Game Connect Asia

Pandemic are sending a few, and a bunch of us are going out of our own pockets. See you there!

I'll be there, and I know of a few others from other companies that will be going as well.

Just booked in today, i'll be doing a talk and should be at some of the parties.

Hey everyone

We just found out that our game Jungle Escape was chosen to be one of the four games on display for the unsigned games competition at GCAP this year. Play as Gabe the Green Alien in a cartoon puzzle game with a unique game play feature. We have lots of fun planned through out the conference and i hope you will be able to spare some time to play and enjoy the game.

It would be absolutely fantastic if all you Sumeans and friends could come and check it out and chuck us a vote, or if your not intending to vote slip me your voting slip and just have a chat :D <3

Look for the people in the Green hats, you wont miss em -_^

Neffy2006-11-22 23:18:26

i will check it out, definately.

yay. got the confirmation for my media pass emailed today! gunna be sweet!

Looks like I'll be flying up for it too, and going to the QANTM thing to grab a few folios, provided some really unfortunate series of events do not transpire to prevent it....................

I'll be for the most part sticking to the the Design and art stuff, Look for a guy with stars in his eyes, seeming out of his depth and not understanding a word being spoken.

I know Sumea has been a bit slack in the past in providing coverage of the game developers conference, but this year we're sending PeterDavis to cover it for us! And he'll be capturing footage and everything, and we'll be able to host and stream that stuff on our new server. It's gonna be cool!!

I just got back some broachers from the printers I hope to be handing out to publishers, along with a demo disk, and a free 'play' of Prime.

If any one is interested just chat to my self (Adam) or Marcello - we will have Grey shirts on with our logo - http://nigredostudios.com/nigredologo.jpg

its not going to be an issue if i take all my photos with hip slanted angles, right? RIGHT?

kidding, of course.

[QUOTE=PeterDavis] its not going to be an issue if i take all my photos with hip slanted angles, right? RIGHT?

kidding, of course.[/QUOTE]

I have been roped in by the Mod DB, and Mod-HQ guys as well to take some happy snaps, i don't know when i will find the time however.

And every one loves it when you take photos at a 45* offset :)

Hey guys, I'll be covering as much as I can of the conference for the site, but I'm unable to attend any of the after parties, QANTM most notably. That gig will be full of students, newcomers and people asipiring to get into the industry, as well as their mentors. My kinda crowd. Bit of a shame I can't make it.

What I would like is that if anyone from here who is going would like to take photos and send impressions of the party to me that would be very cool, and I can add it to the content I'm submitting for the site, of you can talk to Souri and maybe write your own bit about it, if it's worth the trouble(I don't know, depends how the party is).

I'm planning to pop around to most of the stalls at the EXPO and careers market with a handycam, and I'll be taking lots of photos etc, but I wouldn't mind checking some pics from the QANTM gig with our up-and-comings (I'm on as as well, which why I wanted to go =[)

anyway, if you'd like to help out,
(peterlachlandavis at gmail.com)

Well, the conference ended today, and boy am I tired! There were some really interesting sessions and it was great to catch up with friends I haven't seen in a while. A few things could have been better organised, but I'd say overall it was pretty good :)

I agree. I expected a lot worse considering the extremely late date that everything seemed to come together. There was actually some content this year that was worth attending and the Sony party was one of the best yet.

Yeah I had a pretty good time too and actually took away some useful tips from more than one of the sessions. I met up with me'ol'mate Mick and a couple my Fuzzyeyes mates, and a couple of people I hadn't seen for years. Also met a few new people (Peter included) and Chris Avalone seems at least partially interested in reading my work and helping me adapt my novel writing to games, woot!

The qantm thing wasn't as great as I was hoping, it was better the last two years, though there were a couple of standouts. The three most impressive were actually all girls, good texture and lighting from two of them and the other was actually a multimedia student I think who was a great illustrator and had knocked up this mobile based railway timetable network thing so she could code as well, bloody smart chicky and I hope she goes well. There were a few artists who impressed me as well and a few coders who I assumed were good though I don't know code so I just handed a card over to the most stable looking builds.

Students still leave their boothes and expect that their work will speak for itself though, and think that leaving piles of business cards will be enough to land them a job. Way to show the developers you dont give a sh*t guys, like any major dev is gonna chase you around. Seriously, of all the times to go have a drink that ain't it, there were two displays that I sat in front of for a few miniutes and no one was around to talk to at all, I thought 'Screw'em' and left, and went and spoke to students who took me through their work step by step and let me get to know them.

All in all I enjoyed my weekend back in Bris, and hope to catch up with a few of the guys I met from down here in Melb in the future. I'll be at the next one for sure.

