Category Archives: education

Train2Game’s Clive Robert to speak at Edinburgh Interactive

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Train2Game‘s Clive Robert will be part of a panel discussion  about how to get into the games industry at Edinburgh Interactive next month.

The summary of the talk as stated on the Edinburgh Interactive website states:

“Whilst big UK teams producing huge ‘AAA’ games are most certainly in decline, the future is still incredibly bright;

Micro teams, new business models, new analytics, low barriers to entry and improving games education are all great news for graduates and whomever else that want to be a part of this great industry. Those who are driven and prepared to show a little entrepreneurial flair have many more options than just cutting, pasting, tweaking and mailing their cv’s.”

Clive Robert will be speaking alongside game industry legend Ian Livingstone and Ken Fee, MProf Programme Tutor and Lecturer at The University of Abertay Dundee. The session, Games Industry overview & How to get in to the Games Industry, takes place on Thursday 10th August.

It’s the first in a whole host of talks that could be very useful to any Train2Game students who can confidently get to the free, public event in Edinburgh.

“The Public programme will take place in the Great Scottish Hall at The Radisson Blu Hotel on the 11th & 12th August.  Seats are limited so we recommend getting to the venue early where seating will be on a first come, first served basis.” is the advice on the official website.

For more information visit the Edinburgh Interactive homepage.  More information about Clive is available on the Train2Game official website.

As usual, leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game / Game Horizon Developer Drinks

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  • Opportunity for students to meet industry professionals and discuss course details
  • Developer drinks on Tuesday 19 July gives developers access to hot new industry talent

Train2Game, provider of games industry training courses, today announces details of its participation in the 2011 Develop Conference, including its first ever ‘Guru Bar’ on stand B12 – giving those interested in the games industry a forum to interact with key figures and ask questions about training, career development and the community at large.

For developers eager to wind down after a long day marching the floors of the show, Train2Game will also be teaming up with leading games business network, GameHorizon, to host an evening of drinks at Alfresco, a Brighton seafront bar. Here, developers are invited to meet future industry talent and rising stars of the course, as well as get more information on how to get involved with placement programmes.

Key facts of the placement schemes follow below:

  • The placement schemes operate across the all Train2Game courses – Artists, Animators, Developers, Designers and QA.
  • Developer placements programmes are subsidised by Train2Game and can range for periods of 2 – 6 months.
  • Developers can choose from the top performers to suit their needs

Tony Bickley, Course Director at Train2Game sees events like Develop as the perfect place for the present and future of the games industry to collide: “While it’s easier than ever to connect online, there’s no replacement for meeting your peers face to face, both when on the hunt for new talent or considering a route into the industry. It’s the same logic which fuels our courses – substantial relationships and interaction online supported by face time wherever possible.”

Train2Game is a blended-learning organisation designed to fast track the best, most ambitious and motivated students into the games industry through comprehensive, expert-supervised courses. A big part of this is co-ordinating with the best developers in the country and providing top tier talented graduates for placements in the workplace.

Train2Game Guru Bar Details
Date: Weds 20 – Thurs 21 July
Venue: Develop Expo, Stand B12
Hilton Metropole, Brighton
Attendance is free, please RSVP at the Develop 2011 front desk

Train2Game/ Game Horizon Developer Drinks
Date: Tuesday 19th July
Time: 17:00 – 19:00
Venue: Alfresco,
The Milkmaid Pavilion,
Kings Road Arches,
Brighton,
BN1 2LN

Train2Game event in Brighton 19th July

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 Train2Game has teamed up with GameHorizon teamed up to promote the best Train2Game students to UK games companies in an effort to get more out on industry experience placements!

Train2Game and GameHorizon will hold a series of events around the UK throughout the year, and will kick off with an evening event in Brighton to coincide with the Develop Conference on Tuesday 19th July from 17.00-19.00. 

If you are in Brighton on 19th July why not come along to Alfesco’s on Brighton Beach (opposite the Hilton Hotel) to find out more about the Train2Game placement scheme and how developers can benefit from having one of the top Train2Game students in their team

The event will be a good opportunity to meet some of the students and find out more about how the placement scheme works over an ice cold beer! It’s also a good opportunity for Train2Game students to meet developers!

As reported by the Train2Game blog, Train2Game partnered with GameHorizon earlier this year.

If you would like to attend the event please email Carri Cunliffe on info@gamehorizon.net  or 07881 833 443.

Date: 19th July
Time: 17.00 -19.00
Venue: Alfresco,The Milkmaid Pavilion, Kings Road Arches, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 2LN
Cost: Free to attend but please RSVP

For more information see the GameHorizon website.

There will be a Train2Game exhibition stand in the Develop Conference Expo area from Wed 20th – Thurs 21st July where you can also find more information.

A ‘Guru Bar’ will also be available for Train2Game students to get advice from, for more information about this, head to the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game students could be among them? The Games Industry needs ‘a greater number of female graduates’ .

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There are plenty of women on Train2Game courses aspiring to work in the game industry, they may therefore be interested to hear that LucasArts creative Director Clint Hocking says the games industry needs more female employees.

