Three of the world’s most influential games developers will headline a symposium for Australian games developers in June 2012.
Independent developers Peter Molyneux (Populous, Dungeon Keeper and Fable), Tim Schafer (Full Throttle, Psychonauts and Brutal Legend) and Warren Spector (System Shock and Deus Ex) will lead the two-day event. The symposium will be funded by the Victorian Government through Film Victoria and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).
Securing these giants of the games industry is something of a coup and it is hoped that their presence will stimulate business and professional development opportunities for Victorian and Australian games developers. In addition to hearing their keynote presentations, selected games developers will also have an opportunity to engage in one-on-one meetings with these outstanding international games experts.
Participation in Game Masters: The Forum will provide an exciting kick-start to ACMI’s 2012 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition, Game Masters, which opens on 28 June and features over 125 playable games from more than 30 internationally-renowned game designers. The Game Masters exhibition is a highly interactive videogame exhibition, showcasing the work of leading local and international videogame designers from the arcade era through to the latest console and mobile game technology, clearly demonstrating the growing popularity and importance of games in contemporary culture. It is the first locally-curated exhibition in the Winter Masterpieces series, reflecting Victoria’s long and extensive contribution to the video games field.
ACMI’s Chief Executive Officer Tony Sweeney said Game Masters was an opportunity to bring the games and cultural industries together.
“Having highly respected international guests coming to Melbourne for the launch of Game Masters provides a forum to explore the synergies and intersection between the games industry and the broader cultural industries,” Mr Sweeney said.
Film Victoria’s Chief Executive Officer Jenni Tosi welcomed the opportunity to partner with ACMI in jointly funding the symposium.
“I’m delighted with this partnership and I’m sure it will provide inspiration and new connections for our talented games developers, stimulating ideas and business opportunities for this important sector of our industry,” Ms Tosi said.
Tickets for the Game Masters Program Events are available on the ACMI website from Friday 18 May 2012.
Nodes attached to deer
When Colin Renshaw at Alt.vfx and Nigel Haslam from Motion Circus first rang me to talk about motion capturing semi-wild animals for the Toohey’s Extra Dry ad, I wasn’t too surprised. We get a lot of unusual requests. Having provided motion capture for sports games, action games, body armour testing, sports analysis, and dance projects, we’ve captured just about everything humans can do over the last five years. A semi-wild animal was a bit out of the ordinary, but, like many ambitious projects, I thought maybe it wouldn’t happen.
Digital nodes of a live deer
On the day, the Deakin Motion.Lab team, led by mocap lead Peter Divers, were joined in the studio by a deer handler, two semi-wild animals, and the Alt.vfx team. The markers were carefully positioned on the deer for the motion captures. One of the deer proved herself eminently castable, and finished a terrific day’s shoot with a hero move rearing up on her hind legs. The ‘deer logistics’ proved reasonably manageable, even if their aromatic aftermath stayed with us for a few days afterwards.
Digital replica of a live deer
But that was just because I hadn’t worked with Colin and Nigel before. After a few longish conversations about deer logistics and the likelihood of finding a castable deer in Melbourne, within a week we found ourselves researching deer mechanics and designing a 74-marker ‘deer set’ in anticipation of the deer’s arrival.
Animation in progress
This is the kind of project that makes it all worthwhile for us – something off-the-wall challenging, like deer mechanics combined with live deer-management in a motion capture studio, amazing rigging and animation by Nigel to work with in post, and a brilliant finished piece by Alt.vfx. I think this project really demonstrates what amazing work Australian animation and visual effects companies can do. Alt.vfx, a Brisbane-based organization who came to Melbourne specifically to use the Deakin Motion.Lab, received a Mobius Award First Place Gold Statuette for the spot – well done!
See the before and after footage and the full spot here.
Watch the behind the scenes deer capture footage here.
