People trying the games made by the Game Academy students, what a turnout!


The second day of the iWeek started with the continuation of the workshops from the previous day. In the United Studios the students from the Game Academy showcased the games they have been working on. Later you could try the games in the orange lobby where also the Virtual Gallery could be experienced. Some of the games shown were about jousting, breaking stuff as a cat, a multiplayer FPS with water guns and being a thief.

During the day in the United Studios there has been quite many musical performances by a variety of artists and bands from different countries as well as poem reciting. There has also been some lectures about music related topics such as karaoke diplomacy. Today is definitely full of music and chilling to the tunes.

Catalan musician Xavi presenting his first EP "Full Honesty".


You can find amazing exhibitions and installations all over the school. The second floor showcases most of the exhibitions. The installations of the advanced sound design workshop 2018 can be found in both the first and the second floor. 

The installation by Aaro Arvola named Rough mixdown can be found on the first floor in the orange lobby. On the second floor there are the Disco box done by Eetu Tähtinen in the rooms 20019 and 20018 and the Disorder simulations by Polina Hameltoja and Pauli Ondruska in the room 20011. 

Liya Pirkuliyeva experiencing the Advanced Sound Design workshop piece "In heaven, all they talk about is the ocean" done by Kate Vasileva.

There’s the UNPOLISHED exhibition which features photo art from the photography minor and takes place in the 2nd floor corridor during the iWeek. In the photography study module students created a photo art book on a topics chosen by them. Themes of projects vary from a haptic taste of chocolate to the existence of human in the universe. 

The other exhibition WET PAINT showcases drawings and paitings in Mediapolis 2nd Floor, rooms 20012, 20034, 20063 and 20064. The pieces of works are done by the students in the Drawing and Painting minor.

“Like wet paint, we are fluid and unfixed. Fresh and new, anything is possible.”
A quote from the students.

The last performance of the day is by none other than our very own Eeverest, Niko Mansikka-aho. He’s a Finnish student at TAMK Music Production study path who has been working as a DJ and a producer and is based in Tampere. So hope everyone is ready to dance to his music!

And as in the last post, here are some summaries about the ongoing workshops. Hope everyone is enjoying and gaining information and skills from the ones they are participating in!

"Connected Neighborhoods: diverse_CITY" - by Graham Cooper, Martyn Thayne (University of Lincoln, UK) and Anne Karen (Academy of Pop Culture, Hanze University, NL), from Wednesday to Thursday between 9 am and 4 pm.

This workshop is about exploring the global / local landscape and look at the key players / participants / neighbours in a collaborative manner. The landscape is ever expanding and increasingly diverse. The participants of the workshop will use design and discussion to explore and celebrate the different aspects of the cities. The task is to use playful and creative means to showcase the diversity within our surroundings.

“Jugaad: create or transform basic objects using trash materials!” - By Tibor Kecskes (TK Studio), from Tuesday to Thursday between 10 am and 4 pm.

Jugaad is a wide spread activity especially in the developing countries for upcycling broken constructions or creating basic objects using trash / simple materials. The idea is to support upcycling / repairing items instead of throwing them away. The results of the creative minds and able hands of the participants will be shown in the form of an exhibition and / or presented. It’s interesting to see if they can see the hidden potential in so called trash objects and materials!

"Citizen journalism in the age of live streaming" - by Yuwei Lin (University of Stirling, UK), Tuesday to Thursday from 9 am to 12 pm.

If you have ever wanted to learn how to report an event live this workshop is for you. The event can be anything and in the workshop there will be used a variety of social media tools to explore the possibilities. The participants will go through how to prepare, what to cover, how to source the content, maintain audience interests and ethics around live reporting.

Be sure to follow the Facebook page of the TAMK 11th International Week for more live updates during the week. Also, there will be a summary posted about the daily activities every evening in the TAMK Arts and Media blog.



