OGDA member studio, XII Games, had their upcoming game Resonance shown on Gamespot’s On the Spot. There was a great interview and lots of in-game footage shown. Check it out!
Vince is in the closing months of development of Resonance so expect all sorts of nifty information from him shortly!
Please note that because of the St. Patrick’s Day falling on the 3rd Saturday of the month, we will be pushing our meeting back to the 4th Saturday… the 24th, from 6-10. We will most likely be at CAMP once again.
Also, remember that our special industry guest is indie developer Andy Schatz. We are also hoping to see some in-process work by Blacktopp Studios. Should be a lot of fun!
If you haven’t noticed yet, on the right side of the main OGDA page are links to the Omaha and Lincoln area game studios as well as links to personal portfolio pages of some of the OGDA members. Please take a moment to browse around and see how much cool stuff is going on in the area!
Also, if you have a portfolio of work out there on the web someplace — art, programming, videos, etc. — please let us know here so we can add your link to the bunch! We want to celebrate all the OGDA folks and spread the word about your talent — not just to each other but to the game dev world as a whole!
Show us whatcha got!
Andy receiving his award for Monaco at the 2010 IGF
We are very pleased to announce that our industry Skype guest for the March meeting is indie developer, Andy Schatz. Andy is the founder of Pocketwatch Games where he is currently finishing up work on his much-acclaimed game, Monaco. At the 2010 Independent Games Festival(held at GDC), Monoco won both the Excellence in Design award and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
Prior to Monoco, Andy released two titles, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa and Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Arctic where he served as the sole programmer, designer, and producer. Venture Africa was built in 10 months on a budget of $8000 and has sold 90,000 copies worldwide.
Andy is a staunch supporter of the indie games movement and has spoken all over the world about being an independent game developer. His talk, “How to Win the IGF in 15 Weeks or Less” was one of the highest-rated talks at GDC in 2011. (This talk is available for free on the GDC Vault! Watch it by clicking that pretty link above! Seriously… watch it.)
He has been the on-stage host of the Independent Games Festival awards program in 2007, 2008, 2009, and will do so again next week for the 2012 IGF. (The event will be streamed live on Gamespot Wednesday evening.)
Please note that, due to St. Patrick’s Day falling on the 3rd Saturday of March, our meeting day has been changed to the 24th. Unless otherwise informed, assume that we will once again be at CAMP for this meeting.
We expect Andy to join us for about an hour starting at 7PM. Please try to make it by our normal start time of 6, however, so that we can get settled well before beginning with Andy
If you want to follow Andy on Twitter, you can find him at @andyschatz. Also, follow @MonacoIsMine to keep up with the development of his game.
Our normal rule for meetings is “3rd Saturday of the month”. However, it was pointed out that March’s meeting would have fallen on St. Patrick’s Day… not the best timing, I would imagine. Therefore, the March OGDA meeting will be on the following week, March 24th. Same time and place… 6-10 PM at CAMP Coworking.
Stay tuned for announcements on the agenda… but as it stands now, we should be having a famous indie developer joining us via Skype! Should be groovy!
Don’t forget to swing by the OGDA message board to continue to interact with other OGDA members!
If the forum asks you a question when registering, the answer is the 4-letter name of the place where we have been holding meetings for the past few months.
The February meeting last night was a huge success!
About 20 people were present to see KillSmile’s presentation of Blockmonster and to help playtest Twelve Studio’s Resonance. We were excited to see the early peek at Blockmonster and Tyler and Lucas got an ear full of suggestions! Additionally, it was difficult to determine who was more excited about the Resonance playtest — the people playing it or Vince himself!
There were quite a few new faces as well including the co-creators of a new Omaha game studio, Fully Croisened. It turns out they have moved into the Mastercraft building down the hall from CAMP! We are really looking forward to seeing what direction they are taking! More on them later…
Thanks again to CAMP for hosting the meeting! (And thanks to Megan Homan for giving up her VGA cable for a while!)
Keep an eye out for a special announcement regarding the March meeting! Should be nifty!
The February OGDA meeting is this Saturday at 6 at Camp Coworking. This month should be pretty special, too!
KillSmile Studios will be giving us the first look at their recent work on Blockmonster. If you recall, the original version of Blockmonster was created at the Games++ game jam in Lincoln. Suffice to say, things are a lot different than what they could do in 12 hours.
Also, Vince from XII Games is finally (I don’t think he will object to me using that word) nearing completion of his game, Resonance. More importantly for the rest of us, he would like to have OGDA members do some play testing at the meeting! This will be an exciting opportunity for us to see some near-finished work by one of our members. Additionally, it gives Vince some extra eyeballs on his game to help him polish up any rough areas. Please bring a Windows laptop if you have one available.
Remember, the January OGDA meeting is tonight at 6PM at CAMP Coworking. Shane Ferris will be showing off some of his latest work. Others are certainly welcome to show what they have been working on. Also, we might watch some videos from recent Game Developers Conferences to then discuss as a group.
Please remember that CAMP is donation-supported. They are kind enough to host our meetings — even though the owners are out of town tonight! Please try to donate a little cash to them to help support the cause!
CAMP Coworking is in the NoDo (North of Dodge) neighborhood — specifically just a few blocks north of TD Ameritrade park and the Qwest Century Link Center. The actual address is 1111 N 13th Street in the Mastercraft building.
Are you going to GDC? Want to make the lodging a little lot cheaper? Sign up to room with a fellow OGDA member! There is a thread in the forums where you can try to find someone to share a hotel room with.
Also remember to use the GDC travel page to get the conference rates at area hotels.
Omaha Game Devs represent!