“The Seven Day Game Challenge”, organised by Sean Oxspring, has officially started today at 04:30PM. It is a week-long Game Developing Challenge for any students and staff in the Lincoln School Of Computer Science to take part in! Everyone is welcome, regardless of background, knowledge, experience or ability. As long as they are willing to develop a video-game, either on their own, or in small teams. Over the course of seven days, “The Seven Day Game Challenge” aims to provide a strong, motivating and friendly atmosphere in which developing, presenting and discussing video-games development is fun.

We announced that two of the themes from a voting poll will be used for the challenge. The themes that emerged from the polls are:

Space

Vegetation

We are hoping that you’ll be able to come up with some awesome and innovative ideas based on the themes we’re giving you. If you are finding it hard to come up with an idea – relax. You have a whole week and plenty of time to plan your game before you implement it! Please recall that both themes must be used in your game to be eligible to enter the competition.

Over 15 teams have registered their interests for the Game Challenge! Well done guys, we are really looking onwards to see your games! Feel free to chat about your game development towards the game challenge on facebook, blogs and twitter! We even got our own hashtag: #7DGC .

Terms and agreement of the Game Challenge can be found here. Feel free to contact Sean Oxspring for any enquiries! Note: We will contact Team Leaders over the course of next week.

Sign up sheets are now available! Feel free to fill it out with your team details and bring the form to registration event on the 2nd November at 4 PM, Complab B!

Note: If you do not have a team, no worries, we will help you to get into a team at the introduction event!

Voting for the Seven Day Game Challenge is now closed

We are delighted to announce that Sean Oxspring is organising an event called “The Seven Day Game Challenge”. It is a week-long Game Jam for any students and staff in the Lincoln School Of Computer Science to take part in! Everyone is welcome, regardless of background, knowledge, experience or ability. As long as they are willing to develop a video-game, either on their own, or in small teams. Over the course of seven days, “The Seven Day Game Challenge” aims to provide a strong, motivating and friendly atmosphere in which developing, presenting and discussing video-games development is fun.

What is a Game Jam?
Wikipedia’s definition: “A game jam is a gathering of developers, artists, and other creatives over a short time during which a collective effort is made to make one or more games around a given team.” Game jams are excellent, popular ways of getting game ideas down and learning to work quickly and dynamically in a group on a video-games. The games made during jams also contribute to a really nice looking portfolio!

When is it?
This game jam will be spread over seven days. It will be starting on Friday, 2nd of November and end on Friday, 9th November. Teams are welcome to work either in the LSoCS labs or from home. An Introduction to this event will be run at the University of Lincoln, MHT Building, 3rd Floor, Computer Lab B on the 2nd November at 4 PM. This introductory event will explain in detail the terms and conditions of the Game Jam and will allow the registration of teams. Sign up sheets are available here. Feel free to fill it out and to bring it to the registration event. If you do not have a team, no worries, we will help you to find team members at the introduction event. The terms and conditions of the Game Challenge are available here. Additionally, the Game Jam themes will be announced at the event. 

Who should I work with?
Teams can range in size from 1 to 5 people. You can work alone, but it might not be as fun.

What do I get from this?
Every submitted game will be judged by representatives from academia and student body. Judging criteria will be announced at the event. The members of the winning team will each receive a Raspberry Pi! Additionally, your game will look most impressive as a portfolio piece.

Is there anything else I need to do?
The game jam needs a theme! Budding participants can vote for the theme on a poll, which is now closed. Two of the themes from this poll will be used for the jam, so every vote counts! Note: Votes can be done once a day and for up to five themes can be chosen per voting session.

I have some more questions…
Feel free to email or contact Sean Oxspring! Furthermore, you may ask questions in the comment section of this post!

It should be an awesome event – we hope to see you on 2nd November at 4 PM, Complab B!

<a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/6605682/”>7 Week Challenge Poll</a>

We would like to invite you to the screening of “Indie Game: The Movie” – an inspiring documentary about independent game developers, their lives, problems, unique ways of looking at reality and obviously the indie game titles they released onto the XBLA platform. It includes Team Meat (Super Meat Boy), Polytron (Fez), and Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness).

The screening is going to take place on 10th of October, 15:00, Jackson Lecture Theatre, Main Building. The movie is 103 minutes long.

Any student interested in Indie Game Development is welcome to attend!

To celebrate the start of the new study year, the computer labs within the Lincoln School of Computer Science has received some significant hardware upgrades. Our technician, Tom Feltwell, has worked diligently and endlessly throughout the summer and has concocted a selection of most powerful computer hardware which were recently delivered and installed within our premises. Computing students will now be able to fully enjoy the state-of-the-art hardware for studying and development purposes: Intel i5 3570K Processors, Asus P8Z77-M Pro, 16Gb DDR3 RAM, NVidia Geforce GT 640.

Furthermore, the current monitors will be soon replaced with 24″ widescreen monitors. Hooray!

It is with great pleasure to announce that Professor Richard Bartle, best known for being one of the pioneers of the massively online game industry, is coming to the University of Lincoln to give a talk about his recent video-games related work. His talk is entitled “How to Cheat at MMOs without Cheating“. Richard Bartle summarises the talk as following:

“Player Type theory has a long history of use in MMO design, and is accepted as a standard model of player behaviour. In this talk, I explain how different player types view what a virtual world “is”, and how this affects their opinion of whether an activity is or is not cheating”.

The talk will be given on Wednesday, 14th March 2012 between 15:00 – 16:00  in the Cargill Lecture Theatre, which is situated in the Main Building of the campus. No registration is required, just pop to the lecture theatre on time. We hope to see you all there!

Update! For those of you who have missed the talk, Bartle uploaded his lecture slides on here. In his blog, Richard describes his talk as follows:

“For the rest of you, the basic premise is that different types of player have different ideas as to what an MMO is “about”, and play to an unwritten set of rules consistent with those ideas. Anything that breaks those rules, they regard as cheating (or at least with great disapproval). Players of different types don’t have any conception of these unwritten rules, though, and therefore have no concerns about breaking them.”