Five teams have now been selected to receive £10K in development money from Northwest Vision and Media and Screen Yorkshire. These companies will spend the next few months pulling out all of the stops to get their game concept to the next level, ready to pitch again to Sony in March 2010…

Of 12 companies that got through to the intial pitching stage, 4 North West companies and one company from Leeds were selected. These are (in no particular order) Milky Tea (Liverpool); Savvy Productions (Manchester); Connect2Media (Manchester) Pixinworks (Liverpool) and Grantmidwinter (Leeds).

Sony, Northwest Vision and Media, Pixel-Lab and Screen Yorkshire were all blown away by the quality of these ideas, and can’t wait to see them grow.

All companies involved will be encouraged to blog on the site, so watch this space!

This is the second Get In The Game scheme I’ve been involved in…but my first Get In The Game launch event. FACT, Liverpool was a great venue, I thought, and what with the enormous cinema-sized screen and the presentations being run off a PS3 it allowed time for some super-sized game playing silliness before the event kicked off…

After Enda’s introduction we heard from Clemens Wangerin, SCEE, who gave an entertaining and informed presentation on what Sony are looking for out of this project, especially interesting were the hints dropped about where Sony are aiming to take the PS3 through new platforms and its new PSP Mini store…

I hope that the event got people’s creative juices flowing. We’ve already seen the applications start to come in. Sony have already seen and been blown away by the quality of the ideas generated last time around, so here’s hoping we can do that again. Remember to adapt your idea to what Sony are looking for, and you could be making the game for real! The deadline for submitting your ideas is 2pm Friday 25th September… get applying!

The second production review took place on 18th March 2009. This was intended as the dress rehearsal before the final ‘X-Factor’ moment of pitching to the Sony panel. It was excellent to see how far each individual company had progressed with their games. Questions posed at the previous review had been answered with confidence, and some impressive developments had been made across the board. The companies had obviously worked hard, and had taken into account comments made at the previous review- they were much more focussed about their individual games, and had more concrete ideas about what they were pitching. I got the impression that everyone was very proud of their games, they have become such personal triumphs for each of the teams. A couple of the teams had working models and rip-o-matics which were exciting and whet the appetite. One of the teams has started working with a writer, which was really interesting to see.
Although the games have been substantially developed, and milestones have been met, it is still important for each team to take on board the comments made about their pitching skills. This was the focus of the review for a very good reason. The game has to be strong, but so does the pitch, and it is important to spend time preparing, learning the pitch, building confidence in delivery. Get in the Game came about primarily to encourage Sony to enter into a dialogue with the games creators in the North West. Now is their chance, they’ve got to get these presentations right.

I am new to the Get in the Game project, in fact I’m new to Northwest Vision and Media, starting last month as a Project Co-ordinator. I missed the initial workshops and arrived on the scene just after 5 different companies had been granted 10K to develop a game to pitch to Sony.

Up until this week I’d been involved from an administrative angle, chasing project plans, getting contracts signed, etc. Although I’d read the project briefs it was great to be able to attend the first product development meeting, which was a real eye opener in terms of just how exciting an opportunity this was for the companies in question, who were all really embracing the challenge and the chance to present their ideas to Sony. I really like the way the project has been set up so that there is a definite framework, the ideas are being sold to Sony and Sony are already listening. From my experience even to get the attention of such a major publisher is pretty exciting.

Content wise it’s been especially interesting for me, as my background is largely in film and music (in that I’ve studied film and played around with several bands). I have had some experience of the processes involved in getting UK Film Council or Art Council funding, or trying (in vain!) to get a record deal or a publishing deal with a band. But the world of games development was rather foreign to me.

Hearing the creative feedback from Matt from Sony was really the most interesting part for me, seeing games as culturally important, referencing music, film, TV, pop culture. Identifying audiences. Marketing. These guys are working with designers, artists, programmers, all of whom are really passionate about the finished product. Some are coming from an art angle, others from a programming angle. The design element is really interesting, I would have thought that a ‘story’ or a concept would come first in games design, but it’s so much about technology too, that you could start with this and work backwards into a storyboard.

There is so much potential for each of these 5 projects, but working within a 3 month framework is obviously putting a time limit on the creative thought processes and brainstorming. It is important that each project start honing and refining their ideas. Yes your game could do all these things, but deciding on one final ‘angle’ for the pitch is now the key focus for each of them. Watch this space!