It's time for the Mediapolis Game Jam, where people who like to make games gather together for one hectic weekend.



Each participating small team consists of people with various skills, like programming, level design, visual design, animation or sound design, and the goal is to get a game done within 48 hours, no more no less.



The participants of the Mediapolis Game Jam have a score of virtual technology they can use for their games: a technodolly, a technocrane, a virtual studio, several brands of virtual reality goggles, and as a cherry on the cake, a motion capture studio.



The Mediapolis Game Jam is organized by Finnish Game Jam ry, Technopolis and The Tampere University of Applied Sciences. YLE online is there for the whole weekend, showing the highlights of the jam. New articles and videos will be added to the YLE web pages up until the end of November 2015.



...
Suomeksi:
Mediapolis Game Jameilla 20.-22.11. pelintekijät kokoontuvat yhteen suunnittelemaan ja luomaan uusia pelejä jamihengessä. Osallistujat jakautuvat pieniin ryhmiin, jotka koostuvat pelisuunnittelun eri osa-alueiden taitajista. Kunkin ryhmän tavoite on tehdä peli valmiiksi 48 tunnin aikarajan puitteissa.
Mediapoliksen jameissa ryhmät hyödyntävät pelin tekemisessä virtuaaliteknistä elokuva-alan laitteistoa. Mukana on Technodolly, Technocrane, virtuaali- ja motion capture-studiot sekä virtuaalilasit.
Tapahtuman Ylen kanssa yhdessä järjestävät Finnish Game Jam ry, Technopolis ja Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulu.
Ylen verkkotoimitus seuraa hektistä tapahtumaa paikan päällä koko viikonlopun ja taltioi jamien kohokohdat. Sivustolle päivitetään uusia artikkeleita ja videoita aina marraskuun loppuun saakka.

Only a couple of weeks before the conference, our team of Stardust Galaxy Warriors received a letter from the organizers. We were invited to represent and showcase our game (in its current state) during the Casual Connect 2015 conference in the "Indie Prize Europe 2015" section. The offer extended to all seminars, networking events, meals and programs for two people from our team. The three-day event took place in the center of Amsterdam at the iconic building of Beurs Van Berlage between the 3rd and 6th of February 2015.




Petteri and me made a quick decision, booked the flights and eventually started to prepare for the event. Thanks to the big effort from everyone in our team, we had quite some cool stuff with us as we arrived in Amsterdam. We had our "CC special" t-shirts, some badass stickers and flyers to hand out and even our first character-reveal trailer got rendered in the last minute. Most importantly though we had a playable build with four controllers ready for some play testing.


The table spots were not all random, we were naturally proudly part of the "Finnish cluster" and as such we made good friends with the cool guys and fellow devs behind the games like: Pako, Ancestory and the Masterplan, just to mention a few.


We had three long days of introducing ourselves, explaining our visions to various visitors at our stand and making folks play our game all the time. Countless people were passing by at our stand, from game enthusiasts, through publishers and investors, to fellow developers. We never knew who is going to come by next. At times, judges would show up to test the game and get to know our concepts and the team. In this huge whirl of crowd we have received everything from harsh critique, loving and nostalgic support to valuable and potential contacts from all around the world.
The days were also packed with programs, speeches and seminars. These sessions were held by experienced professionals or even young and successful Start-ups who had something to share with us. The presentations were categorized into couple of interesting main themes like: Next-Gen Design & Research, Development & Production, Advertising, Monetization & Retention, Industry Insights and many more. We were obviously more or less pinned to our spot but even like that, we managed to get into some of the more interesting presentations.


The organizers were extremely generous, not only providing us with this opportunity to attend but also taking care of us indies, very well. Throughout the whole three days. We were constantly catered with meals and drinks in the daytime and in the evenings we were invited to some all-inclusive first class clubbing. These evenings are very much part of the networking process, so we made sure not to miss any of these parties.


