Hosting a Social Game Fest
What: People love and are inspired by games. Many desire to create their own. The Social Game Fest provides some background, time and tools for developers and students to make their own Social Game or Application. The Social Game Fest provides a way to learn technology and polish game teamwork while developers and artists attempt their own social game applications. There will be awards for different categories. articipants are also encouraged to submit their game or application on behalf of themselves or in conjunction with their college if they are a student for outside awards and achievements that may apply such as the Independent Games Festival
What is needed From Hosts? A room, lab or auditorium at the hosting facility that will accommodate 20 or more people with reasonably high speed Internet connection.
Optional nice to haves: A room with tables (preferably movable tables that can be arranged into groups when needed)
How Many Sessions will there be? Optimally, being that many people are not familiar with the basics of how to build a social game app, there would be a total of four two hour sessions, two for training and two for developing the games. The sessions are optimally held at a leisurely pace of 1 per week in the evenings. If a specific school or host has different constraints, we will attempt to adjust to those.
Does each Game Developer or Artist need to attend each session? No. Some people may need no training or not be available for all sessions. A participant need only register for one session of any kind to submit an entry for the Social Game Fest awards. Conversely, a participant is not required to submit a game for an award if their main motivation is to learn the technology and have fun. Each of the sessions will have it's own registration on a first come first serve basis.
Potential Benefits for Participants: Ok, first of all fun. Secondly, motivation and opportunity for for building a social game or application and practicing or learning current technologies. These include but are not limited to Javascript, PHP, MySql Database, and social application API's. These are relevant, real world technologies people get jobs doing. People who are interested in sound or graphics will also be practicing the techniques and tools by putting a game or social app together. If an individual attends all sessions they should have been walked through the basics of how to make a social game or application on a platform like facebook. Participants will also practice the never ending art of real life game project organizing and teamwork. Of additional benefit - social game applications, unlike many other games may attract a reasonable number of females as well as males participating.
What is needed from Developers and Artists: Developers and Artists will need to bring their own laptop or stand alone computer to the room unless they have pre-arranged to use one at the hosting facility.
What we will provide: We will provide an application and web server through which each participant will have a pre set up account which includes professional open source tools necessary to develop a social game or application such as PHP, avascript and MySQL database access. No student will be charged for their account, it is included in the price. By default accounts are free during the Game Fest and will be automatically closed two weeks after the Social Game Fest sessions have ended. A developer or student has the option to notify us to convert their account into a paying account (approximately $3/month) if they prefer to keep an account open for further development and hosting after the event has ended, otherwise the account will be closed automatically and no charge incurred.
How will People Sign up?: We prefer to register people online through something like everbright events. The hosting institutions do not need to help register unless for some reason they wish to be involved. Each session will have it's own first come first serve registration.
When: We will be ready to do Social Game Fests from October 2009 onward through 2010. October and November are currently reasonably full already so we are now looking for requests for Jan/Feb 2010. Please let us know the dates which work best with the colleges or hosting institution's calender and availability and we will cross check with our own availability.
Cost: We are estimating costs of $15 - $30 per developer per session depending on the room size at the hosting institution. For example if a developer attends all four evenings and the cost is $25/session then the total cost for the developer for all four weeks is $100.
Awards: There will be various award categories. We will also cover various monetization techniques for those developers who wish to monetize their games.
Who we are: Ann Burkett is Chair of the the Silicon Valley IGDA, a non-profit organization dedicated to benefiting game developers through advocacy, community and fun. She is also CEO of Caught Thinking, a local independent game and web development company. She has experience working with local colleges hosting different game related events including Game Demo Nights, Speaker panels, Game Project Connection Nights and Design and Game Jams. To see videos of some of the events Ann has organized go to http://www.siliconvalleyigda.org/ In addition to Ann there will be a paid (through the cost of the event) web and database server system administrator. The system administrator will set each participant up with an account on a server with which to develop their application on prior to any sessions. The system administrator will also be available on site in the classroom during each session to provide additional technical help and support.
Who Owns the Games Created? We assume the participants may own their own IP in accordance with whatever laws govern the state, country, or organization in question.
Community Connections
IRC chat channel: #socialgamefest on EFnet (active during fests)
General Facebook IRC chat channel: #facebook on FreeNode
Hosts and Sponsors
