Tag Archives: UK Games Industry

Train2Game News: UK Top 20 – 22.10.12

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In the charts this week Skylanders Giants has come in at number two, leaving FIFA 13 still sitting pretty at the top for week number four and Bethesda’s Doom 3: BFG Edition has come in at number five.

Week ending 20 October 2012

POS.  TITLE  PUBLISHER  LAST
WEEK 
1 –  FIFA 13 EA SPORTS 1
2 SKYLANDERS GIANTS SKYLANDERS –
3 DISHONORED BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 2
4 JUST DANCE 4 UBISOFT 6
5 DOOM 3: BFG EDITION BETHESDA SOFTWORKS –
6 POKEMON BLACK VERSION 2 NINTENDO 3
7 RESIDENT EVIL 6 CAPCOM 4
8 –  BORDERLANDS 2 2K GAMES 8
9 POKEMON WHITE VERSION 2 NINTENDO 5
10 XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN 2K GAMES 7
11 F1 2012 CODEMASTERS 9
12 007 LEGENDS ACTIVISION –
13 THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 10
14 –  ROCKSMITH UBISOFT 14
15 PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2013 KONAMI 12
16 NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 NINTENDO 15
17 SLEEPING DOGS SQUARE ENIX 11
18 LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPER HEROES WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE 19
19 FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 MICROSOFT 13
20 GRAN TURISMO 5 ACADEMY EDITION SONY COMPUTER ENT. 16

leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2012 UKIE Ltd

Train2Game News: SpecialEffect Case – Reece

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Reece is 9 years old and has Cerebral Palsy. He is crazy about football, but has struggled to play with his Dad at games like FIFA using a standard controller.

We met Reece at a SpecialEffectRoadShow in Coventry where he tried out a controller which enabled him to play independently with his Dad.

Reece and his father visited the GamesRoom in April during the Easter holidays to try out some different Xbox360 controller set-ups, specifically looking at ways he could play football games. Standard controllers are too small for Reece to as he finds it hard to control his fine movements. We tried out controllers with larger joysticks he could grip more easily and larger buttons he could press more accurately.

Reece is currently borrowing a larger controller through the SpecialEffect Loan Library which enables him to have greater control over the players’ movement, kicking, tackling etc. Reece and his Dad visited the GamesRoom again mid-June to try out a more customised layout and that looks like the route we’ll take. We’re going to order some equipment to lend to him. Reece and his Dad will return to our GamesRoom for us to tweak the set-up and look at accessing other games.

 
Don’t forget you can help SpecialEffectby simply watching the video below and sharing it out. We can get this video to 25,000 by December 25.

 

 

Train2Game News: Dan Gent on BBC Radio

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A teenager from Alferton who is paralysed from the shoulders down after a car accident is now fulfilling his dream to be a games designer. 17 year old Daniel Gent has been Tetraplegic for nearly 3 years but with a lot of determination and the help of voice recognition technology he is following a distance learning programme through Train2Game and is already making his own games.

BBC Radio Derby’s Emma Wotts went to meet Daniel and he told her how difficult life was after the accident.

Daniel: My thoughts in my head for the first 6 months weren’t that great. I wasn’t myself, I didn’t know what my future was. It was hard to decide after my accident. I could feel more now than I could before but at the time I didn’t really see a future. Breaking my neck in three places made me think it would be impossible. Meeting people with similar injuries and how they carried on and how they were getting on with their life made me want to push towards something and carry on with my family. Not living off the Government but supply, supporting and giving my family what they need.

 

Emma: What do you think that turning point was? What was that moment when you thought, I need to do something?

Daniel: It was more when I was first introduced to my daughter at the time when my partner was pregnant I didn’t really see a future, I couldn’t see myself as being a father. I didn’t really want her to have a Dad that was, as I am paralysed from the neck down. When I first met her it kinda changed everything, I wanted to be the dad that every dad wants to be.

 

Emma: And hopefully now you will be able to earn money or be able to provide for your family. How important is this to you?

Daniel: It’s going to change a lot of things, I get quite a lot of depression and feeling down but when these things happen such as the game jam when I went to that it changes a lot of your perspectives on life and it just made me want to carry on doing what I am doing. I just see it as a dream working with certain people such as Microsoft and meeting the people I did. It never would of happened without Train2Game.

 

Emma: How do you feel now about the future?