The Casual Connect naturally ended with the price ceremony where games were nominated and winning in many different categories like, audio, narrative, graphics, game feel, etc. Despite of seriously drawing the attention of some of the judges and so many others, who have got to play our game, we were not nominated. Seeing all those ready-made and polished, awesome games, I was not that surprised that our game, which was at around 30 % in the development, was not able to compete just yet. We were very happy to show what we currently had, gain and receive all those new experiences and advices, make great contacts and we are already excited to return next year, with our perfected and complete game to kick some serious casual ass!


Our team is currently developing at Protomo and we like to welcome anyone who is interested in us, in the development or just would like to talk with us for a cup of coffee. Our game, Stardust Galaxy Warriors is on Steam Greenlight at the moment, waiting for some more votes and comments. We need all the support and personal feedback from you, so please, vote for us and come, see us!


Szabolcs Sarosi 09.02.2015

During the summer, 18 people (4 teams) from three different programs of TAMK have been working on five games during five weeks, five days a week and five hours a day. You can see the finished games at http://score.igda.fi/5d . The summer project was organized by game development club Score.




The 5D team has landed home from the adventurous occasion of Summer Assembly 2013. During the four days on 1 through 4 August, our quest was full of wonders of the party place itself, but we also brought our own creations to the table for others to enjoy. At our TAMK presentation stand, desks were full of computers and devices running our games, and people steadily gathered around to take a curious look at what was being showcased. Some stayed for longer chats and exchanged contact information with prospective game developers from our team.


Immediately on the first night, the gamer crowd was treated to a live concert from The Super Sound of Video Games. Consisting of the mixed choir of the Turku Opera choir, various brass instruments, piano and drums, the group delivered an interesting show, albeit varying in quality and overall ability to capture listeners, of tunes ranging from the 80's to modern-day games. Bubble Bobble, The Giana Sisters, WarCraft 2, Morrowind, Baldur's Gate 2 and many other memorable soundtracks were given tribute.




The main attraction were naturally the demo competitions and short films. Many agree that the 4K entries stole the show this year with their cunning ideas, but the Real Wild demos were not left far behind, if at all. One does not simply forget a demo made using an ancient electronic train schedule board (complete with music made using snippets of the original train station announcer voice clips), or a graphic calculator screen for that matter. The slight disappointment that the Oldskool demos were dominated by a single entry, was quickly forgotten, thanks to the many amazements from other categories.

The game development competition awarded second place for a TAMK student! Congratulations go to Lukas Kallenbach for creating Pölkky, a computer version of a certain famous summer cabin yard game!


Also shown on the biggest screen in Finland was the live-commentated grand finale of ASUS Republic of Gamers StarCraft 2 tournament. The match was between two young Asian master players, Taeja and San. After recovering from a dreadful start, San managed to win one game and start strong into another, gaining the applause, support and enthusiasm of the crowd. Eventually Taeja defeated San however, but it was very exciting to watch nevertheless. Taeja's prize was a boggling 10 000 dollars!

Elsewhere, fighting game tournaments were held with Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Street Fighter IV. Two of our team members entered the SF4 competition. Opposition was strong and ultimate victory came only to those deserving, but nothing seemed to bother the calm yoga cool of this Dhalsim cosplayer. It seems drinking energy drinks was one of his new special moves.

ARTtech presented the crowd with several seminars covering topics from gaming industry business to actual tips for programming. On the same spot, another smaller game music concert was held. Always nice to see and a good effort. But next year, Assembly: let's get some really good singers for the job, okay?




2800 computer places all sold out – that says something about the magnitude of this event, and I believe we can all agree that it was amazing! The whole trip was so crazy that in order to avoid burgers and 8-euro pizza slices most of the time, we invented some devious, nutritious new foods like banana-rye bread. The little sleeping that we did was tough for some of us at first (my air mattress was taken from me at the door), but soon the constant chiptune raving and concrete floor couldn't stop us from falling asleep and regaining power for the next day. Many of us were here for the first time, and for myself I can say I will surely come again next year. A big thanks to organizers both at Assembly and TAMK!

