Arriving in Thun. The weather is sooo nice, I don’t want to go insiiiide xD

Setting up our booth next to Splash Blast Panic

Other Swiss devs teams that were present:
> Black Monday
> Modsork
> No Rest for the Wicked Ones
> Crossbow Warrior – The Legend of William Tell

Walking around in the main hall was quite impressive. So many people! I was also surprised by the games they played which showed a richer variety than I had expected

In the evening we watched the cosplay contest. One of our fellow game design students (Sodiumcat) won the audience award

We ended up staying too long and had to run back to the train station (carrying our heavy monitors). What a day

Ok, all set! The calm before the storm.

The Niche booth is also ready!

Friday morning: Time to open the doors. We were lucky with the weather.

This years festival was a bit special since it was not just a festival, but also a conference. Initially the two events were planed to take place on different dates but then we decided to put them together. So on Friday and Saturday morning, we hosted the gameZ & ruleZ conference about game mechanics.

Booth the conference and the festival (including the exhibition) were completely free of charge and open to everyone.

On Friday evening we opened our exhibition “RuleZ for the magic circle”. All the exhibited games are unique due to their special mechanics.
The floor was full of strange, red circles. These respresented the magic circle in games (like a football field) where special rules are in place. So to get into the exhibition everyone had to talk through the “Move in slow motion” circle. It took a while until they were all inside xD

The exhibition makers

If you played the ZHdK student games (on the white tables) and want to get in touch:
- Panda Lost in space
– Niche – a genetics survival game
– Panakeia
– FAR
– Monocular
– Violet – Pale Noise

Yay, people playing the new version of Niche

Luke Whittaker (Lumino City) playing Journey of a Roach by Kobold Games with his son.

My hands down favorite game of this exhibiton: Some strange Tetris thing that insults you when you fail.

After all talks had ended we played Bigscreen Games on Airconsole

And we got some cool DJing by Dragica on Saturday evening

Saturday and Sunday continued with talks & panels from local and international speakers.

The two highlights of the show: Jesper Juul about The Art of Failure in Games and Phillip Weber about the Quest Design of The Witcher.

At the open mic (short 5 minute talks) Patrick from indiegames.ch presented our collaboration project Indiecouch

I moderated the talk of Luke Whittaker about Lumio City

As well as the screening of the Swiss Games 2014/2015 Trailer, which you can watch here

Livio, our sponsor Lukas and me announced the winner of the new GameZfestival Creative Award for “Most innovative Game Mechanics”. The finalists were:
– The Swapper
– Life is strange
– This war of mine
– Cadence
– Perspective
– The Floor is Jelly
– Blek
– Line Wobbler
– There is no Game

And the winner is: Line Wobbler!
This game managed to come up with great level design and different game elements despite the very limited space.
Robin Baumgartner, the creator of Line Wobbler will be invited to the next GameZfestival!
Nerdilicious GmbH (who organize the JapAniManga Night and the Beaumode) will sponsor his travelling and accommodation cost.

On Sunday we hosted another award. The “Junior Swiss Game Award” by the SGDA.
Both finalists received 500.- price money. Well desevered, the projects are awesome!
– Continent Conquest
– The Glove

More SGDA work
Getting people to sign the “Volksinitiative Film-, Game- und Medienförderung”

And then suddenly, it was over.

After dismantling everything the team discussed the past days.

We’re super happy with how everything went
Thanks to everyone who helped making the GameZfestival possible and to everyone who paid us a visit!
Cu next year

Ahhh sweet sweet home. Finally back in my “office” after two weeks.

The start of the new semester approached quickly. In the meantime I visited a few events:
“Swiss Game Academy” in Fribourg. A week to learn how to make videogames.
I gave a short SGDA introduction and took a look at the projects in the making.

Fantoche in Baden.
Another SGDA job: Moderating the game talks.
I also checked out the adventure games exhibition and went to the industry talk.