Did anyone go to the "Self Publishing & Funding Your Own Intellectual Property" session?

[quote]Moderator: Mike Fegan, IR Gurus
Panelists: Tom Crago, Tantalus Interactive; Scott Brown, President, NetDevil (US); Luke Carruthers, CEO, Imaginary Numbers; Tony Hilliam, Auran[/quote]

What was the status of Imaginary Numbers or was it mentioned what happened?Souri2006-12-05 06:07:05

I thought it was a pretty good conference overall, I met a lot of new people, got some good contacts and caught up with a few old buddies from the Melbourne scene whom I hadn't seen for years.

A couple of seminars stood out to me, one of which was the Developers Rant... always entertaining (and vocal) when you get a few CEO's together discussing their experiences with publishers, especially when you have characters like Graham Edelsten in the mix :)

Another was the Asian game development seminar, this was very interesting and I learnt a lot from the Korean, Chinese and Indian speakers.

I was expecting a more positive outcome from the XLA development seminar... there was nothing mentioned about the financial gains from heading down this path of development and based on the speakers answers to some questions, the likelyhood of even having a game accepted appears to be extremely slim... I've heard stories of developers queing up for XLA, figures of 500-600 devs worldwide currently having games in production, but when asked how many new games we could expect to see by this time next year, the speaker's estimate was "about 10".

I thought the venue was great with plenty of restaurants and accommodation within easy walking distance.

I was told that it's likely future Game Connect conferences will alternate between Brisbane and Melbourne, and I have only one thing to say about that... Melbourne had the AGDC for 6 years in a row, so it's only fair that Brisbane should have Game Connect for at least another 5 years :)

Graham Edelsten's a legend :)

[QUOTE=Red 5]I was expecting a more positive outcome from the XLA development seminar... there was nothing mentioned about the financial gains from heading down this path of development[/QUOTE]

What are you wanting to know about XBLA exactly, financially speaking?

[QUOTE]and based on the speakers answers to some questions, the likelyhood of even having a game accepted appears to be extremely slim...[/QUOTE]

This is correct.

Yeah i was at the Atomic XNA Event last night (SoHo Bar), and its more or less something that they have made, but has no real benifit, or gain for either party - even the pro edition of the XNA Studio has no solid fetures when i spoke to the guys last night.

Thats if the XBLA has any realtion to the XNA Stuff

[QUOTE=Mario]
What are you wanting to know about XBLA exactly, financially speaking?
[/QUOTE]

Hi Mario, was nice to catch up with you :)

I guess what I want to know is whether looking at XLA is a viable proposition. They say they want next-gen graphics yet there's nothing currently available that's remotely close to what I'd descibe as 'next-gen'... and if they're expecting devs to pump loads of $$$ into producing XLA specific games with next-gen graphics etc, is it financially viable?

We're told there's enormous potential but I have no idea what percentage (from sales) devs are actually receiving... maybe this is the kind of stuff you can't answer on a public forum

[QUOTE=Red 5]I guess what I want to know is whether looking at XLA is a viable proposition. They say they want next-gen graphics yet there's nothing currently available that's remotely close to what I'd descibe as 'next-gen'... and if they're expecting devs to pump loads of $$$ into producing XLA specific games with next-gen graphics etc, is it financially viable?

We're told there's enormous potential but I have no idea what percentage (from sales) devs are actually receiving... maybe this is the kind of stuff you can't answer on a public forum [/QUOTE]

Well, developers/publishers get a "large share" of the XBLA list price if you are self publishing/funding, so on a per copy basis the royalties can be pretty good especially at the US$10 price point.

However, the profitability for any given XBLA title comes down to the cost of developing the title.

Check out this article for some sample numbers http://makeitbigingames.com/blog/?p=35 It steps through how its actually not always a realistic proposition for a small developer without a decent chunk of funding and some console development experience behind them. Also hard to get your game idea considered in amongst the myriad of other titles being pitched to MS by other developers.

That being said, there are ways to spin the model to make it work and to make it work exceedingly well. Sidhe Interactive is investing heavily in this area as we believe we can be successful (and help other developers be successful), despite the challenges the model presents.

Control Freaks did an interview at GameConnect with regard to our first console download title GripShift DLX here http://control-freaks.tv/

I'm tracking a bunch of sales data so for your reference there are 16 XBLA titles which have earned over US$500k in revenue, and 18 XBLA titles which have sold over 50k units. Average demo to purchase conversion rates for XBLA are at 24%.

In summary, its a channel worth considering and running the numbers on to see if it can work for you.

Hope that helps.

Very helpful info thanks mate, much appreciated :)