The Shindig

After the theme was announced everyone got intensely into the Jam.

Thanks to all who attended the games jam and participated in making a game around the theme “Signals”. It was great to see people happy to discuss the challenges and share their results at the end of the day, some of which have been showing up bit by bit on this thread. For those who weren’t there a brief description of the day would go: early start then theme was announced – then lots of intense quiet talking for about 7 hours with a few interruptions for a raffle and tea or to talk to the guys from PopCap Games – then the time was up and the room was full of buzzing interest before finally off to the pub or back home for a good rest. I’m sure some were surprised by the quality of the people in the room – and extra kudos to the guys who attempted to also integrate the circuit board concept from the pamphlet into their idea.

Pete McNally of Havok presents Patrick Cronin with a PS3 bundle

Speaking of surprises I think there were a few looks of shock when the raffle prizes were announced. Many thanks to Sameer Baroova of PopCap Games for sponsoring an iPod Touch, with iTunes card plus 4 PSN games (plus swag) and Dave Gargan of Havok for sponsoring a PS3 bundle including Uncharted. Thanks also to David Bishop of PopCap Games for giving a nice speech on spec!

While seemingly a small event there are plenty of people to thank for making it happen, first being Jonathan Ruttle for lots of behind the scenes admin and second being Pete McNally of Havok who handled much of the real work on the day. Then we move to the School of Computer Science and Statistics, TCD (Michael Manzke, John Dingliana, Catherine O’Connor, Tom Erwin) who were the first to get behind the event and offer support and who sponsored the wine and helped with logistics.

David Bishop of PopCap Games gives a speech.

The school is also the same place that I work and where I previously attended the IET MSc in games programming (note applications are still open until the end of June and it’s a great course for programmers). Of course we then move to GameDevelopers.ie and Dr Aphra Kerr who quickly offered support for the event at an early stage and got everyone those very nice pastries plus coffee, tea and soda. Finally and not least a big thanks to Lea O’Flannagain and the people at the Science Gallery for hosting us

I hope that taking part in the Jam may have encouraged some enthusiasm for further events of this sort and instilled a hunger for further collaboration and interaction.

John Halloran, Sameer Baroova and David Bishop from PopCap present Martin Gibney with his prize

If you are interested in running or participating in another event I would encourage you to discuss what you liked/disliked on GameDevelopers.ie. If you are just interested in keeping in touch with people then Gd.ie is also a good place for that – or you could try out the Facebook page where you can also check out some photos too. Finally I’ve created a public twitter list of people who were tweeting at the event.