Albany

Let's ensure November gets off to a great start with an Albany IGDA social night!

The Albany IGDA social night is a great excuse for game industry folks of all experience levels to get-together and network in a relaxed atmosphere. Come on out and meet other professional game creators in the area. There's no agenda or schedule - just show up, have a drink or two, and chat with like minded developers.

During the event we'll also be speaking to attendees about what types of IGDA events they would like to see over the coming year.

SUNY Albany will be the host site in Albany for the 1st Annual Global Game Jam, from January 30th through February 1, 2009. Other sites around the world will run game jams with similar rules and limitations, each starting in its own time zone.

What's this game jam thing?
A game jam is a cooperative gathering of game developers to encourage experimentation and innovation – participants come together without a team, without a game idea, and are given a subject/theme to incorporate in their game while meeting new people. At 3 pm on Sunday, games are uploaded to the global site, and local games are reviewed on site.

Facilities
We will have a lecture center for the kickoff video feed and the demos at the end of the jam on Sunday. There will be two computer labs (with 70 computers) in the SUNY Albany science library. Both of these areas are nearby a central food court.

Schedule
Friday:
• 3 pm – people can start arriving, have registration, get familiar with space, mingle
• 4 pm – hall will open
• 5 pm – opening ceremonies, theme announcement, team forming
• 6 pm – planning and making games!
• 11 pm – computer labs close
• 12 pm – campus center closes

Saturday:
• 9 am – computer labs open, campus center opens
• 5 pm – computer labs close
• 12 pm – campus center closes

Sunday:
• 9 am – computer labs open, campus center opens
• 3 pm – game submission deadline
• 3:30 pm – game presentation
• 5 pm – we’re out of there!

Directions & Parking
The Science Library is at the SUNY Albany Main (Uptown) Campus at 1400 Western Ave. Directions to the campus can be found on the SUNY Albany website. You can also download a map with parking information to print out here.

Parking on Friday is at the Visitors Lot - please mention that you are attending the Game Jam.

Parking on Saturday and Sunday is at the Indian East Gold Lot.

See the Parking Map for how to get to these lots.

View Larger Map

Software
Lab computers will be available for use with the following software installed:

Game Maker
Adobe Photoshop, Flash & Illustrator
Microsoft Office: Excel, Powerpoint and Word
Blender
Audacity
GIMP
Microsoft Visual Studio Suite 2005
Sun Java Development Kit (JDK)

For a full list please check the SUNY ITS Website

Cost
Pre-registration is closed. Register on-site for $7. We have a limited number of Global Game Jam T-Shirts and pins available to everyone who pre-registered and the first 18 people who register on site.

Food
The registration fee at the door will go toward food for the duration of the Jam. Some food will be made available to participants.

What to bring
Bring yourself. If you have a computer you want to work on, bring that. USB keys aren't a bad idea either.

What not to bring
Pre-organized teams and pre-designed games. Everyone is encouraged to form teams on Friday after the theme of the game jam has been announced.

Constraints
The rules of the game jam prohibit the use pre-made content (this includes program code, audio, graphics, models, etc.) unless it was publicly available at least a month prior to the game jam. The SUNY labs may also be closed at night (TBD).

Intellectual Property
All Games, Ideas, Art, Code and Concepts made during the Global Game Jam are owned by the members of that team. This includes all aspects of intellectual property, including Patents, Trademarks, Designs and Copyright. In the spirit of a game jam there are often many people helping one another. When appropriate acknowledgements will be made to those parties, all members of the team are held to standard industry practices of collaboration.

All participants of the Global Game Jam will allow their game to be archived on the Global Game Jam website in the form it was submitted at the end of the game jam on February 1, 2009. Participants may ask to have an update of their game posted with notice of version information.

All materials made at the Global Game Jam can be used for demonstration and lecture at conferences, schools or industry venues (example: GDC 2009) with the expressed discretion of the Global Game Jam, the IGDA and IGDA Education SIG.

As an initiative of the IGDA, the Global Game Jam is fun and trying to keep things simple. Rule of thumb is that team are not going to illegally exploit others' IP, and that in turn, everything we create becomes part of the public domain. Participants agree that their participation in the Global Game Jam will hold no one liable for any loss or damage.

The Albany IGDA Chapter will be participating in the 1st Annual Global Game Jam which is coming up on January 30th- February 1st. This event is being organized by the IGDA Education SIG. The Albany site for the Game Jam is here.

Elizabeth McLaren reports on the sessions on the first day of the 2nd Annual Games in Education Symposium in Schenectady, NY. This event is organized by members of 1st Playable Productions, WMHT and the Schenectady Museum. The goal of the event is to educate local grade school and high school teachers about how games can be used in the class room. Following are Elizabeth's notes:

Tuesday’s kickoff of the 2nd annual Games in Education symposium at Schenectady Museum in Schenectady, New York, began with the three-person panel ‘A New Approach to Games in the Classroom’, with Brock Dubbels, Alex Games, and Peggy Sheehy. Brock’s talk emphasized the importance of play and how it should be encouraged, rather than more commonly taking classroom education as a punitive environment where education is serious and you had better not fail.

Tuesday, March 18th at 5:30pm. A protest will be held in front of Troy City Hall at 1 Monument Square. In support of the Sanctuary for Independent Media and against the abuse of public power to suppress art and dissent. The protest, which is being organized by a new ad hoc group calling itself the Capital Region Committee for Free Expression. Come join the IGDA, the UAG, and the newly formed Committee in a stand against censorship and oppression. If this mod project is allowed to be shut down, we are opening the floodgate for a maelstrom of censorship of independent game projects everywhere. For info on the protest and the new committee email.

IGDA members Tim, David, Justin, Megan, Colin and Tobi at the protest on Tuesday

The next Albany IGDA meeting will be held on February 13th from 6 to 9pm (presentation starts at 7 PM), at Brown's Brew Pub. Joel Gonzales will be giving his GDC talk, "Invasion of the Communities!"

Ernest gave a great talk at RPI last night. If you missed it, you can still check out the slides for the talk on his website and a real audio recording from the same talk he made at GDC 2007.

Slides from Ernest Adams talk last night can be seen on his website here: http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/Rethinking/rethinking.htm

Real Audio from this lecture is also available: http://realserver.earthlink.net/~www.designersnotebook.com/Media/Rethinking.rm

All the rest of his lectures can be found here: http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/lectures.htm

27 people (including Steve Okimoto from Nintendo of America) joined us after for food and drinks at Holmes and Watson in downtown Troy.

At the lecture

Kathleen Ruiz, Ernest Adams and Marc Destefano

Hanging out at Holmes and Watson after Ernest's talk

Ernest gives his final farewell

The fourth Montreal International Game Summit is coming up on November 27th and 28th! For the last two years we have been going up with members of the chapter and RPI Game Dev Club. This a great nearby conference for professional and student developers. It features an excellent series of talks for all disciplines (including some of the best ones from GDC) and is an ideal length of time for busy game developers.

The Albany IGDA at MIGS 2006.

The early registration discount closes on November 1st and IGDA Members get a discount. If 5 or more people are interested we can get a group rate.

Send us an email to albanyigda@gmail.com
if you are interested in the group rate or joining a car pool to the conference.

Registration for the conference is here.