Written by Matias Lehtoranta
Sound designer in 5D, student of music technology at the Pyynikki campus

PS.

We were also invited to a sponsor sauna by the organizers of Assembly but strangely, we do not have photos from there!



By Heidi Mäenpää

 
 


The 5th edition of the legendary 5D has started! 

Four teams of four consisting of artists and programmers (plus two awesome sound designers) will be making five games in five weeks, working five days a week and five hours a day (we sure love the number 5!). 

This week is all about getting everybody on board and going through the basics of 3D and 2D graphics, and also see which gaming platforms everybody wants to use in the following weeks. We will divide into the teams at the end of the week, and our aim is to have 20 games ready in July, and in August these will be presented at Assembly. Last year's 5D participant, the Score Lady Minna Eloranta has been organizing the project and made sure we have all the equipment and licences that we need to make brilliant games.

Today we had our first intensive lessons about Unity 3D and Blender. Jussi Salonen was our guru-of-the-day and he showed us basic level design in Unity and modeling&texturing in Blender. Tomorrow we will be continuing with these, and at some point the axes will be thrown at chickens. We'll just have to wait and see how that turns out!


Unity 3D level design/test made from Jussi's models

An axe we all had to model and texture* in Blender
*The axe's texture was made using this concept art piece. 



 Stay tuned for the first patch of games done by our great teams!

|||
The author is a student of the Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
Read more stories about the Game Development Club Score 


Nordic Game Conference 2013 was organized 23.-24.5 in Malmö, Sweden. NGC celebrated its 10th year anniversary and I was very happy to be part of it!

Togehter with NGC, Unity also organized its first own conference, Unite, which had lasted for a few days. Between them, on the 22nd, was the Nordic Indie night where the best chosen indie developers would show their games accompanied by lectures. In the end, Finnish game Badland won the competition and got the award for Best Indie Sensation! 
Telltale  Games Keynote "The Talking dead - Voicing a Dynamic Narrative with  voice actors and sound designer from the  game The Walking Dead

NGC consisted of great presentations, keynotes, networking, exhibitors.. I wish I had the time to be part of everything organized at the conference! The presentations were categorized by Production, Creation, Handheld, Business and Technology.

Here are some highlights from my point of view from the two-day conference:

Keynote Tim Schafer on creating games ouf of love

Keynote by Tim Schafer - Inspiration Driven Development

The conference was opened by Tim Chafer from Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brütal Legend), who gave an inspiring presentation on keeping your own creative rights and designing with passion. "If you're not making games out of love, I wonder why you are doing it?" - was the most powerful quote from him. Coming from LucasArts, he went through the reasons on wanting to keep all his creative rights and setting up a studio where they can work on what they want.

Matthew Boch - New Normals

Matthew had a very interesting lecture on defining gender roles, sexuality and racism. Using examples from Mass Effect and Dragon Age, he explained with examples how the female and male shepard have differences and also went in depth on how the game world should be creating normals. What if the player's behavior toward's certain game races were acts of racism? It was a great presentation which made people think a bit before using the clichés and way game design has used so far.

Susan O'Connor Play It Again, Sam: How To Connect With Your Audience

Probably one of the best presentations. BioShock writer went in depth with story writing and how it affects the player. O'Connor thought on ways to make the world more fascinating and how to qrite interesting stories that make the player feel immersed. She felt like there is still a long way to go in developing stories in games -- but we're on the right track with the indie games scene growing bigger and bigger. 