In a column in Edge magazine – a useful publication for Train2Game students – Hocking criticised what he called the ‘Viking Culture’ of the game industry, and says that it needs to change.

“Game development studios and their teams are largely staffed in the same way that Viking longships were crewed. Consequently, the culture is overflowing with beer and pent-up aggression, and a very significant portion of our overall cultural output is fart jokes. I think we can do better.”

He adds that establishing a more balanced culture in the games industry would go a long way to games reaching a “truly mass market audience.”

Hocking believes the best way to do this is to encourage more women into the industry.

“This means that we need to better position the industry as a desirable workplace, one in which female artists, designers, programmers and project managers would want to be employed. It involves reaching out to universities and colleges to help them attract more female applicants to their programmes, enabling us to benefit from a greater number of female graduates.”

“Like the Viking expansion itself, this transformation probably needs to be driven from the bottom up. Like it or not, the culture onboard your ships is the culture you’re exporting. Fart jokes have their place in culture, but when fart jokes become your culture you have a problem.” he added.

There are plenty of women on Train2Game courses who definitely want to become part of the games industry, and there are certain organisations that could help them.

As reported by the Train2Game blog last month, the Women In Games Jobs event that takes place in September could be of great benefit to female Train2Game students.

And as posted by Train2Game Course Director Tony Bickley on the Train2Game forum, WIG will be holding networking event for women working, or planning to work in the games industry, during the Develop Conference later this month.

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on Hocking’s comments? Is there too big a male culture in the games industry? Do you think it needs to change?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]

Train2Game News, Smurfs’ Village ‘changing the market’ for mobile games

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It’s very likely that many Train2Game students are aware that Angry Birds is a hugely popular game. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that the Train2Game blog reported that it’s been downloaded over 200 million times.

The CEO of one developer however, believes that it isn’t Angry Birds that’s the most important mobile game, but Smurfs’ Village.

Unsurprisingly, the man singing its praises is Remi Racine, CEO of Smurfs’ Village developer Behaviour Interactive.

“Everybody is talking about Angry Birds, but the game, to me, that is changing the market is Smurfs’ Village,” he told GamesIndustry.biz “Smurfs’ Village is outstanding.”

“I’d be curious to see who is making the most money between Angry Birds and Smurfs’ Village.”

When you look at the charts it’s always among the top three of four grossing games of the last seven or eight months. It’s always there. Angry Birds is in the top ten, but Smurf is in the top three. It’s amazing.”

“About 30 or 40 percent of the top grossing games are freemium based,” Racine added. “It’s the new way.”

Smurfs’ Village is free to download, but allows players to increase progress by downloading the in-game Smurfberry currency, with real money in various sized bundles that cost between £2.99 and £59.99.

For more information about Smurf’s Village, and how free-to-play could be the way to go for Train2Game students, see the Train2Game blog.

And as reported by the Train2Game blog just last week, EA believe free-to-play titles can be as profitable as console games.

So Train2Game, do you agree that Smurfs’ Village is the most important mobile game? Is free-to-play a model a smurfy way of developing games?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]

Train2Game students will be happy, Over half of UK population plays games

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If Train2Game students ever needed something to remind them about what reach the games industry has, this is it; over 50% of people in the UK play games.

That’s according to a report from games market research firm Newzoo, which suggests estimates the 31million people in the UK, or 52% of the population, spend money on video games.

Train2Game students probably aren’t surprised to hear that its consoles that bring in the most money, with an estimated £1.6 billion to be spent on the various consoles and their games this year.

Other estimates suggest that £450 million will be spent on physical copies of PC & Mac games, £400 will go on casual games, with£350 million being spent on MMOS. Digital downloads of PC and Mac games through programmes such as Steam will see £330 million being spent on them, while Brit is will spend £300 million on mobile games.

The average person in the UK plays games on 3.9 of the above platforms, with casual gaming websites proving the most popular. Consoles are the second most popular means of playing video games. People spend an average of 43 minutes playing games everyday.

“Compared to the US, the UK shows a more traditional divide of money spent by consumers, with 56 per cent spent on console and boxed PC/Mac games, whereas in the US, this figure has dropped to 45 per cent,” Newzoo CEO and co-founder  Peter Warman said..

“No other country surveyed shows such a significant difference between time and money spent. For instance, in the UK, online and mobile gaming takes 60 per cent of time but only 35 per cent of money.

“We expect the free-to-play business models on all platforms, including consoles, to not only push the UK market back to growth but also decrease the current gap between time and money spent.”

Warman may be right when it comes to predicting that free-to-play model will expand, indeed, as reported by the Train2Game blog just last week, EA believe freemium can be as profitable as console games.

What’s certain is that with an ever increasing number of people playing games, partially thanks to the rise of casual and mobile games, it’s a good time to attempt to get into the games industry through completing a Train2Game course.

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on the figures? Does anything surprise you? Does it offer you encouragement about your choice of career path?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News, Minecraft passes 10 million registered users

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The Train2Game blog has kept a close eye on the progress of indie sensation Minecraft, which as reported last month has reached over 2.5 million sales. Minecraft has long has a cult forum among Train2Game forum users.

