Fall 2021 Game Jam 10/22-10/24!

Hello everyone! 

We will be hosting our first game jam of the year from October 22 to 24, a week and a half from now, in the Gould-Simpson building on campus. There are no major or experience requirements; teams will be formed right at the beginning of the jam, and you will be able to create your very own game over the course of the weekend! Meals will be provided on Saturday and Sunday - snacks will be available the entire time. 

The jam will formally begin at 5:30 on Friday, October 22nd. We hope to see you there!

Join our Discord and keep an eye on the announcements channel for any further updates or changes. 

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Officer Elections + Final Meeting Soapbox

It's time. 

(dramatic dark souls music) 

During our second-to-last meeting of the year on Monday April 26th, we'll be holding officer elections for next year! Due to the number of applicants and number of roles available, some have already been predetermined, but there are a few that still need to be voted on - join us on Twitch to do your club-sanctioned civic duty and vote for next year's officers :

We're also starting a new tradition for the last meeting of each year - the officer soapbox! Come attend a series of micro talks on Monday May 3rd from the officers about literally anything. Potential topics include snails and avocado rants. 

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Officer Applications Overview + Game Night!

It's the time of year for officer applications again! 

We'll be opening up applications for people interested in joining the club's leadership team for next year. To prepare you all for this, next Monday's meeting (April 5) will consist of a quick overview of how officer applications and elections will work, in addition to a description of the different officer roles. The application form will open right after the meeting, and remain open until April 26th, the day of the officer elections. 

If you are interested in joining the officer team, we encourage you to attend! Please feel free to contact a current officer if you have any questions.

After this quick presentation, the rest of Monday's meeting will be a game night! Join us for a fun, relaxing night of games like Jackbox, Among Us, and Friday Night Funkin. You are free to bring or suggest any other games as well.

PLEASE NOTE: This entire meeting will be on OUR DISCORD, NOT on Twitch.  

We've got one more guest speaker lined up for you this month, so stay tuned :)

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Spring 2021 Game Jam!

Hello, everyone! As you may already know, it's game jam season! 

The Spring 2021 game jam will be taking place from March 12 to March 14. Form a team (or work solo, if that's more your speed) and make a game over the course of a weekend! Get inspiration from a theme revealed at the start! Potentially win an Xbox One X (sponsored by the TEALS Program)! 

This is a great opportunity to learn a lot and have fun, so no experience is needed, just an interest in game development :) 

Sign up on itch.io >>HERE<<

The teambuilding channel on our Discord is also open, so introduce yourself and start contacting people you're interested in working with! 

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GDC Vault Showcase!

Hey everyone! In light of the GDC 2020 trip cancellation, and GDC 2021 being smaller and virtual due to continuing COVID-19 complications, we have decided to launch our own event! We're calling it the UA Game Dev GDC Vault Showcase - it's an exclusive, week-long opportunity to view some of the best talks GDC has to offer, including a number of Vault members-only talks.

(The GDC Vault costs $550 per person for a year-long subscription, so this is a great opportunity to view some of the content there, free-of-charge!)

Logistics!

Our Vault Showcase will run from Monday, February 22nd, to Friday, February 26th.

The showcase will begin at 5:30 PM (our normal meeting time) on each day of the week of February 22nd. It will be streamed live in the Voice channel on our Discord server.

Additionally, we will also be hosting a few additional live talks and workshops throughout the vault showcase! These will occur earlier in the day, before we stream the talks, and will be indicated with an asterisk before the scheduled time. 

And that's about it! We think this event is gonna be really fun, and a great opportunity for anyone interested in game development to learn from industry professionals, without the immense costs of going to GDC itself or purchasing a GDC Vault subscription. Be sure to join our Discord server to stay up to date on the event, and if you want to learn about what we have planned so far on each day, read on!

The Schedule!

Monday, February 22nd - Design

5:30 PM - Can You Make a Good Game Without Good Play Mechanics? [30:24]

Prasert "Sun" Prasertvithyakarn

Square Enix Co., Ltd.

