Scotland has a richer gaming history than most people will actually believe. While a lot of people know that currently, the console versions of Minecraft are being made in Scotland by 4J studios, who are based in Dundee and East Linton, there have been many games that have been created in Scotland. The Grand Theft Auto series was originally created in Dundee as well, and now is made in Edinburgh, the current home of Rockstar North.
Because of this, an annual event that showcases games that are created in Scotland, Game in Scotland, has been successful for a good many years. While this is usually for business and getting people in industry talking to each other, it’s a great way for students and people in the in the industry to chat, find work and even just find out how games are being made. This year marked a special occasion as it was the first time the event was held at the University of Abertay Dundee, which is one of the top Universities in the UK for studying video games.
It also had panels from various people, whether they be part of game development or game journalism. It seems that the event, which was held on Saturday the 1st of March, was a great success with the changes that took place, and feedback will be taken to improve it further for next year. Xbox Live Gamerhub had our own little booth last year, but unfortunately this year, we’ve been far too busy with the relaunch that we couldn’t attend. That didn’t mean that I couldn’t take time out of my studies to go down, attend some workshops and generally see what’s going on.
It was a fantastic day, and when I managed to get around later in the day, just before some of the workshops, it was still really busy with a lot of people looking at the developer’s booths and attending the talks that they had booked throughout the day. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I saw quite a few business cards being swapped here and there, which is always encouraging. Some of the developers that showed up to talk to people included 4J Studios, One Thumb Mobile, Blazing Griffin, Outplay, and even some student developers like Pixel Blimp and former students such as YoYo Games.
All of this surrounded Abertay’s Center for Excellence in Games, which has had literally millions of pounds invested to provide some of the best technology to it’s students, with booths appearing across two floors, with people stopping and chatting in the spaces between, likely discussing about who to talk to next, who they’re fans of and who they’d love to work for in the future. I personally spent a lot of time discussing Minecraft with the guys at the 4J booth, who were extremely happy to talk about how proud the art team are of the Skin and Texture packs they’ve created for the game, because of the freedom they have to create what they want. They also talked about the stress and fear when they’re given licences to work with, as the Skyrim and Mass Effect Mash Up Packs included assets from the games themselves, and the intimidation of the Marvel License as they created the Marvel Skin Pack. It was a great insight to the industry just talking to these guys, and it was fantastic seeing how excited they were to hear me and my better half have been using some of their favorite in-house created skins.
The two workshops I attended, Games Media and Writing in Games, were fantastic to get an insight into the thoughts of people working in the industry at the moment. It was good to hear from people like Dave Cook and Cara Ellison, people I’ve worked with before, to see how their journey has gone so far, and where it’s going in the future. It was also good to listen to Phil Harris and Ian Lowson talking about writing for video games, talking about how if you want to write, just write, and not to confine yourself to one medium. They also managed to give me some good advice for what I’m personally working on for my final year of studies. Both of these panels had a lot of audience interaction, and a lot of interesting questions were asked and answered.
The final panel, discussing the future, was one of the most interesting discussions of the day, and it brought up a lot of fantastic points from a variety of different people who were on the panel. It was great to see the opinions of different people on issues such as Nintendo’s current financial issues, a certain companies silly lawsuits and other topics that have been arising lately.
It was a fantastic event, and the only problem that seemed to occur was the workshops running over time, purely because there was so much that they wanted to talk about, and so many questions that went unanswered. This has already been addressed on the day by Brian Baglow of the Scottish Games Network stating that next year, it’ll be much longer sessions. It was a great success and it’s great to see so many Scottish Developers and Journalists showing up to help promote gaming in Scotland, helping people out with advice and generally making contacts with the people who could be major players in the industry in the years to come.
To find out more, hit up the Scottish Games Network Website to find out all the stuff going on in Scotland. I look forward to attending next year.
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