Last year there was the Gamehotel event in Zurich and I thought it would be a good idea to start this new year with a look back to that event. Spot@nothing had to say this about Gamehotel (in German, ask Babelfish for a translation):

http://blog.nothing.ch/2006/10/gamehotel-2006-grosse-namen-an-einem-kleinen-event/

Now that things are slowing down again from the end year run in late 2006, I look forward to an interesting 2007 and more interesting IGDA chapter meetings.

If the expo is as big as the amount of mails sent, they are definitely right about "the biggest show". Now this is what I call marketing. :)

Update (24.1.2007)
Another email from the same event. They really are working on getting an entry in my blacklist.

http://www.geneva.ch/_electronic_arts_headquarters_geneva_location.htm

Electronic Arts today announced plans to create an international headquarters for its publishing business in Geneva, Switzerland.

And

http://www.geneva.ch/take-two.htm

Take-Two, a leading worldwide publisher, developer and distributor of
interactive entertainment software, hardware and accessories, establishes its international headquarters for publishing in Geneva.

What a nice surprise!

(See the complete report in the extended entry)

and Reto Senn

from bitforge gave a great presentation on the highs and lows of game development on mobile phones. The presentation was concise and being given by two engineers was refreshingly high in content and low on hype.

The different architectures of the 300+ phone models and the different software stacks were covered. Tools and techniques for coding for multiple targets were covered, particularly for areas that currently poorly or inconsitently implemented, for example sound drivers.

Not only programming details were discussed, but also more prosaic matters like how to get your game noticed, where the money is and how to get your hands on it. The post meeting questions were lively and ranged from different target audience of mobile game, ie ~50% women vs your traditional game markets to the death of the PDA.

Discussion

Another Discussion

The night was enjoyed by all, many thanks to Adrian Naegeli and Reto Senn for
giving such a great presentation and Adrian Wiesmann and Felix Martin for all the work bringing this meeting together. I am looking forward to see what the next one brings.

Ronald

P.S from Adrian: The best part was the hands on "lab".

This is just a quick reminder that the second IGDA Berne Chapter meeting will take place this

Thursday 2nd of March at 18:30

at the

Musig Bistrot Monbijou.

Here are the details again:

MUSIG-BISTROT Monbijou
Mühlemattstrasse 48
3007 BERN
http://www.musig-bistrot.ch/lc_map.htm

Adrian Naegeli will present a demo about Mobile Game Development. I hope there are at least one or two other commercial mobile game developers attending as well (I hope you can make it). So plenty of informations and discussions to follow.

To introduce you to the topic, here are some links for your reading pleasure:

EA anticipates growth in mobile gaming
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=374295

John Carmack on Mobile Development
http://www.mobileindustry.biz/article.php?article_id=971

And to see where the money hides:
http://www.handango.com/marketing/Yardstick/Handango_Yardstick_Year_End.pdf

I look forward to see all of you.

The 2nd Berne Chapter Meeting takes place the Thursday, the 2nd of March 2006 beginning somewhen around 1800 at the same place as the last time (details about time and content to be announced).

We will start with a demo about Mobile Game Development and will have plenty of time to start a discussion about mobile games and other topics afterwards (plus time for some beers and rumours about GDC, E3, Revolution... :) ).

Stay tuned on our chapter mailing list for further details.

March the 1st (primary) and the 8th (backup).

We try to have the meeting at March the first but if we run into trouble with either the locality or the demo we will switch to the backup date.

Stay tuned on our mailing list for further infos concerning the date and the program.

This is how the restaurant we met looks like. Must look this blurry because of the cold weather :)

And then there was our meeting room.

After a short welcome and introduction to the Berne Chapter and it's goals we started with the social part of the meeting.

picture 2 - picture 3 - picture 4

We had a few good beers,

made silly faces,

made more silly faces

and had interesting discussions.

picture 2 - picture 3 - picture 4 - picture 5 - picture 6 - picture 7 - picture 8

Somewhen the evening ended and so did the meeting.

Thanks to all of you for attending and making the start of the chapter such a success. I look forward to see you all (and all the others which were not able to make it) at the next meeting somewhen in March 2006.

I am currently working on a meeting report with some pictures of the event so expect an update of this blog somewhen soon.

The location is Musig Bistrot Monbijou. Be warned there is not a lot of parking around the restaurant.

MUSIG-BISTROT Monbijou
Mühlemattstrasse 48
3007 BERN
http://www.musig-bistrot.ch/
map : http://www.musig-bistrot.ch/lc_map.htm

All who are interested in developing games are welcome!

More informations will be postet to the mailinglist and this website when they become available.

- A city based, not a region based chapter, although not living in Berne is not a restriction to be a member, the focus will be on events in and around Bern.
- Regular meetings where the interested parties can meet, exchange and have a beer (or 3).
- build a mailing list and other communication method where the chapter members can communicate easily with each other.

Anybody who is interested in making any type of game on any platform is warmly welcome.

We intend to start with 4 meetings a year where we mostly talk about games and game development, including technologies, game design, opportunities, etc. While we think it is good to socialize, we would also like to learn from each other and to see, experiment, play with, break, put back together and break again* new technologies, ideas and projects. Every second meeting we intend to have a presentation of some new technology or relevant topic.

The first meeting will be held in Berne. Concrete informations will be released when they are ready.

To keep updated about events there is a Berne IGDA Chapter mailing list. To join the mailing list send an empty email to this email address:

igda-berne-chapter-subscribe@swordlord.ch

You will need to validate your subscription with an answer to an auto generated mail.

Happy gaming and welcome to the new chapter IGDA Berne Chapter

*not necessarily in that order