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Just for Fun

Ann Burkett — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:43:41 +0000

Brenda Garno Brathwaite or John Romero — who does a better hair toss?

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Game Design Nirvana – An Evening with John and Brenda Oct 17

Ann Burkett — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:07:49 +0000

And Game Design Nirvana it was. This was on Eventbrite at http://johnandbrenda.eventbrite.com/

An Evening with John And Brenda

Join us for an Evening of Game Design with John Romero and Brenda Garno Brathwaite.

What would John Romero Do? What does Brenda Garno Brathwaiite Think? This is our chance to ask!

OK does anybody not know who they are or what they have created? For starters John Romero designed what is generally credited as being the first genre proper and full blown archetype of the FPS. Just in case you are unfamiliar with game history scroll down and click on the links. Between the two of them they have designed for console, pc, facebook, mobile over their careers and in many different game genres, in some cases creating or evolving the genre along the way.

These are top game industry professionals, kind enough to come to a local event when they are convention keynote types. Take advantage of that for your game knowledge! It is about design, design, design for the evening.

In order to provide maximum focused time for John and Brenda and your game design related questions there will be no Sponsors or Tables accepted for this event. We love our sponsors, really we do and we love our table demo game fun even more however this event is special and it’s going to be all John and Brenda and You.

There will be food and refreshments, you don’t need to eat beforehand. And yes, of course there will be some time set aside for networking, we are game people after all!

The evening is designed with a large Q&A portion with questions being culled from the audience. We will send out a call for questions beforehand to those registered. Ask and send in what is on your mind.We will also try to take some spontaneous and follow up questions to add depth as time and format permits.

In addition we do have one of the great game speech ranters of all time in Brenda Garno Brathwaite, in case she feels like riffing on a subject, no guarantees on that but one can always hope.

Questions on their current designs with Loot Drop will need to be sensitive to their release schedule and proprietary information.

Enjoy some publicity that is already out there on what these two are and have been up to in their illustrious game design lives. Ticket policy is the typical fully transfereable while not refundable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Brathwaite

http://lootdrop.com/

http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/

http://planetromero.com/

Bios

John Romero is a game designer, programmer, artist and sequential artist whose work spans over 130 games, 97 of which have been published commercially, including the iconic works Wolfenstein 3D,DOOM and Quake. His latest Facebook game, Ravenwood Fair, has gained roughly a million players a week since its release in late October 2010. He has consulted on four other Facebook titles for the Google-acquired company Slide. He is currently the CEO of social game company, Loot Drop.

Romero is a serial entrepreneur who has founded seven successful companies including companies in the traditional hardcore, MMO and mobile spaces. His contributions and philanthropy within the commercial game industry have led to a myriad of inspired games and the founding of 10 companies. He is considered to be among the world’s top game designers, and his products have won every major award.

One of the earliest “indie” developers, Romero began working in the game space in 1979 on mainframes before moving to the Apple II in 1981. He is a completely self-taught programmer, designer and artist, having drawn his inspirations from early Apple II programmers.

Romero’s current areas of interest are Facebook games and massively multi-player online (MMO) games as well as social media and its intersection with gaming.

Brenda Garno Brathwaite is a game designer, artist, writer and game developer who entered the video game industry in 1981 at the age of 15. She worked with Sir-tech Software for 18 years on the Wizardry series and later the Jagged Alliance series among others before moving on to work with Atari on Dungeons & Dragons. During this time, Brenda had the opportunity to work alongside legends in the game industry and quite literally apprenticed in the ways of game design moving up through the ranks from lowly acolyte to lead game designer to creative director.

Since her days at Atari, Brenda has worked with a variety of companies, including Electronic Arts, Cyberlore, Firaxis and numerous companies in the social media space. She is presently co-founder, COO and a game designer at Loot Drop. Brenda develops her games both in analog and digital mediums, depending on the needs of the game. She has worked as a system designer, writer, level designer, world designer, lead designer and creative director throughout the years.

