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March 17, 2015 by Philo

Scrotum gegen Votum > Self Analysis

Today was “self-analysis” day. We had to fill out a lot of questionaires and received the evaluation for them. Seems I’m an enterpreneurial/artistic person, who would have taught that?? Sadly, another day without any big learnings. Just let me work on my master thesis!

After school, part of my class headed over to the “Kein Kino” event. Günther Freisinger from monochrom was the guest speaker today. Haha, we had a blast. Especially the groups art projects “Scrotum gegen Votum” (think twice before you click it), “Hellraumprojektor cumshot” and the one that made you eat your own blood as blood sausage were disgusting, but hilarious xD
I had to leave early unfortunately, so I didn’t watch the movie they showed after Günthers talk.

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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.

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March 13, 2015 by Philo

Grafik15

Theory lesson again in the morning…
I’d REALLY prefer to just work on my project. I mean input is good and all, but it’s too much. The good side: I got the idea to shape my master thesis into an interactive pdf instead of a printed booklet today. The longer I think about it, the more I get to the conclusion that my product needs to be completely digital.

After lunch we headed over the Maag Halle to setup our booths for the Grafik15. Niche, Tower Offense, Koboldgames and many many other Swiss games are exhibiting their games there (13. – 15.3). LOTS of visitors attended the Vernissage

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March 13, 2015 by Philo

“NotInYourMouth” Conference :X

Haha, what a crazy day. We had to organize a “fake conference” in just 4 hours. Everything from talks to workshops to branding and social media documentation. I volunteered to take on the role as conference chair to practice my organisation skills for the next gameZfestival
The whole event went smoothly. The highlight: I had a fight with my teacher. A PHYSICAL fight! In one of the workshops we had to play games against each other. And one the games was: Steal the opposite persons shoe! Well, she got mine, congrats Mela
You can find the conference documentation here.

In the evening Isa and me headed over to the ETH to work on our game again. Well we ended up wasting all our time setting up Source Tree and it’s STILL not running on my Mac. Oh well…

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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

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March 9, 2015 by Philo

Master model & Shelter 2 review

This week we have a special master course, which means school lessons every day…
In this course we pretend to finish our master thesis within just one week. We even have to present a product in the end, the real deal. Today we had to build a 3D model of our project idea. Here is a snippet of mine, still very undefined:

During lunch break, I published my FIRST REVIEW EVER on our site about nature and biology games, Playful Oasis. Thanks Andi and Isa for spell checking! Go reeead it

In the evening a friend of mine went live with his game kickstarter.
Really? Again? I have too many friends running kickstarters
The game is called Dino System. I had the pleasure to try it a few weeks ago. This game is so full of love, perfectly worked out systems and potential. Daniele, the project lead, has spent countless nights to bring the project this far. The Kickstarter goal is only 5000$, seriously this has to work out!
Support <3?

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March 7, 2015 by Philo

Tower Offense Tournament!

The printers shop seems to become my second home. Went there in the morning to fetch some Tower Offense material.

After a quick lunch I headed over to the Inkubator to discuss my goals and milestones for the coming semester. Here they are:

01.05: Research Swiss Game Industry – list of studios, individuals, activists, possible investores, sales numbers…
01.06: Research German & Austrian games industry – possible learnings
01.08: Analyse successful games and develop marketing startegies for Niche, Tower Offense and Koboldgames

Back the the ZHdK we had a meeting and long discussion about the future of the gameZfestival and possible cooperations. The meeting was so long I actually was late for our exhibition at the Spielhalle Oslo in Basel. Luckily, Robin went ahead and prepared everything. Thanks Robin
Our friends from Team Schlicht were also presenting their game, Schlicht.

Actually, we weren’t just exhibiting, we also hosted a Tower Offense Tournament! The first and second place received a card, signed by our team and a gift coupon for a game shop. Watching the tournament was great fun. Even completely new players can have very exiting matches, as long as they’re leveled evenly. We definetly have to do this again soon!

The Spielhalle Oslo will be open from March – May, everyday from 14:00 – 19:00.
Every Friday they host an event. Here are the next ones:

Fr. 14. March: Webilea@Spielhalle Oslo
Game Design Workshop. Sign up on webilea.ch

Fr. 20. March: Winters letzte Tage, interactive concert with Dragica Kahlina (Eigenharp / Livecoding)

Fr. 27. March: Bring and play your own video games / consoles

And! You can also host your own events there! So let them know if you have any ideas

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March 5, 2015 by Philo

SRF cooperation & First Inkubator lessons

Today, the second part of our SRF cooperation took place. We all had to present our concepts that we started developing the week before. Our team: René Krebs, David Krummenacher and me. Our concept made it to the next round! Let’s see what happens now
Thanks Noël Wierema for creating our mockup!

In the afternoon I flited over to the Inkubator to join my very first lesson. I was expecting a chilled afternoon, quietly listening to an input about Businessmodels. I was wrong. All the Incubatees had to present their projects and answer the following questions:
– What am I doing?
– Who is my customer and what is my USP?
– How do I achieve my goal?
– How do I earn money?
– Who is my team?
– What’s the current state of the project?
“Ok people, 10 minutes to prepare your presentation, then we’ll start”. Just sitting there, completly unprepared, trying not to freak out, I decided to just talk and explain my project a bit. The resonance was pretty good (to my relief) and we kept discussing the Swiss (games) industry for quite a while.
Here you see two of the other project pitches of Konzertschneiderei and WormUp. I’m a big fan of OpinionGames, a game series for political opinion making.

I was also running around, organizing stuff for the Tower Offense tournament tomorrow at the Spielhalle Oslo in Basel. You’re all very welcome to join and participate in the tournament! You’ll see more of that tomorrow

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March 5, 2015 by Philo

My first 3D print

After todays workshop introduction our class is now officially allowed to use the Low-Tec machines. This includes the Laser Cutter and the awesome 3D printers!

My first 3D print ever! Tools used: Tinkercad, Cura

Also, I’m very pleased to announce that our game Niche was chosen to be exhibited at the Norwich Gaming Festvial next month! I’ve never been to the UK before. A dear friend of mine, Tom Kail who is also part of the Playful Oasis team, invited to stay at his place

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March 4, 2015 by Philo

Arcade Fun!

My morning was spent mostly organizing stuff and answering mails while sitting on our balcony and enjoying the beautiful, sunny weather. In the afternoon, the game design master student met up to play a board game about “programming your robot and reach the goal” in the ETH cafeteria.
We didn’t finish the round because we had to leave early to go toooooooo….

the Outlane! Check out all these cool pinball and arcade mashines
After a brief history and technical insight we were free to play all the games. Fun fun fun!

A nice surprise was waiting for me back home. Unity 5 has been released! I downloaded it right away and tried to update Niche. It worked without any issues. Unfortunately the feature I was looking forward to the most (the HTML5 export with WebGL) didn’t work for me. Have to investigate the issue!
Also, I bought a plugin called Shader Forge and will play around with it soon.

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