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Kim Vincs
Studio Director, Deakin Motion.Lab
The Cluster: The entrepreneur’s space – one year on
A meeting at the Cluster
Co-working is huge in America, especially in San Francisco. There are obvious benefits to it, which we are witnessing daily. After 17 months of operation (and over 130 member companies), we now see that our space is something that is needed in Melbourne (and everywhere else)! We are dedicated to the quality of service to both our in-house tenants and our many virtual office clients (who enjoy telephony, use of address, mail-to-email services and the use of hot-desks and meeting rooms). We want to do more, we want to provide more, and we want to continue to spoil ourselves with the company of other entrepreneurs. Friendships are formed here, and ideas are planted. Business is done, and fun is had. Doing business in a lonely office is no longer the only option.
The interactive games development companies sharing this serviced office space include The Game Developer’s Asscociation of Australia (GDAA), Redtribe, Game Machine Australia, PlayCorp, The Voxel Agents, Desura and Roo Games, plus many other software developers.
I often wonder, as I walk around the office, watching everyone eagerly tapping away on their computers, what the hell are they working on? I know a lot about most people’s businesses, but as much information that I can muster from them, it’s never enough! It was this frustration that led to the creation of “What The Hell Do You Do” nights. These nights are where members present to a room full of Clusterians, “What The Hell They Do”. This particular event always opens listener’s eyes and creates true realizations about who we actually share an office with each day. The level of talent at The Cluster is truly exciting.
Shared space at the Cluster
Clusterian on Clusterian action and interaction is happening every day, as more people meet! Businesses are now working together, networks are being created, friendships are being made, new ideas are being formed and new businesses are starting. We have seen small businesses turn into million dollar entities within a short time. When entrepreneurs join The Cluster, they automatically enter into the “Be the first to hit $1,000,000 profit” competition. I can’t yet put my bets down, as it changes daily, but I have my eye on 5 businesses here, which WILL explode one day, like an egg in a microwave. One of our clients was the winner of the 2011, Start-Up Smart Awards – for fastest growth, and is now ranked number 17 in BRW Fast Starters for 2011. Other awards are numerous amongst members, while others have businesses which are just brilliant ideas or are filling niches that no one else has a toe in (or both)! If I was an angel investor, or venture capitalist, I would like to be a fly on the wall at any of the professional co-working spaces, especially The Cluster!
The saddest thing about my Cluster experience is when a tenant must leave. I am always happy about their sudden growth, and their need for more space which we cannot yet provide. Sometimes I hold onto their leg as they struggle towards the door, eventually letting go as I realize they just need more space for their growing team. Relationships are always maintained and we get regular visits and updates, which cements them as part of this entrepreneurial community. As time has passed, I have become to realize that this exit is necessary in order to create space for other entrepreneurs searching for an appropriate co-working space. The Cluster space is just a small part of their experience of business, and our vision, along with the other co-working spaces in Melbourne, is to provide clients with the best environment and services for their day-to-day office needs. Taking the hassle of renting, fit-outs, furnishing, connecting services, providing kitchen goodies, paying for receptionists and IT, and organizing their own Friday night drinks, ski trips, winery tours, random dinners and speed greeting nights (like speed dating)….is what we, and other co-working spaces, are all about!
The Cluster - Serviced Offices
The most important aspect of creating such a space is the energy created once the space is full of crazy entrepreneurs. An amazing and inspiring space is formed solely from the people who fill it. Physically having the right space to fill comes about by bringing the right people together to create it. This vision will one day happen. It has too. Melbourne needs it. All of our cities need it!
What’s next? The Cluster’s is planning to team up with key groups and individuals to create larger co-working entrepreneurial events and spaces within each capital city of Australia. Clusters in regional areas are also on the table, as there is a need for people in smaller communities to have access to proactive, vibrant and professional spaces. The Cluster is looking to work closely with the state government and local councils to expand the co-working model. Enhancing entrepreneur’s day-to-day working environments is essential for motivating innovation!
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About Kirsten Koci:
Kirsten spent the last 14 years studying business and enjoying the craziness of owning and running a successful fashion company, based in London. After returning from the UK in 2007, Kirsten lectured in fashion business until she started The Cluster in 2010 with Chris Mosely. Kirsten is herself a serial entrepreneur with The Cluster plus some new projects/businesses launching now and at the beginning of 2012. These include The Oddwols (ipad/iphone interactive comedy stories for kids), Binary Digital (Web & App development), dressandpress.com.au (Australia’s Fashion Library) and Bully to Bravery (development of educational DVDs for primary and secondary schools). The Cluster provides the motivation to “Do It All”!