Brenda served on the board of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) until July 2010, and is presently on the advisory board for the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the Strong Museum of Play and the advisory board for Game Developer Magazine. She was named Woman of the Year by Charisma+2 Magazine in 2010 and also was a nominee in Microsoft’s 2010 Women in Games game design awards. In 2009, Train won the coveted Vanguard Award at IndieCade for “pushing the boundaries of game design and showing us what games can do.” She was named one of the top 20 most influential women in the game industry by Gamasutra.com in 2008 and of the 100 most influential women in the game industry by Next Generation magazine in 2007. Nerve magazine also called her one of the the 50 artists, actors, authors, activists and icons who are making the world a more stimulating place.

And now just for fun, how many game designers can you name in this picture?

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HTML5 Developer’s Conference Sept 27, 2011

Ann Burkett — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:45:57 +0000

Catching up on the Posts. Yes the Silicon Valley IGDA Workshops created a new conference, the HTML5 Developers Conference held in San Francisco on Sept 27, 2011

It was a great to see some of the great minds in the field of HTML5 and JavaScript there along with a business and games track that will be expanded on in the future. Had a lot of appreciative feedback on the speakers.

Tickets sold out several days before the event and

over 1200 people showed up!!!

at the Westin Hotel San Francisco, we know that because the 1000 lanyards ran out and we had to buy several hundred more. Had an after party at Jillians. Amazing!

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HTML5 Hackathon Sept 24, 2011

Ann Burkett — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:47:45 +0000

Catching up with posting all the things we did. Here is the HTML5 Hackathon at EventBrite, here was our tagline:

Held in conjunction with the HTML5 Devloper’s Conference – get ready for the new wave of games & apps – so join us for the HTML5 Hackathon @ Eventbrite!

http://html5-hackathon.eventbrite.com/

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August 9 Meet the Game and App Press!

Ann Burkett — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:55:08 +0000

Meet The Press!
Arguably the best way to get the word out about your game or your game company
is to get media coverage. Well respected online and physical magazines,
TV shows, and review sites provide their audience with an expert,
unbiased viewpoint and so have a great deal more credibility than
advertising. Media coverage can make a marked difference in not only
spreading the word, but also how your game or company is perceived.

So how do you entice a journalist to write your story? To answer that we
have assembled a panel of game-media giants to tell you about how they
view the world. Find out what makes them tick, what they want to write
about, and what pisses them off.

Panelists:

Chris Baker – Senior Editor, Wired magazine
Chris Baker writes and edits stories for Wired. He has also contributed to Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, Maxim, Giant Robot, Film Threat, EGM,
Kill Screen, and the 1-Up zine.

Jeff Scott – Founder & Chief Editor, 148apps.com
Jeff
Scott is the founder of the 148Apps network of sites covering mobile
applications and the business surrounding the development of apps.
Launched in 2008, 148Apps is an innovator in the mobile apps space,
being one of the first sites to publish statistics and metrics on the
app marketplaces it covers. Based in San Francisco, his background is in
web and mobile application development, having worked for a variety of
startups large and small before starting his own web publishing company.

Dean Takahashi – GamesBeat
Dean
is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games,
security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked
at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring,
the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times
Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360
Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on
Twitter at @venturebeat.

Sam Kennedy – IGN.com
Sam
Kennedy has been a pioneer in the videogame media since the mid-90s. He
started his career by launching Gaming-Age.com and then went on to work
at such publications as GameFan, GameSpot, EGM, and the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.
In 2003 he launched 1UP.com, the first community and content
destination for gamers, and later its two associated sites
GameVideos.com and MyCheats.com. He oversaw the 1UP Network until its
acquisition by IGN in 2011, after which he took on a broader role of
Audience Generation Director for IGN, building audiences and communities
for IGN.com, 1UP.com, and GameSpy.com.