The game has hit yet another milestone, with over 10 million people now having registered to play the free version of Minecraft. The free version doesn’t receive the regular updates the full-game does, such as the “adventure mode” as reported by the Train2Game blog.

Currently over 2.7 million people have bought the Beta version of Minecraft, with the full release coming later this year.  Imagine if the free-to-play Minecraft users all bought the full version, Notch would become even richer!

As reported by the Train2Game blog, we’ll also see an Xbox 360 version of Minecraft towards the end of this year. Minecraft is also heading to smartphones, there will be no escaping it!

Minecraft can act as a massive inspiration to Train2Game students as to how successful an indie game can now be thanks to digital distribution and word of mouth. Last week the Train2Game reported that Mojang’s next title, Scrolls, will follow the same release pattern.

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on the continued success of Minecraft? If you’re playing the free version, why are you sticking to it?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: PC Gamer]

Train2Game News, Cloud gaming service Gaikai founder on how to combat latency

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As previously reported by the Train2Game blog, streaming video games directly to televisions or other devices is increasingly being talked about as a means of getting them directly to the consumer.

However, with internet connections, well, notoriously unreliable there are those that doubt whether steaming games can truly take off in the near future.

Indeed, Dave Perry, founder of cloud gaming service Gaikai, acknowledges that latency is “the biggest elephant in the room” but claims the company has gone to great length to combat it.

“A lot of programmers  went on record straight away saying ‘this’ll never work’, Perry told Edge “I am an engineer and I get it, I’m there with them, I understand the conceptual problem”

Of course, Train2Game game developers are working towards a career in the area of programming.

“The thing they don’t think about is I have about 60 people coming to the office every day working on this problem. We found many, many ways to do it, and we’re executing all of them.”

“The way the math works is that if I get two states closer to you, I actually get four states closer,” he said

“Two states is four states in latency, we had that epiphany pretty early on. That’s why we have so many data centres.”

Another solution is rather interesting, and also surprising.

“Imagine your game’s running at 30 fps on your console, but we run it at 60 fps [in the data centre], the amount of time that the game took while it was running,” he explains. “The engine itself took less time because we’re running it faster.

“So we take that time and use it for compression and sending, and you can suddenly see how the math starts to work in our favour. The faster we run the game, the more we overclock it, the lower the feel of the latency. This is one of many, many ways we’ve discovered to tighten up the feel of it.”

As previously reported by the Train2Game blog, there are those that truly believe cloud gaming is indeed the future of this industry, could Gaikai’s methods be a step towards this?

So Train2Game, do you think it’s the future of the industry? Does Perry address concerns about latency?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: Edge]

Train2Game News, Media Molecule revealed as Develop Conference headliners

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Develop Conference logo

Many Train2Game students already know that the Develop Conference is one of the biggest games industry events in the UK.

It’s been announced that leading UK games developer Media Molecule, the studio behind multi-award winning LittleBigPlanet, will headline this year’s Develop Conference, which takes place 19 – 21 July in Brighton.

Industry luminary Phil Harrison, co-founder and general manager of London Venture Partners, will interview Media Molecule founding directors Alex Evans, Mark Healey and Kareem Ettouney for the conference’s Opening Keynote session: Living Inside a Molecule.

“We’re delighted that Media Molecule is opening the conference this year,” commented Andy Lane, managing director of Tandem Events.

“They are the pioneers of user-generated content and remain one of the most creative studios around. It will be fascinating to hear their stories from the trenches – and who better to help them relive their tales than the man who helped them on their way: Phil Harrison.”

The Train2Game blog has previously promoted the potential importance of LittleBigPlanet 2 to Train2Game students, with a in depth rundown of why available to see here.

The user generated content tools allow LittleBigPlanet players to create their own levels, with the Train2Game blog reporting that the best community level creators even being hired by Media Molecule.

And in an interview with the Train2Game blog last month, Red Faction: Armageddon Lead Level Designer Jameson Durall recommended Train2Game students get their hands on the LittleBigPlanet creation tools purely for the experience of building their own creations.

The sixth Develop Conference will take place at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton, UK, from 19 – 21 July 2011. It attracts around 1300 game developers from over 20 different territories and has become firmly established as the leading conference in Europe for games developers.

The Train2Game blog will be sure to report on the biggest news to come out of Develop later this month.

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on Media Molecule giving the keynote? Do you see them as one of the top British studios?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game student Jonathon Robinson shares his work placement experience video diary No.2

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Train2Game Game Designer Jonathon Robinson, recently joined DR Studios as part of theTrain2Game industry experience placement programme.

In his second experience diary, Jonathon and Train2Game incubator scheme and Art & Animation student William Alexander discuss a little more about what goes on behind the scenes at DR Studios, and let us know about the fun they’ve been having during breaks.

Watch the video, produced voluntary by Jonathon, below and leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Disclaimer: views expressed in the video are those of the person expressing them, and not ofTrain2Game or DR Studios.