Las Vegas Chapter

October Meeting

Hi Everyone,

I'm taking some time here to announce that this Tuesday, October 10th we will be holding a meeting. It's been a couple of months since our last get together and I've gotten quite a few requests to have a meeting. We've decided to change our meeting location from our local Chili's and the Art Institute of Las Vegas has been gracious enough to sponser us with a meeting location.

As usual if you will be attending please send me an email at mike.mcgehee@gmail.com so I can get a head count.

Where: The Art Institute of Las Vegas

Date: Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Time: 7:00 PM

Directions

July Meeting Recap

Greetings all,

I'm happy to report we had a fairly successful meeting on the 11th. We had a total of three new faces show up, so hopefully we'll start experiencing more growth. As always if anyone has any ideas about how to bring in more developers to our chapter drop me a line at mike.mcgehee@gmail.com to discuss it.

]]> The topic for the night was Complexitity vs. Simplicity. It was quite a discussion. We touched on numerous points of interest, everthing from web based games, the casual games market, gamer expectations, and even Hollywood and Blockbuster Games. As usual it can be pretty much agreed amongst this group that every game has it's market, even if it is a niche. We all had a great time and I really enjoyed our discussion.

I look forward to seeing you all at our next meeting in September.

July Meeting

Hi everyone, just wanted to announce that our next meeting will be held on July 11th, 2006 at the usual Chillis location. I'll be sending out emails to all of you as reminders and I hope to see you all there.

Also, if you have never attended one of our meetings before please inform me ahead of time that you will be attending by emailing me at mike.mcgehee@gmail.com

Topic: Simplicity vs. Complexity: Does the gameplay of yesterday still apply today?

Where: Chilis at Sahara and Decatur

Date: Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

Time: 7:00 PM

Directions

April Meeting

Greetings again everyone. Just wanted to make a quick announcement about our April meeting which will take place on April 25th, 2006. I have had some emails from some new developers to our area so why don't you guys stop by and meet them. I'll be emailing all of you the info if you're on the mailing list, so if you don't get an email from me please contact me at mike.mcgehee@gmail.com so I can get you added to it.

Thanks again guys.

Topic: Envoking Emotion in Games.

Where: Chilis at Sahara and Decatur

Date: Tuesday, April 25th, 2006

Time: 7:00 PM

Directions

March Meeting

We will be having a pre GDC meeting on March 14th, 2006 at the local Chillis location. The topics will be current events within the Game Development industry, GDC events, and the main topic of "Interactivity in games, now and tomorrow."

Remember to RSVP to mike.mcgehee@gmail.com

Thanks everyone, hope to see you there.

Where: Chilis at Sahara and Decatur

Date: Tuesday, March 14th, 2006

Time: 7:00 PM

January Meeting pushed back!

Hey guys,

Sorry to report that I'm going to have to push the meeting back until the 17th. Turns out that some things came up with a few people and the turnout would be a lot better if we took it back a week.

See you on the 17th!

January Meeting

Our next meeting will be held on January 10th, 2006. That's on a Tuesday, a few people have requested earlier in the week meetings so we're gonna give that a shot this time around. The meeting will be at our local spot and usual time. Hope to see you all there.

Where: Chilis at Sahara and Decatur

Date: Tuesday, January 10th, 2006

Time: 7:00 PM

Topic: TBD

See ya there.

Quick reminder

Just a quick reminder that our meeting is this Sunday at our local place. If you plan to come shoot me an email at mmcgehee@pixelshiftstudios.com so I can get a headcount. See you all there!

Where: Chilis at Sahara and Decatur

Date: Sunday, December 4th, 2005

Time: 7:00 PM

Topic: Developer Rights, the give and take.

Directions

Student Panel Recap

On the 17th of November, 2005 the Las Vegas Chapter hosted a panel discussion for students in the area. The students had the chance to ask questions of the local game developers, workshop a game idea, and they also were able to participate in a raffle to win some prizes.