AJ Glasser – Lead Writer, Inside Network
AJ Glasser is lead writer for Inside Network. Inside Network covers Inside Social Games, Inside Mobile Apps, Inside Facebook and App Data. AJ is a prolific lead writer on games, apps, and social networks. Previously, she served as News Editor at GamePro Media and as San Francisco Correspondent for Gawker Media games blog, Kotaku. Her work can also be found in Future US Inc. publications like GamesRadar.com and the Official PlayStation and Xbox magazines. AJ earned her Masters of Journalism from Stanford University, and her undergraduate degree in International Relations from Mills College..

Lightning Talks:

Philo Northrup – Co-Founder Envie Interactive
has been gamifying art and artifying games spanning three decades with over 50 titles published and countless awards garnered including Best Downloadable Game of the Year and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. His lifelong passion for the arts and the desire to play while he works will be on display as he lets us in on how his newest project, VIE: Virtual Island of Entertainment, is taking a slice out of a billion person pie.

Ben Savage – CEO Sibblingz
Facebook, Apple, and Google are all fighting over the emerging 14 Billion dollar mobile games market, with each party trying to attract developers into creating content for their respective platform. Sibblingz developed Spaceport so that developers don’t have to choose one over another. Welcome to Platform independence.

Agenda:

6-6:40 pm: Table Demos Networking,refreshments
6:40 – 7:00 Lighting Talks, Intros
7:00 – 7:15 Break
7:30-8:30 pm: Panel “Meet the Game and App Press”
8:30-9:30 pm: More Networking, Table Demos and close

Moderators: Ann Burkett Chair SV IGDA, Simon Amarasignham Director SV IGDA

Brought to you by The Silicon Valley IGDA

Thank you to our Venue Host: Google

Sponsors, thanks for making food/drinks and event possible:

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July 26 Get Your Mobile Mojo On!

Ann Burkett — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 08:44:37 +0000

It’s time for a relaxed mixer and a bit of “find your team” matchmaking followed by a chat with our great mobile specialists complete with zombies and talking cats and air guitar. Come get your mobile mojo on!

REGISTER AT http://yourmobilemojo.eventbrite.com/

Andrej Nabergo CEO Outfit7 Talking Tom has come along way. “Tom” and “Ben the Dog” are being represented by WME, the same firm that represents Keira Knightley and pop queen Lady Gaga. Not too shabby for what was once an off the shelf 3d cat model, so Andrej knows all about the the ins and outs of nurturing winning IP. Talking Tom and friends have been downloaded over 135million times. An elegantly simple entertaining interactive app that has become a worldwide phenomen. Bring your questions on building engaging IP or general entrepeneurship. This man knows!

Thomas Chung VP & GM, The Playforge Don’t know how to do in app monetization? Thomas Chung knows how. Free iphone app Zombie Farm uses it. Zombie farm has a revenue run rate of “double digit millions,” all
thanks to virtual goods. Accoding to Business Insider, “Virtual goods is big business for iPhone apps now. Three of the top
ten grossing apps are free, making all of their money from virtual
goods. (Zombie Farm is the number seven gross app in the App Store.)”

Besides asking Thomas about how to harvest zombies and money, you may want to ask him about the strategies he and his team used for building a great game in general at Playforge. The team will be launching a new game soon. We are all ears,

Raj Singh A mobile industry veteran having worked across the space over the past 12 years. Raj is the Founder and CEO of Fifo Labs focused on enterprise mobility.Fifo Labs was spun-out of SRI (Stanford Research Institute) where Raj served as an EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence). Previously, Raj was the founding Vice President ofBusiness Development for Skyfire, a mobile browser that supports full Flash rendering.Prior to Skyfire, Raj co-founded venture-funded Veeker, NBC’s mobile video citizenjournalism service and ToneThis, CNET’s top downloaded ringtone creation product.Ask Raj about interesting upcoming mobile technologies.