Daniel: Now I see it being a lot brighter and a lot more doors are opening from all wider areas, it’s going to change a lot of things. I can see my future well worth staying around for. I can just say it has given me a reason to carry on.

 

Emma: What would you say to anyone else who has been through what you have who thought they wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything in the future. Someone who’s really down about their life as you did just 3 years ago. What would you say to them?

Daniel: Whether you are disabled or if you suffer from depression you are going to go through a lot of doors and sometimes it isn’t going to be what you want but you will find that right door and everything is going to open up and you’ll see the future is a lot different. It’s not going to come to you naturally. You aren’t going to wake up in the morning and it’s going to be there. You’ve got to go out there and grab it as you can. I would say volunteering for anything you can just to get yourself motivated and take your mind off things. I found that a lot more useful, being active and going out more. If you are inside then that is where it is mostly going to depress you. Life is not going to be easy but you can make it easy.

Broadcast on BBC Radio Derby 18 October 2012 – audio available via http://audioboo.fm/train2game

www.train2game.com

 

Train2Game News: Games industry jobs – 17.10.12

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Developer

SEGA are looking for a mobile games engineer for their studio in the Midlands.

Studio Overview:
Hardlight is SEGA’s third UK based studio and is focused exclusively on creating high quality, innovative game experiences for mobile and handheld platforms.

The Studio comprises small, agile teams working on new IP & well-known SEGA IP. Project durations are 5-10 months, with their first projects due for late 2012.

The team follows an ethos of staying compact, agile and focused – combining talent from a variety of game genres and backgrounds, and welcomes applications from candidates of all levels of experience.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Work with other members of the team on creating high quality mobile titles
  • Implement game features in partnership with artists and designers
  • Learn and help develop various areas of features going into mobile handheld titles
  • Constantly develop your skillset and experience in the mobile space

Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

  • Development experience in C/C++
  • Experience developing titles for mobile devices (either independently or as part of a larger studio)
  • Comfortable with game design and implementation
  • Examples of own demos, with source code, very beneficial dependent on past professional experience

Pluses:

  • Passion for computer games highly advantageous
  • Development experience with C# or HTML5
  • Knowledge of OpenGL ES and other graphical development libraries

You can find out more HERE.

Art

Fullfat Games are looking for a UI Artist for their studio in Coventry.

Position Overview:
• This position involves designing and creating 2D Artwork and Graphics for the UI Interface as well as other 2D items on various mobile and console platforms, which include Wii, DS and iphone.

Key Responsibilities:
• Working with the entire Development team to design and implement focussed, practical solutions within a realistic time frame.
• Design Icons and logos within the style constraints of the product.
• Work efficiently and at a speed representative of the platform.
• To be responsible for all 2D art aspects of any given project
• Be able to create all levels of Art from palette controlled pixel sprites up to hi Res Marketing Assets.

Skills and Experience:
• Excellent 2D background, including ideally pixel work.
• Use of Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Willing to work with Engineers to work within the technical limitations of the platform.
• Self Organised and willing to participate in team meetings.
• The ability to draught out a variety of concepts styles at speed to fit within the design constraints before game assets are created.

You can find out more HERE.

 

QA

Fullfat games are looking for a Mobile Test Engineer for their studio in Coventry. They unfortunately had no information on the position on the website but you can email them and find out more from HERE.

Train2Game News: Matty Wyett-Simmonds – Week 45

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Week 45! Weeks are getting faster and faster I think. I’ve had a pretty awesome weekend as it was my birthday. I went out in Southampton for the night and hung out with some friends and my girlfriend flew down from Leeds as well which was cool! One of my birthday presents is a trip to Sea Life centre! Since I was only little I’ve always liked sharks, they’re awesome! Also it’s shark week there so bonus!

PlanetSide2 has been awesome too, Craig got a beta key as well now so we’ve been attempting to play it at the same time but Craig has a crappy computer at home and the servers are down every day during lunch time at work so I’ve still been playing on my own. If anyone actually has the beta come join in!

Not too much to say about work yet, sorry! It’s been the same as always, tight deadlines and what not. I had two late nights (10pm ish) and got my work done pretty quickly so that I could go home early on Friday to get home to Southampton. The release date for the current project is set and it’s very soon so you’ll all get your hands on it soon if you have a smart device of some sort. It’s a very tight deadline and we are probably going to be working nonstop to get everything done on time!