Richard Lemarchand - Life of Play, Life of the Mind: What Game Design Can Teach U

Naughty Dog Game Designer (The Uncharted Series, Jak & Daxter, etc.) spoke on his decision to stop working in the gaming industry and moving to teach game design in USC, the ranked #1 game design school in North America. Going through methods from doing paper prototypes to engaging people to talk to eachother honestly,  Richard was sure there are much more ways to learn game design than many people think.
Networking an creating new student cooperation between Kajak and Tamk
-- 
The Nordic Game awards was organized after the first conference day. Nordic game companies took homw prizes from different categories, such as best Nordic Game, Best Children's game, best artistic achievement, etc. Supercell's HayDay took home the prize from Best Handheld Game.

Work hard - Play hard. After a long but very exciting and interesting first day of the conference we were transferred to a secret place to network and take it easy in between the conference days. There was a great chiptune-gig for a few hours in one of the spaces, needless to say it was packed with people dancing to sounds from the Game Boy.
Kamk students showing off their spring game projects, BAFTA-award winning Starcrossed and game from the Kavio Cluster
All in all, it was a great and succesfull event, I made tons of new connections and got inspired by the amazing people from the industry. (now to just sort out all of these business cards..)

Minna Eloranta
Student of Degree Programme in Media, Game Development Club Score







At the end of last week I bought a train ticket to Kajaani and went to find out what the Kajaani game development area was all about! The Kajaani University of Applied Sciences is known throughout Finland as a strong game development school with their own co-op and lots of other happenings (Like the Northern Game Summit in the autumn). Students from Kajaani also won the BAFTA Ones to Watch-award this spring with their game Starcrossed. With only about 40k inhabitants, they're doing a terrific job on staying on the map of the Finnish game industry.

I was there to see their working methods, meet students and ask for some tips on how they've done it all. I was hosted by Julius, last year's CEO of their local game development co-op Kajak Games. I also chatted with the current CEO to discuss on future cooperation plans with Score and Kajak Games. (Game Jams, LAN parties, who knows?)

The Business Information Systems district of KAMK
Merging in
Students working hard on a Friday morning, getting ready for next week's Nordic Game Conference to show their games

I got a tour around the campus, which had really nice spaces to work on game development. Classrooms with computers organized in groups offered a nice way to work on project work. On Friday morning the classrooms were buzzing of people working on building their games for devices they needed for the next week's Nordic Game Conference.

I also got a tour around KAMK's game testing laboratory, where researchers test games from game companies using neurological and physiological tests. It would be quite interesting to see my brain's reactions to different type of games!

In addition to the student-driven Kajak Games, I also visited the premises of the Kavio Game Cluster at the campus, which  is working on enhancing the Kajaani Game Development area even further by helping game developers and students to get into the business in the Kainuu area.
The Kavio Game cluster guys gave me an artbook on game projects from KAMK with lots of coolio graphics

A very successful trip I'd say, back to Tampere with lots of inspiration! (You can find the Kajak art book from the Score lab)

Minna Eloranta, student of the International Media programme
Score Facebook page


Wooga Game Jam was organized  15.-17.3. Two Score members, Andy and I and also 5 students from Kajak traveled from Finland to Berlin to create games during the weekend. We came a day earlier, so we even got to see some of what Berlin had to offer!

The Game Jam kicked off at Wooga's office on Friday. Their office was amazing, and we had some presentations at their newly opened auditorium. After that, we split up into groups and started jamming. I grouped up with 4 Kajak students.

Our coolio team 

Our jamming went pretty smoothly, especially since Wooga offered us drinks and food for the whole weekend (and our workplace was right next to their kitchen..)
We developed on Windows Phone, which was a new platform for me. Our awesome programmers Petri and Olli-Matti did a great job in developing and polishing the game. 

Our protagonist, Luchador


Creating the menuscreen with our programmers in the background



Our to-do list in our working lab, programmer Petri and the producer/game designer Julius 

After two days of working around the clock, our hard work was rewarded by the winning prize! And most importantly, we had tons of fun!

 Minna, Elsa, Olli-Matti, Petri and Julius, the happy winners

Here's some gameplay video:



- Minna

http://www.facebook.com/ScoreGameDev