Ronald Mannak Rounding up the panel on the unfunded indie wild side we have Ronald. Yes he’s trying kickstarter and rumor has it Red Bull was more than just a friendly beer. Ronald
Mannak is the creator behind Air Guitar, turning iphone music app into a
game. Changing iPhone music gaming. Previously created Amazon’s best
selling music toys and bChamp for iPhone, endorsed by Steve Wozniak. Bring your earplugs if you are the sensitive type, we don’t know that eveyone trying it out will be a musician.

Agenda:

6-6:30 pm: Table Demos Networking,refreshments
6:30 – 7:00 Find your team matchmaking
7:00-7:30 pm: Fireside Chat/Panel on “Get Your Mobile Mojo On!” — IP that goes Hollywood, Market Pivots, Monetization, Indie Karaoke
7:30-8:00 pm: Q&A for Panel
8:00-8:30 pm: More Networking, Table Demos and close

Moderator: Ann Burkett Chair Silicon Valley IGDA

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Tuesday June 14 — How to Build Your Successful Game Company

Ann Burkett — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 18:25:45 +0000

This event will sell out, to attend register at http://buildgamecompany.eventbrite.com/

Hightlights the current world of Silicon Valley style company building for game related companies

Life building game companies was once simple. Bootstrap or find a publisher. Pretty much.

With the the explosive growth in the online and mobile gaming space of the last decade out from under the previous publisher constraints comes enough choices to make your head explode too, and we don’t mean just for special effects!

Instead of cleaning up the brains like a zombie, we suggest you check out this expert panel instead on “How to Build Your Successful Game Company” with people who have recently done it.

Jason Citron is Co-Founder & CEO of OpenFeint, the largest cross platform mobile social gaming network. Jason started his remarkable journey with critically acclaimed game Aurora Feint on iPhone.

From running out of funds to pivoting with a new
idea “Xbox Live for iPhone”, then managing like a good entrepreneur
pirate to get it covered by Techcrunch, getting into Peter Relan’s
YouWeb incubator and being acquired for $104 million — all we can say is this is someone who
deserves that raised eyebrow!

OpenFeint has over 80 million players, 20,000 developers and 5,500 live games. OpenFeint was acquired in April 2011 by GREE, Japan’s leading mobile social gaming platform, together reaching over 100 million players.

Ben Savage CEO/Founder at Sibblingz. Where Ben goes, typically successful games and platforms follow. After achieving an early facebook game success he went on to join the magic at incubator YouWeb. Credits include assisting on Happy Island and his Sibblingz team was heavily involved in the prototype and development of fellow incubee Crowdstar’s now flagship hit game “It Girl”.

Ben’s team’s latest is Spaceport. Developers write a game once, and simultaneously deploy across the entire Web, iOS, Android, and Symbian operating systems, Games created with Spaceport can be updated instantly. It uses popular Javascript with an already familiar API.
Ben’s vision is to make the process of creating games like that of creating websites; simple, fast, instantly accessible around the world and across mobile operating systems.

Mark Weeks is a partner at Cooley LLP’s Business department. His practice includes the corporate representation of emerging growth and public companies, venture capital firms and investment banks. He is involved in a full range of corporate legal projects including private financings, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, corporate partnerships and technology licensing, as well as the representation of investment banks in equity and debt transactions. Mr. Week represents numerous clients in the life sciences and technology industries, including CrowdStar, AcelRx Pharmaceuticals, IDEV Technologies, and Openfeint

Marc Burch Marc Burch is an angel investor and executive entrepreneur with extensive experience providing early-stage capital to technology start-ups. He works with founders to help develop their business models and go-to -market strategies. Marc also develops ideation, social gaming and product strategy for social media applications and has strong connections with the top Facebook developers and Ad Networks. Additionally, he has over 20 years of marketing, sales,
business development and executive management experience in technology companies.

Benjamin Wan holds an exceptionally well rounded perspective having been both on the venture and game making sides of companies. From Chief Operating Officer of online social game and app studio The Broth to Pricipal at Sycamore Ventures, Ben brings 16+years of experience in entrepreneurship.

