Nordic Game Jam

Danish Minister of Culture to Open the Nordic Game Jam 2012

Published on January 17, 2012 in Announcement. 0 Comments

We are very happy to present Danish Minister of Culture Uffe Elbæk as the opening speaker at this year’s Nordic Game Jam.

Minister of Culture Uffe Elbæk has himself been a creative entrepreneur. As the former head of the creative project manager education “Kaospiloterne”, he also has a lot of experience with managing creative projects and creative people. He acknowledges that the game development is an industry with great potential for growth and should be supported as other art forms, to ensure the development of high quality games.

The Danish Goverment supports the Danish game development industry through: Spilordningen, at the Danish Film Institute, the Nordic Game Support under Nordic Council Of Ministers and through the MEDIA+ Support under the European Union. Notable games to receive support are among others, Playdead’s “Limbo” & Press Play’s “Max & The Magic Marker”.

The opening speech from the Minister will take place at 18:00 in Aud1 on Friday, the 27th of January.

Global Game Jam 2012 Trailer!

Published on January 16, 2012 in Announcement and Video. 0 Comments Tags: global game jam, trailer, video.

Global Game Jam 2012 Trailer from Adam Barenblat on Vimeo.

Check out this awesome trailer if you haven’t already and spread this out to all those potential jammers out there .

Interview: The Nordic Game Jam Experience

Published on January 14, 2012 in Interview. 0 Comments

At last year’s Nordic Game Jam a team of seven made the game Cubiclysm. We managed to interview four of them them back in February to hear about their experiences while they were still fresh in their minds. Here’s the experiences of Oliver Due Billing, Kristian Hedeholm, Sebastian Jørgensen, and Nikolaj Wendt.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you? What kind of work do you normally do?

Nikolaj: I am 35 and I work as a producer for watAgame ApS in Copenhagen. We run a social networking site with social activities, games and creative content for teenage girls. Games, both digital and non-digital, has always been a big passion of mine.

Oliver: I work as a programmer at watAgame developing everything from games to backend systems. We work on an online game called goSupermodel and the challenges there are very versatile.

Sebastian: I’m a 28 year old computer scientist. I am very competition-minded when it comes to games – I used to be part of a Quake 3 clan which became the european master in Capture the Flag, and has since that played all kinds of fast-paced competitive strategic games. I work at watAgame as a programmer too.

Kristian: Normally I study computer science at Aarhus University. Besides this, I am a member of the an association called Unge Spiludviklere (Young Game Developers), where I write and holds workshops about game development. Furthermore, I am also a member of the Danish Game Council (Dansk Spilråd) which aims to promote game media in Denmark.

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Interview: 8bitklubben & la belle indifference

Published on January 11, 2012 in Announcement and Interview. 0 Comments Tags: 8bitklubben, music.

Hi Game Jammers!

This year, we are lucky to have a small concert with la belle indifference at the pre-party on the 26th January. Here is a little interview with our 8bit-friends:

- What is 8bitklubben?
Jacob: I started 8bit klubben. It used to be a Copenhagen hackerspace, before hackerspaces were called “hackerspaces”. 8bit klubben is now mainly a webpage and maillinglist promoting 8bit events in the Copenhagen region. People interested in taking 8bit klubben and culture further are most welcome to join.

- What is la belle indifference?
Jacob: We are a Gameboy band – we make funky chip tunes. Sometimes we build our own instruments and do sound installations. At the 8 bit klubben we had workshops in making music on Gameboys, where Thorbjørn attended and then we started making music as the band la belle indifference.

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We are organizing couch surfing and hostel help for NGJ participants

Published on January 10, 2012 in Announcement. 0 Comments

For people who don’t have any accommodation plans:

If you want us to help you find a place to stay write an email at joon@igda.dk with the following details:

- your name and phone number

- approximately how long you’ll be in CPH

- if you are interested in couch surfing or hostels (solo or group)

When we know what you are looking for, we will contact hostels to see if we can get a deal, or help you to book rooms together, and find out which hostels have the best price.