The SGDA Pop Quiz

Isa invited me to the Swiss Emex marketing fair

And lots of other things…

All in all the lecture free summer months were spread like this:
45% Niche
20% Master Thesis
10% SGDA
10% Tower Offense
5% Playful Oasis

Aaaand we’re back to school.

Time jump!
When stepping out of the cool, climated train from Zurich to Milan a wave of heat washed over us. What a hot day!
First impression when entering the Expo: O my god this is HUGE! I never would have thought it would be this big.

We made it to the Swiss Pavillion without melting (but it was close) just in time for the opening presentation.

After the introduction the GameJam teams presented their works. Last but not least different studios and developers from Switzerland and Italy gave an overview of their projects. I talked about the ZHdK, Niche, Elarooh, Tower Offense and my work for the SGDA.

After lunch we had a panel discussion about the Swiss & Italien games industry.

The conference was over at around 15:00 and we had time to explore the Expo afterwards.

Dominiks top priority: Ice cream!

Silly David!

Adventures on the shaky bridge at the Brasilian pavillion *shake*

And LOTS of other cool attractions / pavillions

After a very enteraining trainride back to Zurich with Martin and Jan, I got home around 1 am.

It was a super fun day and I got to meet lots of nice people. Thank you very much for having me!

Thursday:
On Thursday the ZHdK press apero and Sommerfest took place. After some walking around and listening we all enjoyed the various offers of free food.

Friday
On the very last day of the semester, the Incubator organised a pitching session. Swisscom and other big companies were present to listen to our pitches.

Well, that concludes the first semester of my master studies!
I’ll be spending the next weeks working on Niche – a genetics survival game intensively

Tuesday:
In the morning I attended the 2. Semester Stroytelling analysis, great stuff! Then we got an input about politics which was quite strange -> Got the advice to buy a ferret for ma master thesis xD
And he had another input at ETH. The last one actually!

Wednesday:
At the Stammtisch we played and analysed “Quartett”

Thursday:
In the name of the SGDA I went to the ETH and awarded the best Matura Game of this year ^^

Friday:
Niche working meetup! Lots of decisions have been made. Look at these milestones!

Monday:
Boring theory lesson. I almost fell asleep, seriously.
Isa and me headed over to the ETH to prepare our game for the upcoming presentations.
The working session was “interrupted” by a SGDA planning event. I really really love sitting at this table with these great and hardworking people!

Tuesday:
The input about News Games by Margarete Jahrmann was interesting.
Afternoon ETH presentations. Our game didn’t receive as much reaction from the audience as I hoped. We have to improve the “fun to watch” part

Wednesday:
News Games workshop with Marcus Bösch.
Nobody wanted to make a mobbing cardgame with me *sob* so I had to join another team.

Thursday:
Film Noir story input by Beat Suter, cool stuff!
A normal afternoon at Capsule Games. I did community/organisation stuff and Robin had a life or dead Tower Offense battle with his arch enemy Gian. Also, we decided to use Slack as a communication tool and setup a timetracking sheet. Very business, much professional.

Friday:
I visited Kobold Games at their new office, like it a lot!
We talked about the story, setting and art style of their upcoming game, but that’s a story for another day

In the afternoon we analyzed the text together.

After finishing up some SGDA and Capsule game tasks I can noooow….
pack for the International Games Week in Berlin :D!

The game design students keep skipping afternoon classes because of our collaboration with the ETH xD
Our presentation at the ETH went quite well, our game concept is taking shape.

During the theory input I had an idea. Lots of people are currently talking about or even already making lists of the Swiss Games Industry. Instead of just working all by ourselves and have many unfinished/outdated lists or survey that don’t contain all important questions, we should join together. So if you’re up to helping us, head over to the discussion group.

The evening was spent mostely on SGDA organisation things aka Fantasy Basel and Swiss Online Marketing tasks

Edit: Totally forgot to mention the awesome First Strike infographics that came out today! I had the pleasure to work on them during my internship and they have been tweaked and released now. Take a look at it: First Strike, year one in numbers