NFTS Games MA students have had a fantastic public response to their Games at the 9th GameCity event, in Nottingham, where one of our student Games has also hit the headlines.
NFTS Games projects have been on display during the week-long GameCity Festival October 25th-31st which has been visited by up to 70,000 people, many of them families enjoying this inclusive celebration of videogames culture deliberately programmed during the half term break..
The NFTS Games area had a diverse array of work on display, including first year projects such as ‘Hello World’ and ‘Moments of Consequence’, plus sneak previews of second year graduation projects from Paul Dillon (‘Vocal’), Jonathan Hatton (‘Hindsight’), and Ana Ribeiro (‘Pixel Rift’). These three students also contributed to the festival with public talks about their projects to appreciative and enthusiastic audiences.
Ana Ribeiro and her virtual reality based Pixel Rift project also hit the headlines in the Games media and local press - the Nottingham Post– which splashed an article over two pages, reporting both on Ana’s game and her involvement in GameCity’s LadyCade event for women Games developers and players. Iain Simons, director of GameCity, said LadyCade was a key fixture for the festival’s ninth year and added: “For us it is about getting more interesting and different people to have their voices in gaming.”
Also showing at GameCity is Criminel the latest Game created by 2014 NFTS graduate Bojan Brbora (see below). Criminel‘where CSI begins’ is a forensics photography-based game. You can watch a teaser trailer for Criminel and his previous award-winning 4PM game HERE.
This is the second time that NFTS Games students have displayed their work at GameCity - one of the biggest public facing Games expos in the UK, which we hope to attended annually. The NFTS Games department has also voiced is support for Iain Simons and his team’s plans to launch the National Video Game Arcade next March 2015 – a gallery for the National Video Games Archive and a venue for a multitude of additional cultural initiatives around videogames.
Jon Weinbren, Head of the NFTS’ innovative Games Design and Development MA course said he’d been really pleased to be involved in GameCity this year and was delighted by the amazingly positive response to the games we’ve shown – particularly as many of them were actually first year exercises never intended for close public scrutiny. He wishes the GameCity team every success with their initiatives and looks forward NFTS Games continued involvement in the future.
The NFTS Games success at GamesCity follows hot on the heels of rave reviews recently received at Eurogamer Expo (EGX). NFTS students who graduated in February this year are already making an impression in the Games industry. Albert Bentall, who designed and developed the ethereal riverboat exploration Game Sandman for the Oculus Rift, was snapped up by Sony Computer Entertainment’s London Studios to research and develop new games which utilise Sony’s own brand new Morpheus Virtual Reality technology; Bojan Brbora attracted investment funding to develop his game 4PM after it was Greenlit on Steam’s Greenlight site. Bojan is also developing the game Criminel in collaboration with NFTS Screenwriting graduate Stefan Kaday and NFTS visiting tutor and director of Trash Games, Duncan Walker. The subject is the history of forensic photography, and the setting is 19th century Paris. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust and will be released in conjunction with a special exhibition on the history of forensic science at the Wellcome Collection at the beginning of 2015.
We are still interviewing for the last highly sought after place on this hugely successful two-year Games MA course.
Click here for more details and to apply.
(Pictured are NFTS games MA students Jonathan Hatton, Leon Delgado, Ana Ribiero and Paul Dillon)
(Pictured at top of page: Left to right l-r Charlene Putney,Hannah Nicklin,Xian Chua (student), Alex Roberts and NFTS Student Ana Ribeiro with Pixel Rift game).
