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news and events
Calling All Members From Amy Minyard BAFTA Events and Membership Officer
CPr e a t i v e A l c h e m y : S e a s o n 3 laying Away - Developments in Mobile Gaming is present- ed jointly by BAFTA, NMK and TIGA as the first event, on April 23, in the new third season of the very successful Creative Alchemy programme at the Academy.
Creative Alchemy, produced by Stephen Jeffery-Poulter, is a unique high – profile season which aims to engage new and traditional media creatives. It invites leading national and inter- national industry speakers to dis- cuss and explore opportunities to cross-fertilise existing visual, audio and written artistic and entertain- ment content across new and emerging digital platforms - inter- active TV, broadband internet, mobile wireless devices, etc.
In particular, this ongoing pro- gramme will address the complex issues surrounding non-linear nar- rative structures and the fragmen- tation and blurring of genre boundaries that will result.
All industry predictions indi- cate that the mobile gaming market is about to go wild – inspired by GPRS enabled phones, the looming potential of 3G and armies of enthusiastic, tech-hungry consumers.
As the gaming industry braces itself for massive expansion, mobile gaming already account- ed for 8% of traffic through Europe’s major portals in 2002.
According to some analysts, the global market for wireless entertainment could reach
$17.5bn by 2006, while another research report calculates that there were already 43m regular users of such services worldwide in 2001 and predicts that this fig- ure will increase to 850m in 2003.
The current crop of mobile games are dominated by ver- sions of PC and console games such as EA SportsTM, FIFA World Cup 2002TM and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® alongside repack- aged old arcade titles like Pac- Man and Spectrum games clas- sics such as Pong.
Then there are a range of products linked to major movies and successful television shows including Men in Black II, Ice Age, Big Brother and Who Wants to be a Millionaire to name but a few...
There is, of course, a rapidly expanding choice of original mobile games for solo as well as networked players, some of which are taking advantage of the GPRS capabilities of new hand- sets to create a new genre of ‘location specific’ entertainment.
This evening seminar will exam- ine existing and future market openings for games delivered to the rapidly proliferating range of wireless devices. Speakers will con- sider the range of current offer- ings and try to predict the impact of 3G and Java-enabled handsets on the next generation of mobile games.
The event will include two detailed case studies of recent mobile games with their produc- ers discussing the creative, tech- nical and commercial challenges of developing successful prod- ucts – one from an original cre- ative idea and one which has been adapted from an existing entertainment brand.
These presentations will be fol- lowed by a panel debate, chaired by a leading industry fig- ure, where commissioners, pub- lishers, platform owners and independent developers identify the key issues which will encour- age or inhibit the potential future success of the UK’s mobile games industry in a booming world marketplace.
After questions from the audi- ence there will be a networking session, and drinks will be available.
CJ o n fi r m e d C o n t r i b u t o r s
ohn Abbott, MD of Hailstorm, will present a case study on the evolution of their very successful game Trapped! which started off as a wap product and evolved into a full colour arcade game on TTPCom’s platform. In Trapped! the player must guide Sprintus Maximus, a Roman Legionary famed for his athletic ability, as he makes his way through 20 treacherous mazes, avoiding huge rolling boulders that mercilessly follow him through the mazes.
Hailstorm, an independent mobile games studio based in Banbury, Oxfordshire has devel- oped mobile games over many platforms, including J2ME, WAP, HDML, SMS and European iMode. The company has achieved com- mercial success in many territories, most notably in North America where it has a distribution deal with Airborne Entertainment.
Hailstorm also works with Mobile Scope AG, Cash-U and TTPcom in Europe, and will be announcing partnerships for J2ME content shortly.
As Managing Director and co- founder of Hailstorm, Abbott has over six years experience devel- oping all kinds of video games, from large console projects to small java games.
Balbir Blugan, Business Development Manager, Kuju Wireless division will be talking in detail about the development of one of the company’s wireless games linked to a major TV series.
Kuju Wireless, an independent group within Kuju Entertainment, has multi-platform development capabilities covering all the cur- rent platforms and develops titles for market leaders in the Wireless Space.
Recently the company launched a package of brand- new Java-based titles which run entirely on the handset and need no connection to play, and which are also suitable for con- version to larger-screen devices. These included the BAFTA nomi- nated World Fighting Champ, Nitro Challenge, the 18th Precinct and Ripple.
The Kuju wireless division has recently begun working on inter- active TV. Jumble, a fast-paced
puzzle game, is the first in a raft of exclusive new titles which they are developing for Sky Gamestar – Sky digital’s interactive TV games portal.
John Chasey, Managing Director of iomo ltd, will be chair- ing the event. John is a founding Director of TIGA www.tiga.org.uk, the Independent Game Developers’ Association, and is the board representative on its Mobile SIG, “TIGA Mobile”.
iomo ltd are award winning UK developers of entertainment con- tent for mobile devices. Recent titles include BAFTA nominated Scooby Doo, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Stuntman, Monopoly, Wentworth Golf, Thief: Constantine’s Sword and Thunderbirds, for customers including Nokia, Eidos, iFone, Vodafone, Aspiro, Digital Bridges, In-fusio and Empire. Technologies covered include SMS, MMS, WAP, J2ME and Symbian.
Paul Maglione, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Digital Bridges, is in charge of acceler- ating the company’s penetra- tion into the global market, and has a BA from Brown University and a Sloan MBA from London Business School. An international media executive with over 20 years experience, Paul previous- ly held positions with CNN Interactive Europe, NBC Europe and Turner Broadcasting.
Digital Bridges is a world leader in mobile entertainment providing the distribution channels, content, brands and technology to bring mobile entertainment to a global mass-market audience.
The company’s proprietary interactive content server plat- form (UNITY) generates, delivers and monitors usage of multi- device, multi-user and multi-lan- guage interactive entertainment content and community services
Digital Bridges’ publishing (dbi) arm works with the industry’s most innovative game developers to create exceptional mobile enter- tainment solutions and also pub- lishes mobile entertainment appli- cations based on globally recog- nised licenses from many of the major media and entertainment brands including Star Trek, Thunderbirds, Cartoon Network, The Weakest Link, Space Invaders
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