The details behind Dublin Gaming Mini Con

On Sunday, September 22nd at the Wynns Hotel Dublin this collection of groups will be running a free entry mini gaming con as a back up for the European Games Festival.

They have no official affiliation with the con but have come together to put on a small event for those who have bought train tickets, flights, hotels and more.

If you know anyone who had plans for The European Games Week the Dublin Gaming Mini Con is a must for them. This will allow them to enjoy themselves this weekend as there are several events set up and they cater to everyone. I personally am impressed with what this collection of geeks is doing. They didn’t have to do but hopefully, this will help soothe the sting of the cancellation of The European Games Week.

Stay tuned to GamEir. Also, be sure and converse with us on Twitter (@gam_eir), Facebook (@GamEir), and Instagram (@GamEir). Check out our videos on Twitch (GamEir) and YouTube (GamEir) and we’ll give you all the latest content.

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As part of their events, the team behind European Games Week are always trying to raise awareness around the gaming community in Ireland and abroad and as such they are offering 20 spots FREE to game developers who would like to showcase their game at the event. This is an opportunity not to be missed.

There are a few T&C’s to apply but if you’re interested you need to sign up @ https://europeangamesweek.com/summit-tickets/ and use access code INDIEPROMO

What you need to know for applying at European Games Week:

• The free application is for the 17th & 18th September only (Summit)
• Each applicant gets full access for free to the event as well
• It is valid for 1 person only (Additional €50 for an extra person)
• Must bring own equipment and any additional branding materials. (A full setup is available on request at extra cost)
• A 6ft Trestle table with power will be available to each applicant
• Each applicant must be at least have a playable demo of their game
• Each game must be video game-related only
• If any applicant would require additional space (6ft) they can apply at a discounted rate of €150.00 ex VAT
• Each applicant will also get a discounted rate for the festival on the 21st & 22nd September (consumer) of €150.00 ex VAT

Terms & Conditions Apply

Stay tuned to GamEir, and if you’re interested, converse with us on Twitter (@gam_eir), Facebook (@GamEir), and Instagram (@GamEir). Check out our videos on Twitch (GamEir) and YouTube (GamEir) and we’ll give you all the latest content.

The post An offer you can’t refuse for European Games Week appeared first on GamEir.

The details of The Big Video Games Quiz:

• The Big Video Games Quiz is this Wednesday, 31st July
  at Token, Smithfield.
• 1st Prize €75 Token Cards (5x€15)
• 2nd Prize €25 RAGE Gift Card
• Best Team Name: Pitcher of Beer
• Booby Prize for the losing team.
• 8 rounds of questions
  with pictures, audio and video
  are all presented on the big screen.

The Big Video Games Quiz is sure to be something that everyone we can enjoy and if this is successful then there will likely be even more events across Dublin and the other counties. What I’m excited about are the ridiculous video game team names that will be created. Just imagine all of the great teams throughout video game history. I personally would go with Avalanche as I’m a huge Final Fantasy VII fan.

Find the tickets here and hurry they’re almost all gone.

Stay tuned to GamEir, and if you’re interested, converse with us on Twitter (@gam_eir), Facebook (@GamEir), and Instagram (@GamEir). Check out our videos on Twitch (GamEir) and YouTube (GamEir) and we’ll give you all the latest content.

The post The Big Video Games Quiz you need to attend appeared first on GamEir.

Tell me a bit about yourself!

My name is Benjy Bates, and I am a game developer. I live in Dublin, I was born in England. Durham, northeast, underneath Newcastle and Sunderland. I call myself Benjy because there are two pro golfers called Ben Bates and one DJ called Benjamin Bates.

You’ve recently put out a game called The Outpost Nine, and this is the first episode of the game, right?

The game’s about a year old, but it’s just got a Steam release now, which is exciting.

Tell me about the game.

It is kind of an amalgamation of a lot of different things. It is part-text adventure, part-visual novel, with kind of point-and-click elements to it. If you’ve ever played a game called Snatcher or if you’ve ever played really old Hideo Kojima games, it’s very evocative of those.