We are also looking for people who can host a couchsurfer, so hopefully we can match everybody up nicely.

For people who have a spare room/couch/floorspace in the CPH area:

If you are up for hosting one or two (or more) jammers at your place, please write us an email at joon@igda.dk with the following details:

- address

- phone number and

- how many people you can host

Nordic Food Challenge Deadline postponed to Sunday at 14:00!

Published on January 9, 2012 in Announcement and Competition. 0 Comments Tags: competition, gdc, nordic food, nordic game.

We decided to extend the deadline for the Nordic Food Challenge, and now the deadline is the same as the NGJ12 hand-in deadline, Sunday at 14:00.

The challenge stays the same: make the best game about Nordic Food and win 10 000 kr for a trip to GDC in San Francisco!

Nordic Game will be cooperating with its sister program of the Nordic Council of Ministers, in creating a special event during this year’s GDC in San Francisco. The event is planned to contain a special Nordic dinner as well as the infamous Nordic Party with New Nordic Food.

As part of this, a competition is being launched for the Nordic Game Jam 2012 participants. The goal is to create a game about Nordic Food within the next three weeks before the NGJ12 starts.

The competing creations will then be reviewed by Jacob Riis of Nordic Game and Charlotta Ranert of New Nordic Food, and a winner will be selected and announced at the NGJ12 Award Ceremony on Sunday, 29th of January.

The winner will receive 10 000 kr. to use for a flight ticket to SF and a admission pass for GDC. If the game is of appropriate quality, it will be displayed during the event in San Francisco.

The deadline for submissions is 14:00 on Sunday, 29th of January.

Email all submission to competition@igda.dk. The submission email should contain the following information:

- about the creators of the game,

- description, instructions and link to the game,

- optional, but recommended is in-game video (especially if the game runs on other platforms but PC and requires game accessories).

Best of luck to you all!

Pre-Interview with Keynote Speaker Manveer Heir

Published on December 29, 2011 in Interview. 0 Comments

Manveer Heir, Senior Designer at BioWare, will be giving the keynote at Nordic Game Jam 2012. As a warm-up, we managed to get an interview with him here.

Hi Manveer! Can you briefly tell us a bit about your background and how you got into design?

Manveer Heir: I always wanted to work on the creative side of things, since I was a teenager. I decided to learn how to program from books and then went to Virginia Tech to get a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. From there, I worked as a gameplay programmer at Raven Software on Wolfenstein.

Somewhere along the way, we were having a lot of troubles getting that game done, and I found myself regularly going to the creative director and saying “Let’s try this instead” and offering solutions and ways to fix some of the problems we had in the game. Over time, those visits became frequent enough and the ideas, apparently, viable enough that I was asked if I wanted to be a full-time game designer, a role Raven didn’t have at that point. I completed the last year and a half of development on Wolfenstein as a game designer, then became the lead designer on an unannounced game before I left to join BioWare Montréal as a senior designer on Mass Effect 3.

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New Group Forming Process

Published on December 29, 2011 in Announcement. 0 Comments

Many approaches to forming groups have been tried at Nordic Game Jam and similar events over the years. This year’s jam brings a new approach inspired by experiences with previous methods. The following is a summary of our current direction.

A lot of tables will be arranged along a path, where each table will contain some source of inspiration. This inspiration might be in the form of “As long as we are together, we will never run out of problems” or “Not entirely a digital game”. It could also be a physical prop like a box of Lego, or an existing piece of media like a poem, painting or piece of music.

The participants will sit down at the tables, interpret the inspiration and come up with an game idea. The idea is that people will mingle and form groups around the inspiration tables, the concepts people come up with or maybe just a group of people who would like to work together.

NGJ 2012: Want to experiment and get inspiration?

Published on December 20, 2011 in Interview. 0 Comments

Listen to Jesper Taxbøl talk about why it is inspiring to participate in Nordic Game Jam!

NGJ 2012: Cool advice from an industry veteran!

Published on December 19, 2011 in Interview. 0 Comments

Listen to Jasmin Kassner who was a jury at Nordic Game Jam 2011 – Cool advice from a cool person!