Meffy Award for Melbourne’s Visceral Games
Melbourne-based Electronic Arts studio Visceral Games has taken out the Meffy Award for the Best Mobile Game for its Dead Space iOS for iPhone and iPad.
The Mobile Entertainment Forum’s (MEF) Meffy Awards, judged by expert panels of independent journalists, analysts, academics and VCs, are widely recognised as the most established and coveted global awards in the mobile media industry and provide a benchmark for success and innovation.
Dead Space iOS, which brings the critically acclaimed sci-fi action-horror franchise to the iOS platform, was launched in January 2011, and both the iPhone and iPad games reached number one Top Grossing positions worldwide.
EA’s Visceral Games also created the award winning Dead Space 2 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
As the industry’s official benchmark for measuring success and rewarding innovation, the Meffys honour the most influential players from around the world, and over the years have recognised the global brands, dynamic start-ups and visionary individuals who have helped shape the mobile entertainment and media industry.
The award is a bouquet for Visceral Games and for Melbourne, Victoria, which has a reputation for being a centre of creative and innovative activity. Victoria is a hub for games development; its interactive computer and video games industry is a mature sector, of nearly 30 years’ standing, and at the forefront of next-generation technology.
Australian game developers have been greatly successful in the mobile gaming industry, with countless home-made titles putting the local creators into the international spotlight. One
such team of talented game developers is Melbourne-based The Voxel Agents, creators of the smash hit Train Conductor series.
Train Conductor
The game instantly hit the top 100 in 24 countries and was named Best iPhone Game of 2009 by DIYgamer. Train Conductor starts simply: route trains to their numbered tracks while avoiding collisions, but unique challenges appear in
each of the eight levels, including long-haul Gold Rush Trains, parallel ghost worlds where trains don’t crash, and even broken tracks inspired by that apocryphal Summer’s day in Melbourne where temperatures of 46.5 degree made the tracks buckle and the city to come to halt! The Train Conductor series has 4.5 million installs, with 4 million free downloads and a half million paid downloads.
Hailing from Brisbane, The Voxel Agents began in early 2009 when three friends and game developers, Simon Joslin, Tom Killen, and Matthew Clark joined forces
Train Conductor 2
then moved to Melbourne in 2010. This talented team’s accolades include “Best New Business 2010” in the National NEIS Business Awards and “Startup / Rookie of the Year” at the MoMo Melbourne business awards last year.
PALGN recently sat down for a chat with The Voxel Agents’ Simon Joslin. During the interview, he confirmed that Melbourne is more than just a great source of inspiration for games, but one of the best locations for developing them.
When asked whether Melbourne is a good location for making video games, Simon enthusiastically replied, ”It’s the best! I am certain we have the most socially active community of developers in Australia, thanks to the fantastic IGDA, as well as the best government support of any state. Plus, is there a better Australian city?”
Simon also pointed out that diversity in the Australian games development industry is important to its strength, warning that a reliance on only mobile games would create a niche but unstable market.
In the last four months The Voxel Agents have built fifteen prototypes, three of which were “fantastically fun” and were developed until one in particular showed extensive promise. They are now in pre-production on the most impressive prototype. Their community of 4.5 million players are eagerly awaiting official announcements of their next title.
For insights direct from the Voxel Agents, visit their blog or visit their YouTube channel.
‘You struggle furiously to get back towards the surface, then you feel the ooze being pushed aside as if something large was coming your way and you suddenly realise you have worse problems’. The Wizard from Tarnath Tor.
Hmmm, quite a predicament, but what do you do? Draw your weapon and hope to fight the creature off … or rely on your fading fitness and make a run for it?
Well, that’s entirely up to readers of Gamebook Adventures 6: The Wizard from Tarnath Tor, which is now available for download for iPhone 
or iPad from the iTunes App Store.