On the subject of how the panel went all I have to say is WOW! We had a great turnout of about 50 students and the panel really enjoyed the event. There were some great questions asked and we were able to brew up quite a bit of student interest in the IGDA. Hopefully that will result in some student memberships for the orginization.

]]> It's still a bit undecided but I'm thinking it would be nice if we could hold something like this again next year, and maybe even make it an annual event for our chapter. After all, we do have to remember that these students are the future of our industry and if we can help shape and develop them our industry will be very strong in the next generation.

I've uploaded some photos of the event as well, so have a look!

Here are a few good views of our panel.

Students had the chance to workshop a game idea. The idea? A game involving 2 characters and fish.

and of course you can't forget the questions.

It was great time for all and I was really glad that we could give this to the local students.

Don't forget members that we have a meeting in our usual spot on December 4th, 2005 at 7:00pm.

See you then!

Las Vegas IGDA Student Panel

The Las Vegas IGDA will be hosting a student panel on the 17th of November, 2005. All students that are currently attending High School or College will be able to attend free of charge. The event will consist of a panel of professionals that the students can ask questions to about how to enter game development or just questions about the industry in general. Students will also have a chance to participate in a small workshop where they come up with a game concept and present it to the panel to have their ideas critiqued.

The purpose of this panel is to build a better standing knowledge of the local development community and the presence of the IGDA chapter here. We have roughly 100 seats available and hopefully we'll fill them all up. To help raise the attendance the local CompUSA has agreed to sponsor the event by giving away some door prizes that will be raffled off during the event. I am also attempting to get sponsorship from Intel, Canon, and Apple for the event. If any of you would like to aid in sponsoring the event just shoot me an email at This address.

Here's a link to the flyer that I will be passing around.

Flyer

December Meeting

Where: Chilis at Sahara and Decatur

Date: Sunday, December 4th, 2005

Time: 7:00 PM

Directions

October Meeting Recap

Hello Everyone,

Some of you have probably been waiting on the recap of the October meeting, so here it is! Our meeting went very well, this time we had nothing but new people attend and man it was a blast. I had the pleasure of finally meeting Mike Legg from Petroglyph Games, Jill Zinner from Premier Search, and many other new people. Our topic for the night was “Censorship in games, where do we draw the line and who is responsible.” Through-out the discussion many points were brought up, some members suggested that the developers have a social and moral responsibility to make good games that don’t involve over the top violence. Other members said it was the parents, retailers, or even the ESRB. After much discussion on the topic I think we all came to agree that it was probably a combination of all these things, but we also have to accept the fact that the gaming industry is this decades taboo. All in all the meeting went extremely well and I hope to see many of those new faces again.

See you all at the next meeting,
Mike

P.S. Here's a link to a picture from the meeting.
Meeting

Montreal International Game Summit 2005

As some of you may be aware the Montreal International Game Summit 2005 is quickly approaching. The event is on the 2nd and 3rd of November in Motreal so if some of you were looking to take a vacation this should be the perfect opportunity to do so. I've been informerd that all IGDA members recieve a 10% discount on their passes making this quite a deal considering the list of speakers that they have scheduled. If you want to check out some more information on the event just shoot over to http://www.montrealgamesummit.com/.

New Site

Welcome to our new site layout! I hope that everyone can navigate this new layout easily and will enjoy the new style it brings to our chapter page. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could members of the chapter please send me an email at mike.mcgehee@gmail.com so that I can build a current chapter mailing list. This will help me promote meeting awareness, get topic ideas, and keep the chapter in touch and active. Also, please use the link at the right of the page to access our forums and take a quick moment to post. Lastly, you can now subscribe to the pages RSS feed by clicking one of the links at the bottom right of the menu. This will help us all keep up to date with chapter news and happenings. Thanks in advance!

October Meeting

Where: Chilis at Sahara and Decatur

Date: Thursday, October 6th, 2005

Time: 7:00 PM

Directions