Bringing together Savvy’s team of technologists programmers and coders with directors, producers and development producers – required a huge amount of terminology unravelling and working practice changes, so when we did the Agile training it was interesting that half the team considered themselves to be working this way anyway and the other half found a strategic look at project working practice a real gem…. Great. Still feel like the Kola Cube in a packet of Smarties, but interesting none the less

So, those GITG decision makers seemed to think that we might just be an interesting fit for the project. From the off, we have been labelled “The Wild Card” – not because of our crazy reputation for partying, but because the rest of the party belong to a different universe!!!
1st day of the 3 day training event at FACT in Liverpool and I walk straight into a conversation about RENDER FARMING !!!!! What the???? – So the twilight zone is alive and well in Liverpool and the language is alien. After 3 days of terminology like gaming mechanics and metagaming and a whole pile of acronym’s like npc’s and mmorpg, I am starting to believe that the gap is one of differing terminology rather than a whole new industry and there’s a little bit of me starts to believe that the holy grail of finding the missing link between passive broadcast entertainment and interactive gaming could be there for the taking if only we can unravel the Enigma code…. An Enigmatic and compelling challenge… I start to thank Enda and David and the team for believing that we might fit, somewhere in the picture. After all what is development about if not pushing the boundaries.

So it’s late summer 2009 and there’s an advert on the NWVM site which Savvy decide to pitch to develop a Sony Playstation project… And yet we are a company that developed from broadcast narrative through creation of a digital toolkit towards cross platform narratives – online on mobile, radio, TV. So why does gaming appeal? Well, Savvy’s main aim is to put its audiences at the heart of the drama – with interactive experiences that engage and entertain… and, well, the gaming industry has been getting this right for rather a long time. They also have an audience who expect and are willing to pay for content and who are creating key online communities, and as 6% of the bbc iplayer traffic comes through the PS3, the boundaries are definitely blurring and we like blurry. What’s not to like? I think there’s a lot to compliment our current work and interactive dramas and narrative games are closer than the terminology would seem to suggest. So we applied…..

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!

Northwest Vision and Media will be holding a session on narrative in videogames on the 28th of October in Manchester. Here are the details:

As we move into true episodic games and digital distribution this session will explore the importance of narrative in videogames. Matt Costello, whose best-selling and award-winning work across all media has meshed game play, technology and story, will lead an engaging and thought provoking discussion around how and why narrative can be used to sell games in a digital age. For more information about the event please click here: http://www.visionandmedia.co.uk/page/the-importance-of-narrative-in-games

Following this Visionary Session Northwest Vision and Media are also going to be hosting a workshop on structuring scriptwriting for videogames, run by scriptwriting agency International Hobo. For more information about this course, which will take place on 12th November, please contact Amalie Roberts (amalier [at] visionandmedia [dot] co [dot] uk).

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!

Enda Carey opened the night, speaking on how the programme will run:

Here are Clemens slides, detailing a lot more about what Sony are looking for:

We launched Get In The Game 2 at FACT in Liverpool on Tuesday night, with about 40 people from Northwest companies in attendance. A few photos are up on Flickr.

Enda Carey from Northwest Vision and Media, and Clemens Wangerin from SCEE took people through the project, talking about the process for GITG and what Sony are really looking for to go on PSN. Clemens also showed videos of some games currently in development for PSN, which we’ll be posting along with the slides soon.

The presentations all ran relatively smoothly from a PS3; we’re actually quite impressed that one can be used for showing slides and video, as it gives the proceedings quite an informal and friendly feel. Kind of like showing your friends cool stuff online, instead of being the speaker with powerpoint.

If you want to apply for GITG, you can do so directly via Eventbrite here, or if you’re more comfortable with a word document, you can download this one and either email it to amalier [at] visionandmedia [dot] co [dot] uk, or print and post to Amalie Roberts, Northwest Vision and Media,BBC Building, Room LG45, Oxford Road, Manchester M60 1SJ.

The deadline for applications is 14:00 on Friday, September 25th.

Get in the Game gave us a unique opportunity to step away from contract work for a while and focus on our game proposal. Over the months we have really defined the project from a design and production point of view. We used the time to go away and concept an area of our game and produce artwork for this segment. After our final production meeting it was suggested we focus our efforts on our pitch and the accompanying PowerPoint for the final weeks of ‘pre-production’ and we were keen to act on this advice. We got some great one to one quality time with Matt Southern to help us sort the PowerPoint. 100s of slides and two ripomatics later we were ready to go.

Stepping in at the 11th hour, as I rested in my sick bed, Steve – Citrus Suite’s own Super Mario (a bit inappropriate considering the pitch was to Sony) – did the presentation and as the icing on the cake we showed a simple demo illustrating gameplay on the target hardware. Seeing that Sony are still talking to us I guess Steve stuck to the script!

It’s been great to be part of this process and I’m sure Get in the Game will go from strength to strength. Thanks for inviting us along.

Chris Morland

Well the final presentation to SCEE and the GITG panel was given on Wednesday 22th and luckily, due to an afternoon appointment, Catalyst were able to go first. I had rehearsed the presentation several times and had decided to do the whole presentation on the PS3. This enabled me to show the slides, images and the ripomatic movie all on a HUGE HD screen and controlled using the PS3 pad. My script was prepared and printed and ready to go. I know the argument of should you read from a script to present or memorise your presentation will always rage but through numerous presentations I feel more comfortable with my script printed in front of me. I’ve seen too many speakers lose it during presentations and stage fright and winging it are no way of providing confidence. The mocked up PS3 screen shots worked well and the ‘photo gameplay talkthrough’ did exactly what it needed to do. The feedback from the panel was positive and also provided some new areas of consideration. Overall I was pleased with the final presentation and hoped the panel thought it was polished and professional. Besides the nerves that are always there for these type of presentations, I really enjoyed it and felt happy that I had conveyed what we want to do with our game. The project as a whole has been enlightening and it has been great to see things from the other side of the fence and being able to explain something simply is actually harder than you think. It doesn’t matter how many time you do something, you can always learn more and improve.

I appreciate that I haven’t mentioned the name, type or style of game I’ve been working on and this might frustrate some readers, as my comments without being put into context may appear very vague and pointless. However IP protection is something I feel strongly about and without signed publishing agreements, it’s really the only thing a developer has.

Now it’s just a case of watching my inbox to see what the final decision on moving forward will be…..

Cheers,

Ivan