The magical gamebook is the latest offering from Melbourne-based video games studio, Tin Man Games (TMG), and takes readers on an interactive adventure with different choices to be made on every page.
There are time travelers to meet, items to find and creatures to fight during the journey through the legendary but destroyed city of Tarnath Tor.
And of course, there is also the story, which has been crafted by Al 
Sander, winner of the 2008 Windhammer Prize for Short Gamebook Fiction, and illustrated by Gamebook Adventures regular, Dan Maxwell .
Creative director at TMG, Neil Rennison, says The Wizard from Tarnath Tor makes it feel like Gamebook Adventures has finally gone social. According to Neil, the latest gamebook takes the reader experience to a whole new level and he has plans for even more functionality to be included in the future.
TMG is a fantastic Victorian success story and has built quite a following over the last two years.
Located in Melbourne, TMG is one of the many local animations houses that have the talent and capacity to deliver world-class animation sequences for games using the latest software and techniques.
The city is also home to an excellent pool of world-class game developers, has connected and reliable infrastructure and a successful cluster of software development companies, which make it a high-quality mid-cost Asia-Pacific location for games development.
TMG has also recently added a News page to main menu of each gamebook to keep fans up-to-date with the latest TMG developments, which include new writers such as Fighting Fantasy’s Jonathan Green, and new genres such as science fiction and supernatural romance.
Looks like Tin Man Games is taking an adventure all of its own – minus the ooze and creatures, we hope!
Visit the Gamebook Adventures new website or the developer blog.
Melbourne is now regarded as a leading centre for computer game development, synonymous with the development of innovative and popular titles. Despite its success in the use next generation technology and the latest platforms, Melbourne is by no means a new kid on the block.
1980 saw the establishment of Australia’s first game company – Beam Software (now called Krome Studios) in Melbourne, a video game development studio which has gone on to create over 150 titles. Beam’s success began with 1982’s The Hobbit for the Spectrum, Commodore 64 and PC and by 1983 it had reached the number one selling position throughout Europe with sales exceeding 500,000 units. The success of this was repeated by Beam in 1985 with the launch of The Way of the Exploding Fist which also got to number one in Europe on the back of over half a million sales.
By the second half of the decade Melbourne House (Beam) had a 10% share of the UK video games market and just two years later became the first game company to go public on the ASX. Beam was joined in 1994 by two more Melbourne-based studios: Torus and Tantalus, followed by Blue Tongue the year after and IR Gurus Interactive in 1996 further establishing the state’s dominance of the sector.
1996 also saw the start of a strong relationship between the Victorian Government and the gaming sector by providing funding to IR Guru’s AFL Live. In 2000 this relationship was cemented with the launch of the successful Game Plan policy, committing Victoria to supporting this exciting sector – a first among state governments.
Spurred on by industry innovation and government support, the past decade has seen the sector reach new highs from Infogrames’ award winning Le Mans Dreamcast and Grand Prix Challenge, THQ’s Annie nominated SpongeBob Game and Firemint’s Flight Control which is now the most downloaded iPhone game ever. This global reputation for excellence was demonstrated only this month, with the announcement that Firemint would be joining Electronic Arts’ stable of studios – bringing their total to four in Victoria.
In just thirty years, Melbourne has gone from one lone studio, to a thriving cluster that makes up over half of Australia’s independent games studios and employing the bulk of the 1000 Victorian students who graduate each year in games related courses. Through dedicated export programmes, investment in development kits and funding from Film Victoria’s Digital Media Fund in excess of A$10 million the Victorian Government is working hard to ensure that this success continues in the next thirty years and beyond.
EA successfully lands Firemint
A huge boost to Melbourne’s games sector was announced this week with news that Melbourne-based game developer Firemint will be joining US entertainment giant Electronic Arts’s stable of Victorian games studios.
Firemint is probably best known for its hugely popular iPhone, iPad and iPod touch game Flight Control and its follow-up success with Real Racing. These apps have set new targets for mobile phone games by selling some seven million copies between them. Firemint has also been in the news recently when it took over fellow Victorian-based company, Infinite Interactive – creator of the Puzzle Quest series.
