The first Games Convention Asia Conference (GCAC) coming September 6, 2007 will have numerous regional game industry leaders to speak at the two-day conference, so goes the official announcement made earlier today. The press release named Joonmo Kwon, CEO of MMORPG tycoon Nexon and Nexon Mobile, to be one of those to speak at the GCAC in Asia and Pacific (A&P) commercial hub Singapore.

 

The event will be held alongside an open-to-all GC Asia Exhibition which will run up to September 9 - two days longer than the conference - in an effort to spur exposure of the region's most reputable game companies to investors, retailers and the public alike. But more importantly, Asian game developers will be able to tout their best products to international publishers.

In addition to Mr. Kwon, who will be addressing attendees on Mobile Development, James Miller (Lead Program Manager, Microsoft, USA) will prime the region's developers in the views of third-party publishing. And because A&P is a region of oft-outsourced game developer studios, a panel consisting of Charles Speyer (COO, Glass Egg Media, Vietnam), Alexander Fernandez (CEO, Streamline Studios, Netherlands) and Bob Bates (Board of Director, IGDA, USA) will tackle issues with outsourcing and its overall effect to the game industry.

Other discussions will express opinions on the growing trend of game financing, often the source of funds for independent game developers the world around. As of press time, the GCAC is accepting registrations online, reachable through the Read link provided below.

Star-studded David Perry has a lot of things to say about his upcoming project with Acclaim Games. To those of you who missed it, it's not going to be just any game. Selected applicants will form a new development team and come up with a new free MMO game. The ultimate prize is the chance to be the overall director of the said game.

Perry shared that he has been helping new talents into business for years now. Some of his past projects included helping out at Westwood College and investing a lot of time and effort with his local IGDA chapter. In relation to the "Top Secret" project, he explained,

This is really that concept on steroids, instead of just hosting students and gamers, this way we will all work together and make a game. The goal for the first game is actually just to keep it fun and get something shipped. Then we can see who did what, and who did well.

Apparently, this competition is nothing but the tip of the iceberg. Perry commented that after this, the winner will get his/her own MMO and that winner will be able to invite any talent they enjoyed working with. The director then shared that Acclaim will try to give people as much space as they need in developing the game. He commented,

The design, like before, will be based on voting, with the cream rising to the top. If you need to work on something semi-privately, you can ask the moderator to carve some space for you. So a small group can bang away on an idea and present their results. If I like an idea, I'll make it happen.

Even though it's a free MMO, Perry clarified that participants will still get something out of it. And he doesn't just mean the experience or an entry in their resume. Perry divulged then that there's actually a competition within the competition. Anybody who is capable enough will get a job offer to join his team. And then he added,

They will make royalties off the game. Hopefully they will have a pre-built audience so they will make good money from their first title. If they do a great job on their first title, obviously Acclaim would be dumb to let them go, so a career could be the final prize.

Lastly, Dave Perry commented that they are not trying to make a World of Warcraft clone. He explained that they are trying to push the paradigm forward and doing another WoW will never do that. He believes, though, that a good place to start is in a genre that everone has experienced:

I'm keeping this game simple so we can aim to be done within 12 months. I don’t want to start a 5 year project. I think we will start with something in a genre that everyone has experienced, that everyone has opinions on, and then challenge their brains. What would make this genre more fun? Prepare for plenty of discussion.

Nominations are now being accepted for the 7th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. So, what do you have to do to make sure your own personal best game of 2006 gets the award it deserves? Pray. That's about all we can do. Members of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) are the only ones eligible to vote.

Nominations for the votable game categories can be submitted through the Game Choice Awards website until January 12. The awards ceremony itself will take place on Wednesday, March 7, during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and will be hosted in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center.

The votable award categories are:

• Best Game
• Innovation
• Audio
• Character Design
• Game Design
• Technology
• Visual Arts
• Writing
• New Studio

Each votable category will have five nominees battling for the award. Four special annual awards - the First Penguin Award, the Community Contribution Award, the Maverick Award, and that favorite of favorites, the Lifetime Achievement Award - will also be presented, with the winner selected by the Choice Awards Advisory Board.

Now, since we can't vote, let's just try our hand at predictions. Leave a comment below and tell us who you guys think will win in which categories. When the awards are handed out, we'll take a look back at the predictions and see if anybody came even close.

If you've watched Pirates of the Carribean one too many times and Jack Sparrow's line; "clearly you've never been to Singapore," is still looping in your head, so much that you're planning to head to South East Asia this holiday Season, you'd be glad to know that there's a gaming related event that's about to happen there.

The second Asian Game Developers Summit is scheduled for December 9-10 at the Orchard Hotel Singapore. The event is jointly organized by the IGDA Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. It aims to promote game development within the region and to provide education, networking, and business opportunities for programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, and others involved in game development.

The two day event is set to feature lectures, forums, and round-table discussions on game game design, game technology, game arts, and other things creatives and developers busy themselves with.

The speakers at the event include Ian Livingstone, OBE (Director of Product Acquisition, Eidos), Obsidian's Feargus Urqhart, Koei Entertainment's Raymond Wong, FunCom's Ragnar Tornkvist, and USC Professor Tracy Fullerton.

IGDA Singapore coordinator, Allan Simonsen had this to say:

We are happy to have the recognition and support of MDA Singapore (Media Development Authority, Singapore) and sponsorship by key game players the likes of EA (Electronic Arts, NASDAQ:ERTS), the world's leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment and Hewlett-Packard (Commercial Systems Unit, Asia Pacific and Japan), the industry leader with more than 20 years of experience designing and certifying high performance workstations for game developers.

So heading to Singapore?

Anyway, back to good 'ol Captain Jack. When he said, "clearly you've never been to Singapore," we think he meant this.

Because September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, we bring you this Star Trek Online article (hey, there are ships there, too). The game's Lead Designer Glen Dahlgren, Executive Producer Daron Stinnet, and Lead Systems Designer John Yoo shared some news.

• The team is now up to 35 full-time developers. That's a big crowd for a game in its early stages.
• There is an already-somewhat-playable version of the game. They can play it, add features, and test it.
• The team is now fleshing out combat. That's both avatar and space. They started with an auto-attack that fires phasers and torpedoes, and then they'll go from there.

The next big step is creating the first space zone. What is Star Trek without space, the final frontier?
And through it all is the challenge of finding a balance between avatar and space actions: "The first is the interaction between characters and ships. How do you go from one to the other? How do you combine them in missions? How does this affect exploration and discovery?" It's great that Perpetual Entertainment is really trying to get the feel of Star Trek while trying to make a good game with engaging game play.

As for the screenshots that you see, the Star Trek Online team says those are from a real client based on a live demo showed at an IGDA conference! majQa'!

  

A lot of the games we know and love are well-written pieces of fantasy or science fiction. Whether it be the sweeping scale of the Final Fantasy games or even the FPS goodness that is the Half-Life series, games are emerging as another medium for valid artistic expression.

You cannot, however, make a good game without an ample story to immerse players in it. The International Game Developers Association, or IGDA, has come out with a new book to help inspire and teach a new breed of literary talent: writers for video games.

"Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames" talks about the field of game writing from the point of view of real game writers, showing you the difference of writing for the gaming medium to other media, as well as teaching you how to write appropriately within the context of video games.

It should prove to be an entertaining read, not only for writers who want to get into the field of game writing, but also for the insight it offers into the creative process of game-making.

So before going out to buy the book, you might want to check out the review first and excerpts from the first chapter. Keep checking QJ though, as we'll provide news of the latest IGDA book releases when we have them.