Category SGDA | Philo Stuff

March 26, 2015 by Philo

Zoomz

The Zoomz festival for film and media is premiering this week. It takes place in Luzern and the target audience are schools. Teachers can sign up their classes for different movies and presentations. Game Design is one of them.

Gemma, Robin, Markus and me were invited to present our games Drei, Tower Offense and Elarooh. Additionally to offering a glimpse behind the development process we also talked about possible game related careers in Switzerland. We felt like missionaries, talking about the different Swiss studios, game history, education and so on. It was a great experience telling the students about the path we chose and invite them to join us
At the end of the presentation we were interviewed by the students radio 3Fach. You can listen to the interview here.
There is only one downside to the whole story: The festival organizers told us about their attempts to invite schools to our presentation and It seems that game design is still a topic that many teachers reject. We need to improve that until next year when the festival takes place again!

To end the day perfectly we were invited for dinner. We were sitting at a table with the Vloger and Youtuber manniac. He’s a really nice guy and we had a great time talking about animation and other stuff

Thanks a lot Zoomz for having us! We wish you the best of luck with your future program!

in Marketing / SGDA 0 comments

March 20, 2015 by Philo

Fantasy Basel & Pro Helvetia pitch preparation

Spring is coming. It’s so warm and sunny lately. A great way to start a day full of things to do!
After finishing all kinds of organizational stuff in the morning I headed over to the Fantasy Basel office for a meeting. René Bauer, my teacher at the ZHdK, joined us aswell. Swiss Games at the Fantasy Basel, it’s going to be awesome! Stay tuned

After the meeting, I headed over to the Tower Offense office. We worked on our pitch for the Pro Helvetia “Call for projects” presentation. Did lots of research and discovered this Steam tracking site. Have to do the same thing for Niche too…
Let’s hope this will work out!

in SGDA / Tower Offense 0 comments

March 14, 2015 by Philo

Politics all the way!

Haaa! I’m sick today, seems I caught a cold somewhere. But who caaares! Finally, FINALLY games are becoming a topic ins Swiss politics. The SGDA ist just awesome! There were tons of articles about the topic and I was so busy collecting and sharing them, that it made me forget my fever. I’m so happy right now! A true milestone has been achieved today. Let’s hope that we can build up on this

A selection of articles:
– title story on 20 Minuten online and on print: http://www.20min.ch/…/Schweiz-soll-zum-Gamer-Mekka-werden-1…

– Swiss german radio SRF: http://www.srf.ch/…/die-schweizer-politik-entdeckt-das-gamen

– Bieler Tagblatt: http://www.bielertagblatt.ch/…/schweizer-politiker-interess…

– Watson: http://www.watson.ch/…/110117426-%C2%ABWir-wollen-die-Chine…

– Aargauer Zeitung: http://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/…/politiker-wollen-schweizer-…

– article on PC Tipp: http://www.pctipp.ch/…/staatliche-hilfe-fuer-schweizer-gam…/

The evening was spent working on Niche and recovering some more.

in SGDA 0 comments

March 11, 2015 by Philo

… Playdoh!

So, as you already know we’re currently having a theory week. This includes lots of reading, listening to inputs and discussions.

During lunch, Andi and me metup with Dragica. We talked about the need for a proper list of Swiss game development studios. As a first step, we will setup a format with slots for all important information. The form will then discussed with the SGDA. If YOU have any inputs for us, let us know!

My head, almost blowing up from the amount of information, was so happy when we reached the ETH. We paper-prototyped our evolution party game with PLAYDOH! Hurray! I haven’t played with playdoh for AGES. Had so much fun building these little creatures with my team

The rest of the day was spent with preparations for the SGDA trip to the Nintendo Headquarter in San Francisco. I’m not going there myself. I only prepared a trailer video featuring some successful Swiss games.
In the afternoon I gave a quick interview for a magazine, will show you once it comes out

in ETH GameLab Collaboration / Master Theory Lesson / SGDA 0 comments

February 26, 2015 by Philo

Workshop Chocolate Tower Llama day??

After a quick trip to the printer’s shop (you’ll see the result a bit later) I joined Gian and Robin at the Capsule Games office. It was a very entertaining morning with lots of joking and fun. Gian took care of the background music, mixing dupstep with funny goat sounds and Beethoven. My time was mostly spent building up the playtester group for Tower Offense.

In the afternoon, we (the game design master & 4. semester bachelor students) had a workshop together with the SRF. In a short session we had to develop a concept for a planned format. The first round was completely open in terms of projects size and cost. In the second round, we had to take financial restrictions into account.

Heading back to Capsule Games, I picked up the finished materials from the printer’s shop on the way. And here you see the result: Chocolate paper for the SGDA. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and hope it will be a helpful goodie at the GDC.
Before heading home, Robin gave me a quick program structure crash course to help me with my refactoring problems. Thanks Robin ^^

My life is crazy…
I was peacefully reworking the Niche code, applying the structures Robin taugth me earlier. Suddenly Patrick, the guy from Indiegames.ch told me about a “llama Jam” which seemed to be happening on Twitter. The whole ruckus was started by two Llamas that went loose in Arizona. We agreed that we should host the Jam on Playful Oasis. Let’s see how many people will participate
Do YOU like Game Jams and Llamas?

in Master Theory Lesson / Playful Oasis / SGDA / Tower Offense 0 comments

February 19, 2015 by Philo

Capsule Games and SGDA

On Thursdays and Fridays all the master students have time to work on their master projects. Which means no school lessons, work where you want.
I spent most of the day at the Capsule Games office. Tower Offense (Capsule Games current project) is one of the games I’m supporting during the course of my master. My dear classmate Andi is the lead artist of the team.
The programmers are working hard to get the online multiplayer working. I’m currently trying to build up a small community around the game.
We are looking for playtesters and player feedback right now. If you’d be interested in trying the game, send us a mail.

Robin also introduced me to an awesome tool called Parse. I will definitly try it out for Niche. It can be used to track and store user data in a quick and easy way. And it even has an SDK for unity.

In the evening I went over to Bitforge for a meeting with the SGDA.
From today on, I will spend at least 4h a week to support this great initiative!
If you are a game developer from Switzerland, I highly recommend joining us.

in SGDA / Tower Offense 0 comments

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