This investment brings EA’s tally of Melbourne’s studios up to three, joining IronMonkey and Visceral Games, and shows a significant vote of confidence in Melbourne’s games industry by such a global force in games publishing. EA’s growing presence in Melbourne is key to its overarching strategy, which has seen it spend over 30 years building a games development and distribution empire, which currently generates more than A$4 billion in annual revenue.
In fact this new partnership is not just good for EA, but for Firemint who have been working with EA mobile since 1999. Firemint’s CEO, Rob Murray, blogged to say that he is looking forward to not just working with some of the best developers in the industry, but also in using the new structure to free up more focus on the creative part of the business.
Firemint is a big player in Melbourne, one of the leaders of a thriving cluster that makes up over 50 per cent of Australia’s independent games studios and employs the bulk of the 1000 Victorian students who graduate each year in games related courses. Melbourne’s world-class expertise is continuing to attract investment such as this and underscores the city’s un-rivalled reputation for technology and interactive games development.
Jonathan Green helps Tin Man Games fantasy come true
Jonathan Green
The Wizard is coming to Oz. Or at least, Jonathan Green – popular author of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks – has signed on to write for Melbourne-based video games studio, Tin Man Games (TMG).
And much like Dorothy, Toto and the Yellow Brick Road, the path ahead for this exciting partnership promises to be quite an adventure.
Highly regarded for his 17-year association with the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, Green is currently writing the seventh TMG Gamebook Adventures title, Temple of the Spider God, which is due for release in July.
Green is well known to devotees of the gaming genre having created the Pax Britannia series and writing gamesbooks set in universes such as Doctor Who and Star Wars.
The creative partnership was announced at the recent Penny Arcade Expo East in Boston, and for Tin Man Games’ creative director, Neil Rennison, it is a dream come true.
Rennison, who started Tin Man Games just 18 months ago, grew up reading Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. But even he could not have imagined that one day he would be collaborating with one of the most popular Fighting Fantasy authors.
The venture is also an exciting opportunity for Green, who recently commended Tin Man Games on the huge impact it has had on the worlds of interactive fiction and iPhone apps in such a short space of time.
Sounds like dreams that you dare to dream really do come true, after all.
Victorian Government is awesome! We were totally stoked when we found out that the State Government of Victoria provides funding assistance for businesses to attend international trade events through its ICT export grants program.
Being a fast moving Internet and interactive games business, at MMGN.com we are constantly thinking about how to make ourselves better, how to get our brands out there, what kind of places we should be and which events we should attend. We want to mingle with the best around the globe. One of the most exciting music, film, and interactive conference events is the SXSW Interactive held in Austin, Texas, USA. Late last year, we submitted an application for an Export ‘Networker’ grant, and were told recently that it has been approved!
The grant is part of the ICT export initiative of the State Government of Victoria. It encourages Victorian technology businesses to explore export opportunities in international markets, take their products and promote their services beyond the border, gain new ideas and learn from top industry leaders. This perfectly aligns with our marketing strategy.
As an event Networker, you are eligible for $2,500 grant. If you decide to set up an exhibition stand, the grant is even higher, up to $10,000. There is more! A Victorian business can submit up to three applications per year. This means we could also be eligible for funding to attending E3 and Tokyo Game Show (TGS) later this year also!
Applying for the grant is quite simple. Everything is available online and there is a lot of funding support available for various categories including sole or group exhibitor in an exhibition stand.
It is great to see that the Government is supporting technology businesses! Only if we had discovered this sooner….
For more information about ICT Trade Events and Exports Assistance Program grants, go to Multimedia Victoria.
The Games Investment Program assists Victorian games developers to create a diverse range of games for any distribution platform with an emphasis on technical, creative or design innovation.
Al Gibb
Paul Callaghan
Marcus Tierney
brawsomegames
Neil Rennison
Chris Mosely
Michael Woods
touchmypixel
bengoodvachdraffin
Roy Hui
Kirsten Koci
kimvincs
