They played four rounds of videogame themed Would I Lie To You, with Jonathan, Margaret and Iain playing a blinder around Peter Molyneux: Absolutely noone in the room thought he’d said he wanted to make a sports game recently, but apparently it’s true. Less true may be rumours that it’s a football game about everything that goes on off the pitch, and that the ball is your friend.

During the night we also learned that Nate Wells formerly studied underwater archaology, and Mark Rein got more stick from the panel than we expected. Fortunately, he’s a very good sport.

Photos of the night are on Flickr. Everyone there was also wowed by the new Duke Nukem E3 trailer.

Nate Wells (2K Boston)
Mark Rein (Epic Games)
Jonathan Smith (TT Games)
Margaret Robertson (Channel 4, Lookspring, BBC, former editor of EDGE)
Iain Simons (GameCity)

It’ll be in Conference Room 5 at 18:30, on Wednesday the 30th. Come down for some heckling and debate.

We’d like to thank Rare, Autodesk and blugfx for making NMTP possible.

This time, we didn’t quite manage the post-mortem as planned, and decided we’d talk about GTA IV during the panel section of the evening. Then we decided we’d play it as well. It ran on the big screen all night, with a controller passed around the audience. A few photos are up on Flickr.

Iain Simons, Chairman of GameCity, and Adam Russell, University of Derby Lecturer and former AI developer for Lionhead and Eurocom, joined David Hayward of Pixel-Lab and the audience for a discussion of GTA IV and related topics. 

The main thing was game launches – Rockstar North seem to have managed a very culturally aware and intelligent one for GTA IV. Rather than the typical rented celebrities, costumes and tackiness that have come to represent videogame launches, they’ve been talking to a lot of non-specialist press and putting across exactly why their game is so artful.

As well as that, we talked about casual games, which got a bit heated. Opinion seemed a bit divided on whether or not they’re a bad thing, eventually settling on the definition of "games" being too vague to accurately convey all these different things the industry is moving towards. WiiFit generated quite a bit of apathy and antipathy, which was a surprise. We also mentioned Ste Pickford’s blogging on games that are too hard, and the general response was "Well cheat then".

As promised, here’s the link for Ellie Gobson’s WiiFit review. Hilarious.

SUB is definitely the right venue for it, with a decent atmosphere, relaxed seating and excellent tech support from the University of Derby.

Like last time, a selection of indie game videos were exhibited, here’s the list:

Fez

Punishment

Spheres of Chaos (That video really doesn’t do it justice. This article by Iain Simons does)

You Found The Grappling Hook

Noitu Love 2

I Wanna Be The Guy (If you only watch one of these videos, make it this one. It’s a remix of lots of 8 bit games, and the designer seems to have a perfect grasp on how to surprise people).

You Have To Burn The Rope

Introversion: Procedural City Generation

Trilby – The Art of Theft

Karoshi 1

Stalker: Clear Sky Tech Demo

Syoban Action

Synaesthete

Psychosomnium 

Jinsei Owatta No Daibouken!

Thanks to everyone who came, Polygons is now finished in Derby for the summer and will be returning later in the year. As ever, we’d like to thank Rare, Bluegfx, Autodesk, and CIN for sponsoring us.

Instead of the normal quiz, our panel will be speaking on and dissecting the development of a locally produced game. Join the panel on May the 8th to quiz them. Doors at 6 p.m., panel to start at 7 p.m.

Once again we’ll be in the SUB bar, at the University of Derby Kedleston Road Campus. Here’s a google map, map of the campus, directions to it, and a floorplan. If you’re driving, please park in the visitors car park. To get to the bar, just head into the atrium and past the shops.

Please note, the bar will be closed to normal student admissions – students wanting to attend should see John Sear for a wristband on Friday the 25th of April or later. Photos from the last Polygons we did there can be found here.

If you’re not driving, the Unibus 6 service runs right to the university from the train station. We’ll make sure to have some cab numbers handy on the night should you need them too.

This event is made possible by our sponsors Rare, Bluegfx, Autodesk, and CIN.

There will be more Polygons t-shirts in future. For now though, the last few of the first batch are reduced to $25 USD with shipping to anywhere.

As well as here on the website, you can keep up with Polygons on the Facebook group and the mailing list.

There are still changes coming for Polygons, but #10 felt very much like it was in the right venue.

Our panel on the night was Dan Marchant with George Bray from Mumbojumbo, and Nick Burton with Craig Albeck from Game Republic. There was some friendly rivalry between Dan and Craig, with each respectively represnting a different region of the UK.

The discussion included casual games, indie games, violence and the latest appointments at Atari: we found this quote from a few days before Phil Harrison left Sony:

Harrison: "It will be characterized by servers, communities, user created content, and all the things that the game developer doesn’t do. So that’s quite an interesting thing for our industry that all of the things that are going to be cool about our future products are stuff that we won’t actually be making. It will be the space between that will actually create the value and the emergent things that will happen are unplanned".

Raph Koster: "I’d still be at Sony if people there were talking that way".