Date: June 14^th, Tuesday, 6-8:30 pm

Venue: Cooley Palo Alto/Hanover Campus (3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA 94304)

Overview: With all the recent media coverage of the explosive growth in the online and mobile gaming space (Zynga, Rovio, Crowdstar, etc.), huge investment rounds for game developers (ie Kabam, Crowdstar, Wooga, etc.), and massive acquisitions (ie OpenFeint, Ngmoco, Playdom, Riot Games, etc), people want to understand better how it’s done. This joint event between SV IGDA and SVF highlights the current world of Silicon Valley style company building for game related companies . The event leads off with a fireside chat with Jason Citron (CEO/Founder, OpenFeint, the largest cross platform mobile social gaming network, was recently acquired by GREE of Japan for $104 million. A panel of experts follows that will cover what you need to know to get up and running and focused on success, spanning: founding team, company formation, bootstrapping, IP issues, ‘hot’ areas, operations, investors/funding, growth, and exits.

Panel Members: Jason Citron (CEO/Founder, OpenFeint), Ben Savage (CEO/founder at Sibblingz – “It Girl”, “SpacePort”), Marc Burch (Angel Investor), social game infrastructure), Ben Wan (former VC and current social gaming entrepreneur), Mark Weeks (Legal Expert, Partner Cooley LLP, clients include OpenFeint, Sibblingz, Crowdstar)

Agenda:

6-6:30 pm: Networking,refreshments
Table Demos
6:30-6:40 pm
Intro Mark Weeks Partner Cooley LLP
6:40-7:00 pmJason Citron CEO fireside type chat about the amazing journey of OpenFeint
7:00-7:30 pm: Panel on “How to Build a Successful Game Company” –Founding, Market Pivots, Incubators, Funding, Structures, Acquisition info
7:30-8:00 pm: Q&A for Panel
8:00-8:30 pm: More Networking, Table Demos and close

Moderators: Ann Burkett Chair Silicon Valley IGDA and Jorden Woods, President, SVF

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Important Advisory about Amazon’s Appstore Distribution Terms

Ann Burkett — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:08:06 +0000

The IGDA has put forward the following advisory on Amazon’s store. Sounds like a classic case of signing pricing control of your app or game away, it’s a good read:

http://igdaboard.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/important-advisory-about-amazon%E2%80%99s-appstore-distribution-terms-2/

and a follow up response:

http://igdaboard.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/amazon%E2%80%99s-clarification-fails-to-address-game-developer-concerns/

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E3 for Free? Two upcoming SV IGDA and IGDA Discounts

Ann Burkett — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:37:13 +0000

Upcoming Discount #1: For the Silicon Valley Fundraising event “Building a Better Startup”, there is a Discount code for you to use:
Enter SVF_GAME for $15 at http://svf0412.eventbrite.com/?ref=ecal

Upcoming Discount #2 If you are a member of the IGDA you can use that as one piece of info to gain FREE entrance at the famous E3 Expo, after April 25 it’s 20% off, see http://www.igda.org/e3expo2011

Not a member of the IGDA? Well if you are usually planning to go to either E3 (or GDC either) it doesn’t make much sense not to be so join here http://www.igda.org/

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Welcome Simon Amarasingham as a new Silicon Valley IGDA Director

Ann Burkett — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:58:17 +0000

The Silicon Valley IGDA is delighted to announce Simon Amarasingham will be joining the Silicon Valley IGDA as a Director.

Simon Amarasingham is the co-founder of dSonic, which has been supplying the game industry with audio for over 10 years. dSonic started from very small, humble beginnings but has grown to become one of the leading game-audio companies in the US, with credits on over 100 titles from AAA games such as Bioshock and Brutal Legend, to social/mobile games like Farmville. Originally from New Zealand, Simon is a classically trained musician who eventually discovered the game industry, where he was excited by the combination of creativity and technology

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