After guiding more than 500 fans through evenings of games, good times, topical debates and Play-Doh in Season 1, new sponsors bluegfx join the Nights to make them better than ever.
Here’s recap of what happened at Season 2.
Episode 1 Launch Party (28th January 2011)
We launched GameCityNights Season 2 with a party of epic proportions. Featuring entertainment from:
Time Freeze Annual Biannual Convention - Local performance group The Megaphones presented a hilarious tribute to a forgotten classic of sci-fi TV, Time Freeze.
Derek Williams presents Free Market Economy – An experimental music performance chronicling his life selling video games from his market stall. A video of Derek’s set in it’s entirety can be watched here.
Graham Goring – Stand up comedian and man of many slideshows who entertained us with his tongue in cheek tales of growing up as a videogame developer geek.
‘Theremin Hero’ Greig Stewart – Combining his talent as a world-class thereminist with Guitar Hero and Super Mario Bros to use the theremin as a controller. It really has to be seen to be believed. Greig ended the evening by playing the Tetris theme on a laser harp. A LASER HARP.
Oh and we played a huge game of pass the parcel in our special prize-winning segment ‘A Winner Is You’.
Episode 2 (Friday 25th February)
Crytek UK shared some of the secrets behind their upcoming title Crysis 2.
Delving deeper into the inner workings of some of the UK’s biggest development studios, Managing Director Karl Hilton opened with Frontend, an incisive and frank look at the end of Free Radical and the beginning of Crytek UK.
Steven Lewis, Lead Level Designer at Crytek UK, delivered a one-off talk about the creation and large-scale destruction of Crysis 2’s in-game world as he guided fans through the design process of the multi-player maps.
Also – Lee Petty, Art Director at Double Fine productions joined us via Skype for a ‘From The Desk Of…’ feature. He discussed working on the incredible Stacking and the recently announced Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster.
Paul Butler unleashed his Augmented Vision with a brand new standup set about videogame villains.
Gambling Lambs completed an epic Minecraft challenge to create a brilliant a piece of in-game artwork in 3 hours.
Episode 3 (Friday 25th March)
Jakub Dvorsky, of the brilliant Amanita Design, graced GameCityNights with his wonderful words, work, pictures and general presence as he guided fans through the unveiling of new games Samorost 3 and Botanicula, and interactive music video Osada. Oh, and not to forget Kooky. Who can forget puppetry of that level of skill, wonder and imagination? Not only did Jakub give the world premiere of these fantastic works, but also offered an insight into his life, history, creative process and more, thanks to some probing from Frontend guest presenter Martin Hollis, founder and CEO of Zoonami. Rounding out the evening, videogame inspired graphic designer Cory Schmitz joined via Skype to present his work as this month’s From the Desk of, giving a frank account of his meteoric rise from aspiring student to world renowned artist.
Other frankly brilliant moments include Nintendo gracing fans with the new 3DS to try, an enlightening debate as to whether Sensible World of Soccer is the best game ever made, the unveiling of Ruth MacLeod’s GameCity5 film and the first combination of interactive live gaming, comedy and prizes thanks to Paul Butler
A Winner Is You prize fund contributors included Capcom, Square Enix, Nintendo and Insert Coin Clothing, and finally a thank you to those who contributed to the evening, with NerfGames, Olivier Etienne and Ben Bradley demoing their brilliant work.
Episode 4 (Thursday 28th April)
Stewart Gilray of Just Add Water did a wonderful job of unveiling several new projects and presented an exclusive look at their work as they take the reins of the Oddworld series. Lorne Lanning joined us live from Oddworld Inhabitants HQ in Berkeley, California for From The Desk Of… in which he examined the Oddworld legacy, the future of Oddworld Inhabitants and the HD remake of his critically acclaimed game Strangers’ Wrath. Oh, and the ‘weaponisation of pop media’. It was powerful stuff.
In true GameCity style we ended the night with a duel. A Winner Is You brought out everyone’s fierce competitive nature in a series of tense laser gun battles with a minimal amount of cheating.
Episode 5 (Thursday 26th May)
TT Game’s Jonathan Smith popped in for an evening of nautical fun. He guided guests through the buccaneering world of LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean with a live playthrough and Q&A session. Brian Provinciano presented his 80′s inspired game Retro City Rampage all the way from his desk in Vancouver. The GameCity guests became the first people in Europe to play the game.
The night was also crammed with the usual assortment of indie gems and saw the return of our Blow Blow Blow the Boat game, this time with a chocolatey twist.
Episode 6 (Thursday 30th June)
Episode six was an interactive extravaganza. We invited down loads of developers who’d been creating marvellous projects using Microsoft’s Kinect. Chris O’Shea gave a fascinating insight into his work showing off a range of projects including his Air Guitar Simulator and Interactive Childrens Storybook. Richard England showed off his Kinect Music Visualiser and our regular indie developers Nerf Games brought along their Kinect painting game.
Dr. Sketchy’s did a wonderful job of running a videogames inspired life drawing session. There were a range of cosplay videogame characters to doodle with a range of challenges thrown into the mix.
At the end of the night the lights were dimmed and the synaesthetic marvel that is Child of Eden was played on the big screen.
Episode 7 (Thursday 29th September)
Tiny Invaders, the first title from Hogrocket was nearly among us, and the entire team are prepared to dominate the (games) world, beginning with a stop at GameCityNights.
Creative Director Peter Collier, Managing Director Ben Ward and Technical Director Stephen Cakebread lead the night as they presented our new tentacled overlords on the big screen, recapped their move from Bizarre Creations to independent studio and shared stories of life at Hogrocket.
GameCity[Silent]Nights
With the festival season over, the festive season began. This meant Christmas parties galore! On Thursday 8th December in Antenna we had mince pies, games of Johann Sebastian Joust with silly hats on, board games, prizes, elderly relatives drunk on sherry and Owain Davies knocking out some christmas carols on his Tenori-on.