We also screened videos of indie games we thought were interesting. For those who want to know what they were, here are youtube links to all of them:

Fez
Clean Asia
Cursor*10
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Gesundheit
Fret Nice
Gumboy Tournament
Cinnamon Beats
World of Goo
Galaxy Scraper

It will be at the SUB bar, at the University of Derby, Kedleston Road Campus. Here’s a map. Here too are directions and a floor plan of the campus. To get to the SUB Bar, enter the atrium from the car park, then head past the shops. If you’re driving, dump (but don’t burn) your car in the visitors car park.

Doors are at 18:00, with the panel to begin at 19:00. Please note, the bar will be closed to normal student admissions – games programming students will get in with Polygons wristbands only.

There is car parking at the venue (and soft drinks for drivers), and alternatively the Unibus 6 service runs right to the university from the train station. We’ll make sure to have some cab numbers handy on the night should you need them too.

Our sponsors this time are Rare, Bluegfx, Autodesk, and CIN.

We’re going to be producing more t-shirts for Polygons in future too. For now though, the last few of the first batch are reduced to $25 USD with shipping to anywhere.

Conversation this time included the mainstreaming of games, to the point of celebrities like William Shatner endorsing them, the tension that exists between game reviews, PR and advertising, and the effect of Wii scarcity on publishers and developers.

The buyout of UK studios such as TT Games and Evolution presented an interesting disucssion on price: TT Games recently sold to Time Warner for upwards of £100M, yet has none of its own IP, and Evolution Studios, owners of Motorstorm and Pursuit Force, went for a comparably small seeming £16M. The panel’s conclusion was that the context of a sale is critical. Rare went to Microsoft for a fairly large figure, because at the time they were seen as crucial in gaining Microsoft a competitive advantage over Sony. Additionally, as non-games big media companies buy into the industry, there’s a lot of dumb money moving around. Obviously, TT Games have done some great things with other people’s IP, but only time will show whether Time Warner have overspent on them.

Much more was discussed, on the panel and over pies in the bar afterward – see you at the next one.

Guests on the panel this time will include Bruce Everiss, writer of the excellent blog Bruce On Games, and Dave Wilson, recently departed from Evolution Studios and now lecturing at the University of Derby. Our team captains this time are Iain Simons from Gamecity and Rob Yescombe of Free Radical Design.

Rare , magnificent as ever, are once again sponsorsing the bar, along with bluegfx, Autodesk, and CIN.

We’ll also be in a new venue this time, Derby University’s freshly opened Markeaton Campus, who are kindly offering us space to do this in style. Here’s a google map to the venue, note that it is actually further along Markeaton Street than the postcode marker: it’s the very large building that’s still under construction in the google satellite imagery. There is also *very* limited car parking at the back of the building via Pybus Street.

We look forward to seeing you all there, meanwhile stay up to date via the mailing list and facebook.

The poster for NMTP #9 can be downloaded here. 

Polygons #8 was the biggest ever, with over 100 developers and games students there. Here are the photos.

There were a diverse bunch of companies represented, with people from Ninja Theory, Rebellion, Gusto, Monumental, SCEE, and MumboJumbo there among others. Rare were there in force too, and as a result Monumental were outnumbered, for once

As Dan was away, the teams this time were opinionated favorite Iain Simons coupled with Tom Scutt of Gusto Games, against Louise Ridgeway from Rare and Andrew Oliver of Blitz.

In connection with the Wii, Andrew Oliver reiterated the point made by Angela Fenge at the Brighton event: Casual isn’t stealing market share, it’s building a bigger market. During a general discussion on brands in games, he also went into quite some detail on the Burger King work Blitz did:

Toby Barnes: "When you’re producing a branded game, does the brand interfere with creativity?"

Andrew Oliver: "We run a profitable business and we don’t lay people off. A lot of people talk about advertising in games at conferences, and it seems stupid to me to just simulate billboards, they’re tiny, and remind me of banner ads on the net, which I find quite annoying.

We saw the Burger King Games as a good opportunity for creativity. Sure, marketing people may try to push you down certain routes, but so be it."

"People say they’re cheap, but they got loads of attention and lots of ad-industry awards."

"We got 3 games done in 6 months. There’s more creativity there than in Halo 3"

Audience: "OOOOOHHH"

We kept score this time, more or less, with the audience racing ahead of both teams in the final, quickfire round to snatch victory.

The next one is on December the 13th; we’ll tell you where and who the panel are closer to the time. You can keep up through the mailing list, and there’s also a Facebook group now too.

Polygons is back in Derby from October, with the next one happening at Friar Gate Studios on Tuesday October the 2nd.

Joining regular captain Iain Simons will be Andrew Oliver from Blitz, Louise Ridgeway, who is Supervising Animator at Rare, and Tom Scutt from Gusto Games.

This time, the free drinks will all be courtesy of Rare.

Doors open at 18:00 and the panel begins at around 18:30. Entry is free for all and sundry involved with game development, students and studios alike.

Google map to Friar Gate Studios:
link

Once again, our kind sponsors are bluegfx, Autodesk, and CIN.

If you have any questions, email them to david.hayward@pixel-lab.co.uk.