Waiting for monday

I'm counting the hours till Monday 6th when the Master begins. In order to calm down I've looked for things about the Master. There is something that maybe, only if I've time and money, I would like to do some of the courses of BCNPlay, done by the same people as the Master, the Pompeu Fabra University. It's a summer school about video games, where you can acquire new knowledge, for amateurs and professionals. It has courses about, for example, design and creativity or shader programming, all courses are in the context of video games.

In the Master as in BCNPlay, we found the name of Daniel Sanchez-Crespo as director of the courses. Here he has his personal web -I think-. There you can find lot of information about him: documentation, presentations, articles, etc. I've seen that he is the founder of Novarama, where they work with the platforms Game Boy Advance, PC, PSP, Nintendo DS and Xbox360.

I've found an interview of him here from iCatFM -in Catalan-. He talks about BCNPlay '08. I think the best question is the last one: "which platform do you prefer?". His answer being more and less:

[...] Nintendo's consoles have reached their limit [...] Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are very good platforms [...] but PSP is the console with which you can innovate more [...] You'll see next year.

Perhaps we should think in a PSP video game for the Master!

Big expectations

Some days ago, I went to the offices of the Master in Video Game Development, to give my university title. The person on charge is a cool guy that showed me the temporary facilities. Temporary because the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) is building new facilities, but not any facilities. UPF is building the communication campus in Barcelona innovation district, 22@. A place were we'll have all the tools to create anything from video games to animated films.

Returning to the guy, when he took me to the classroom, he explained things we would do. Apart of the Master agenda, the most outstanding things were:

• Some Xbox 360 to play.
• Edge magazine, Spanish edition -I would prefer the English edition because the Spanish one has a month of delay-.
  
• Close contact with the people from Master in Animation. Because interactive movies are a new tendency in video games. See The Bourne Conspiracy, Heavy Rain, or Splinter Cell Conviction. -I will talk about this tendency in future posts-.
  
• Video games conferences with people from video game industry. They're trying to bring the creators of Gears of War to the UPF, for example.
  

But the thing most awesome was the idea to choose the two best video games projects, and join all teams to improve these two video games and participate in contest around the world. See the game Galaxy Scraper, finalist in the Independent Games Festival '08. The new in Spanish here. This game was create with only 5 people. Think what could happen with a team of 15 people.

Another good news. The guy said companies as Konami and Codemaster were coming to Barcelona to open offices. That means a close contact with the Master. But I haven't been able to find anything on this for the moment.

Anyway, big expectations. We will see what happens.

First post

Welcome to the blog!

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a Engineer in Computer Science who is going to begin a Master in Video Games Development -or Master in Creating Video Games as they say-. I need a place to share and to explain what we do. Because, if you're capable of explaining something and others understand it, this proves that you've understood and assimilated this knowledge.

The course begins in October 2008 and ends in November 2009 for only 30 persons: 15 artist and 15 programmers. I feel very lucky to be included. The course has two big blocks, in the first one, artist and programmers work together, because it is important to know the role and the work of the other. In the second one, you go to the specialized branch. Finally, you are in a team of two programmers and two artist -more and less- where you get to develop a video game.

I have many expectations with the course. I love technologies, animation, cinema, and overall, video games. In the future I would like to work in the business. But I'm going to take this course along with other project: eventuo. It's a big project, my partners and me are very involved in it. Take a look at our blog (Spanish).

I hope this post will be the first of many and that you will enjoy all of them.