6:00 PM - Immersing a Creative World into a Usable UI [30:33]

Steph Chow

Steph Chow Design

6:30 PM - Taking an Axe to 'God of War' Gameplay [1:01:16] 

Jason McDonald 

Sony Santa Monica Studio

Tuesday, February 23rd - Marketing

*12:00 PM - Game Design, Communication, and Q&A with Rami Ismail [1:00:00]

 Rami Ismail

 Vlambeer

5:30 PM - Build Your Own Fan Club: How to Use Your Email List [33:48] 

Chris Zukowski

Return To Adventure Mountain, LLC

6:04 PM - Trailer Made: What Makes a Successful and Memorable Game Trailer [29:23]

Derek Lieu

Independent

6:34 PM - 'Slay the Spire': Success through Marketability [1:01:25] 

          Casey Yano 

Mega Crit Games

 Wednesday, February 24th - Career

*12:00 PM - Networking 101 [1:00:00]

Jade Marmorstein

UA Game Dev

5:30 PM - Finding Your Place in Games [20:05]

Yaprak DeCarmine

Game Jolt

5:50 PM - A Survival Guide for Game Developers [33:17]

Richard Vogel

Certain Affinity

6:23 PM - 8 Keys to a Long Career in Games [1:02:59] 

Don Daglow 

4thRing Inc.

 Thursday, February 25th - Art/Audio

*2:00 PM - Beyond Stick Figure: Drawing Basic Human Anatomy [1:00:00]

Jade Marmorstein

UA Game Dev

5:30 PM - Inspiring 249 Million Strangers: Art Direction for a Global Audience [43:17]

Riana McKeith

King

 6:13 PM - 'Moss': Design Before Sound [29:36]

Stephen Hodde

Polyarc

6:43 PM - 'DOOM': Behind the Music [1:00:57] 

Mick Gordon 

Game Audio Australia

Friday, February 26th - Advocacy

5:30 PM - #1ReasonToBe [48:43]

Rami Ismail, Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh, Lual Mayen, Camila Gormaz, Juan de Urraza, Nourhan ElSherief

Vlambeer, Arkane Studios, Junub Games, BURA, Posibillian Tech, Instinct Games

6:20 PM - Accessibility Best Practices: In-Game Communication [30:56]

 Douglas Pennant

 Creative Assembly

6:51 PM - 10 Ways to Make Your Game More Diverse [58:09] 

Meg Jayanth

Freelance

TL;DR

Come join our Discord server and get exclusive access to some of the best GDC talks, streamed live at 5:30 PM every night from Monday, February 22nd, to Friday, February 26th.

We'll also have our own workshops and talks throughout the week!

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Project Fëa AI talk and upcoming Ren'Py workshop!

Welcome to week 2, everyone!

We have an EXTREMELY exciting schedule of guest speakers and events this month! To make everyone's lives easier, we'll be adding a talk and event schedule to the sidebar of the website and in the Discord so you can plan ahead for the meetings and events you're interested in attending. :)

This Monday's meeting (February 1st, 5:30 PM MST/AZ Time), we'll be having our first guest speaker of the semester - Steven Eiselen, a former graduate student and TA with the UA Computer Science department. Some of you in the club may remember him! He'll be giving a talk on his graduate research project, Project Fëa: Simulating Personality, Emotions, Social Relations, and Physical / Mental Needs for autonomous Non-Player Characters within video game / computer simulation worlds. The first half of the talk will briefly introduce and discuss 3 different AI models, then discuss some details on how they would be augmented within the greater Fëa system towards possibly creating unprecedented, truly life-like virtual people. The latter half of the talk will be a Q&A. Join us on Twitch, and bring your questions - he will be more than happy to answer them!

On Sunday February 7th, at 2PM MST/AZ time on our Twitch channel, we will be holding our first workshop in a while! To prepare for the Valentine's Ren'Py mini-jam on February 13th, Jade will be hosting a workshop on the basics of the program. You'll be able to give suggestions and follow along as she equips you with the skills to design and program a fully functional visual novel game. Ren'Py is highly recommended for folks who are interested in creating narrative games and/or are new to programming, and for good reason - it's a super easy engine to learn. 

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