Open Day and Procrastination

First audience of 2013 – hope you enjoyed it

We had our first department open day of the season today. Great fun. We were talking at lunch about my latest Windows Phone project, soon to be in Marketplace. The great thing about Windows Phone is that I can describe an idea at 12:30 and have it running in the phone at 1:00 pm (even if it is a rather silly idea). I think it is fair to say that the audience were mildly impressed by the gameplay, I’ll let you know when it is available in the Marketplace.

Platform Initiative at Grimsby

Mid-meeting

Today I went to the Grimsby Institute for the first time. We were having a Platform Initiative meeting, so Simon, Louis and I all boarded the Cube Express and headed over the Humber Bridge. It’s a great location. We had the meeting in a brand new building that even has an "atrium” in the middle. I didn’t embarrass myself by asking where the “btrium” was, but it was close….

Anyhoo, the meeting was really good, lots of constructive comments and plans for the future. Everyone was really pleased with how well Global GameJam Hull went (thanks to Tom and Simon) and they all want to have another one (and don’t worry, we will).

It is great working with these folks. It is like “pushing on an open door” in that everyone is keen to contribute and move things forward. We’ve got some great things we are going to be doing in the future. Can’t wait.

Latest Camera Test

My new camera has a “sweep panorama” mode. I thought I’d try it today, and it came up with this.

PEGI Game Ratings

If you’ve ever bought a video game from a shop then you will have already seen PEGI in action. This is the organisation that makes sure that you know what you are getting when you buy that copy of “Rabid Chainsaw Massacre III with Flame Thrower” for your six year old nephew (although with a title like that you should probably have a shrewd idea what you are getting, and it might not be a wise choice…)

PEGI implements a European wide ratings system for games which lets the buyer know what kind of content the game will have and also provides age ratings for purchasers. The big games publishers all use the PEGI ratings on their products and submit them for rating as part of the development process.

If you are making video games it is important to know how the ratings are applied. If you are making a kids game you might find it useful to have a PEGI rating, so that parents would be more inclined to buy it.

Today Ian and Gianni came over from PEGI to describe how the ratings process works and what you can do (and not do) to make sure that your content hits the audience you intended. It was a great talk with lots of “what would you do?” moments where the audience was invited to comment on the impact of game design choices. Good stuff.

Hull University on a Lumia 920

Take a look at the original sized image on Flickr. And then reflect that I took this with a phone camera.