After the break you can read the text of an email that was sent out to Clinton Lowe and the attendees of our first Athens GGDA/IGDA meeting. Overall the event was very successful. I think we came away with a core group of people interested in making the chapter a success. I think the chapter itself will also be an excellent starting point for independent game development efforts in the Athens area. GameJam time!
The Inaugural Meeting of the Athens Chapter of Georgia Game Developers Association (which I’m hoping will be co-branded as an IGDA chapter as well) will be today, November 11th, at the Pub at Gameday. The full annoucement of the event can be found on the GGDA website. The synopsis listed on the site is:
The launch meeting of the GGDA Athens Chapter will focus on letting interested members of the Athens community know about these efforts and the role that the GGDA and IGDA plays in assisting the efforts of members. Dr. Casey O’Donnell of the University of Georgia and President of the Athens Chapter will be updating attendees of his and UGA’s gaming related efforts as well as discussing what he hopes will be a new pocket of game development and innovation. It is also an opportunity to gauge interest in participation in the Global Game Jam events on January 30th
I will post photos and event notes here after the meeting. The slides have been posted as a SWF file here.
Last night’s plenary session seemed to set the benchmark for talking about the state of the videogame industry more broadly, but also in the state of GA. In part, that is what has made the conference so far a particularly interesting one it demonstrates the kinds of intersections that occur between local activity and creative industries more broadly. But back to the Friday night plenary…
Andrea and I will be heading down to Atlanta tomorrow for SEIGE at the Marrietta Hyatt. It should be a great introduction for me (and those students of mine in NMIX 4200 who are planning to head down for the event) to the GA game development scene. What I’m hoping to find is a new fieldsite or three willing to accomodate me over the next few months (years). I’ll of course be hard pressed to find any studio as accomodating as Vicarious Visions was during my dissertation research, but I’ll try.