We have a new person coming to work for us soon that used to be here before, I think he’s jumping right in to this project asap which will be good! This project will be a bit bigger than My Sea Park hopefully, as it will be for a wider audience and a wider range of devices.

So yea, more late nights, more takeaway food and less sleep for me over the next month or so I think.

Til 46!

MattyWS

Train2Game News: Ezekiel Morris student diary – Week 18

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So what have I been doing this week? Well I’ve finished animating characters and now I’m going back to doing vector art again. The project manager wanted me and Amanda to change our roles, my task for this week was animating characters and Amanda’s task was to create character costumes in vector art, so we mixed up, she does one animation and I do one character costume.

Matty and I were helping Amanda to use the tools in Maya so hopefully she will pick it up, I will be there to guide her if she needs any help.

I was knackered working late on Wednesday and also Thursday but the end result is that all the animation for this week is completed and now I’m starting to create one costume for the character.

I know there’s a tight deadline coming soon but I feel confident that all my sprints will be done before the deadline hits. I’m glad that I’m getting my work done and I’m learning a lot since working at DR Studios.

Train2Game News: Craig Moore student diary – week 47

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We now have a date for when this next title is due to be available, and we have a lot of work that needs doing. I’m not going to let it slip yet, but it’s still coming on in leaps and bounds edging closer and closer to a releasable game.

Due to the nature of the title release will be a minor milestone. We are looking to further support it after release and add content, modifications and updates as we go.

I keep saying it but work is still incredibly busy, I would never lie to anyone and say this job is easy because it simply isn’t. There is no slacking, no twiddling of thumbs, if work isn’t done it is your fault and everyone is responsible for their own work and workload. It’s great as long as everyone knows this, thankfully everyone here does and it seems to flow pretty well.

Next week we have more work to do, polishing, fixing, tweaking, updating, and balancing. All the fun of the fair!

Craig

Train2Game News: Amanda Blatch Student Diary – Week 4

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This week has been a productive week once more, creating five characters and a single animated sequence for one character in it’s home environment as given to me by our project lead as he wanted to see me and another colleague try something different to see how easily we adapted to different roles.

It was a tough start on the animation of the characters as I had never animated in Maya before and barely scratched the surface with animating in 3Ds Max. I  was fortunate however that I have had a lot of experience in animating traditionally and in film-software packages so it was very easy to pick up once I learnt the processes.

With the combined efforts of Eze, Matty and good old online tutorials I managed to grasp the basics of it overnight and was about to complete my animation by the end of the next day. Overall not a bad turnaround methinks! Also… two more awesome characters coming into the game that I am pretty happy with and hopefully you guys will be too! Anyways.. back to work with me.

Train2Game News: Oliver Smith in the paper

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Oliver Smith, a Train2Game student on the QA course, has been featured in his local paper, the Exeter Express & Echo.
Oliver talks about his plans to help the elderly and also has an exciting job prospect on the horizon.

You can read the article below:

Exeter Train2Game Oliver

Good luck to Oliver in everything he does.

Train2Game News: UK Top 20 – 15.10.12

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On Monday mornings I will now be posting the top 20 UK games chart from UKIE to keep you all updated.

 
Dishonored has come in as the highest new IP this year at number 2 but nothing can knock FIFA off the top spot for the third week running. It is interesting to see that Skyrim and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are still in the top 20.

Week ending 13 October 2012

POS.  TITLE  PUBLISHER  LAST
WEEK 
1 –  FIFA 13 EA SPORTS 1
2   DISHONORED BETHESDA SOFTWORKS –
3   POKEMON BLACK VERSION 2 NINTENDO –
4 RESIDENT EVIL 6 CAPCOM 2
5   POKEMON WHITE VERSION 2 NINTENDO –
6 JUST DANCE 4 UBISOFT 4
7   XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN 2K GAMES –
8 BORDERLANDS 2 2K GAMES 3
9 F1 2012 CODEMASTERS 5
10 THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 8
11 SLEEPING DOGS SQUARE ENIX 10
12 PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2013 KONAMI 9
13 FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 MICROSOFT 11
14 ROCKSMITH UBISOFT 7
15 NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 NINTENDO 12
16 GRAN TURISMO 5 ACADEMY EDITION SONY COMPUTER ENT. 13
17   CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3 ACTIVISION –
18 NBA 2K13 2K SPORTS 6
19 LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPER HEROES WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE 14
20 DEAD ISLAND GOTY EDITION DEEP SILVER 16