I could say that Apple changed its mind. But it’s more accurate to say that the game’s publisher, UK-based Auroch Digital, found a way to humor the humorless iBureaucrats. “Endgame: Syria” has been repackaged as “Endgame: Eurasia”, which is pretty much the same game except that the name “Syria” has been removed along with references to specific groups such as the Free Syrian Army or Hezbollah.
Title changes from ‘Syria’ to ‘Eurasia’…
There is more on the reaction to the original release here, here and here.
PS. I was also pleased to see ads for aid to Syrian refugees appearing next to articles about the game. The game also has links in it leading people to be able to donate to organisations/refugees from the war, however I didn’t really think about the point that by generating articles about the issue, you automatically create spaces for ads related to it to be displayed and in contexts they might not have been placed before. The image below is from Polygon…
The Battle for Hill 218 live on the App Store
Check it out! Well worth getting if you’re a strategy game fan like me!
The Battle for Hill 218 live on the App Store
Hill 218 looks just like any other hill on your map, but High Command says it’s important and it’s your job to take it. Unfortunately the enemy has the same plan.
“… only Ascension has ever felt better over such short play sessions.” – Pocket Tactics
The Battle for Hill 218 is an abstract strategy card game for two players where you represent a military commander struggling for control of Hill 218 as part of a larger military struggle. Players must maintain supply lines and destroy enemy units to advance on the enemy home base, while ensuring that their own base is not taken. It’s easy to learn and quick to play but has a depth of strategy usually found only in games that takes much longer to play.
*Deploy different army units such as Infantry, Tanks and Special Forces*
*Play vs. the computer with two difficulty levels*
*Online play through Game Center or play a local friend over wi-fi*
*Game Center Achievements and Online Leaderboards*Based on the popular card game with the same name, The Battle for Hill 218 has been described as the perfect strategy card game and is now finally available on the iPad. The game will be released on the App Store on Wednesday, March the 20th.
Credits
The Battle for Hill 218 is published by Your Move Games and developed by Large Visible Machine in conjunction with Opposable Games.More information:
http://largevisiblemachine.com/games
Your Move Games
http://www.yourmovegames.com
Talk in Paris on Games and Reality
Speaking in Paris on 19th at the Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI):
Gaming The Real
With over a third of the EU population playing games and the explosions of platforms, development tools and distribution of games over the last few years, they are increasingly a primary form of media for science, education, news and other engagements with the real world. In this talk Tomas Rawlings, is is a games consultant to science organisations such as The Wellcome Trust and The Royal Society and also runs a project turning news into games, GameTheNews.net will talk about the design, deployment and use of games in real world scenarios.
And looking forward to it!
BBC Click & London Review of Books on GameTheNews
We’ve had a couple more outlets and people pick-up on the work we’re doing over at GameTheNews. Firstly the high-brow London Review of Books:
Simplistic and partial it may be, but no more so perhaps than many other news sources. More troubling is the way it apes regular combat games: in the ‘military phase’, you’re informed of new civilian casualties to the accompaniment of exciting explosions (then again, the TV news has been doing that for years too).
Overall the article things we’ve not got the formula right yet, but they liked what we were trying to do with the cotton picking game:
The only game that really works is My Cotton Picking Life, a response to the news that Uzbekistan uses forced labour for its cotton harvest. The dullness and monotony of the game are the whole point: it takes as long to pick a day’s quota of cotton in the game as it does in the fields (though the simulation is obviously a lot less backbreaking than the real thing).
Which is in some respects, fair point as we are still really in beta and working out what a newsgame means to us. I suspect it will be more than one thing. Over on the BBC we got a mini-review by Kate Russell:
It’s a great review and we were really pleased with it. You can watch it here. Thanks to Kate for that!
In other news on gamethenews.net, we’ve also had Endgame:Syria listed by Games For Change…
Endgame:Syria on Games For Change
A Great Becoming... 