It started as a lot of different things. I don’t know what you’re like creatively, but for me, I have a million ideas at once, all trying to be something and burst through onto a screen. So, originally, The Outpost Nine was a cowboy game and then – THEN – it somehow became a game about kings and knights, and it just kept going and going  until I sat down and I had something that I thought looked nice? ‘Cos it went through so many different art things, and the original build was this text adventure in which you had to avoid being eaten by an alien. Based literally off Alien. So that’s what I had.

People played the demo, they thought it looked great, they thought it played great, they liked it, which I didn’t expect at all, and then I decided ‘Tell you what, I’ll make a whole thing of it. If this gets as much popularity as it does, then yeah sure, I’ll go along with it.’

So gimme a quick plot synopsis for The Outpost Nine.

It’s a game that follows the skeleton crew of an outpost on the moon of ‘Cobalt Paradise’. They get a distress beacon, they go into the ship and they find that they have an extra guest, who is a horrible monster. And that’s kind of what the basic outline of it was, but now that I’m going into creating more content for it, what I’m focusing more on the character side and less on the horror elements. I want more world-building flashbacks in there too.

The aesthetics are pretty distinctive. What inspired the look of The Outpost Nine? I see a kind of ’70s vibe with the colours.

The colours are saturated. It’s a VHS-style look, but instead of being more muted, I wanted it to be more vibrant. To catch the eye a bit more. Alien is my favourite film in the whole world and I wanted to make something that I could put my love of that film into. I’m also a huge fan of Halloween and I wanted something that felt like that. There’s a lot of different things in it. I’m a huge fan of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, the Italians of gore. Some martial arts aesthetics. I wanted something that felt kind of grindhouse. Something that looked like a horrible-arse film that you’d see at a grindhouse at two o’clock in the afternoon in some horrible cinema.

What are the challenges of making a game by yourself that end up making the work different from big studio games?

Well, you’ve got to consistently put work in. You’ve got to have a lot of self-discipline. I guess that’s the same with everything. I can be very lazy, and there are days where I just don’t feel like I want to do anything creative. But the more effort you put into something, the more consistently you’re putting effort in, that’s what makes it stand out from everything else.

I don’t know if the constraints necessarily make for better storytelling. I’m not under the same pressure as someone in the AAA industry, I don’t have the same creative limits, I mean. I can tell, literally, the story I want; I am my editor; I am my writer. Actually, if anything, I think that freedom can make a project worse. Limits on creative projects can make something really interesting and make something really fun. I had my own limits and that helped The Outpost Nine.

So what kind of advice would you have for someone looking to develop their own game? How can they use the constraints to their benefit and avoid the pitfalls?

Well, there’s always gonna be constraints anyway, because for instance, I’m not a coder. I don’t code. I know very basic ‘My First Coding Language’ kind of stuff. That’s my real constraint. That’s why this is a point-and-click game. But I love point-and-click games, so that’s not really a bad thing.

If anyone’s getting into the industry and they’re thinking ‘I’m gonna make this game, and I’m gonna do everything,’ – you’re not gonna be good at everything. I understood that a visual novel has a visual aspect to it, and so can a text adventure, and so can a point-and-click.

How did you get into making games?

I was an artist. I studied film, but I’d never made a film, I’d never written anything. Like I have housemates who are working in film, and they used to shoot films when they were teenagers, so I don’t know what lofty dream I had. I think I just wanted to get into games.

When I was between about 8 and 10 years old, for Christmas I got a charity boxset game. It had Road Rash 2000, a Myst and a Broken Sword. I didn’t know any of them, the only game I wanted that year was WWF Attitude because I was like a little normie baby. When I got Broken Sword I sat down and it blew my mind, cos it was like looking at a film but you controlled a character. Everyone was just living their life and you could go up and talk to them. I’d never seen anything like that before.

So, I wanted to make games like that when I was a kid. I always drew them down, in copybooks, where the character would walk to if I clicked something. I thought it would be a pipe dream because I didn’t know how to make a game and nobody really told me. So that’s what attracted me to film. Then I got into a coding class because I couldn’t get a job, and then that coding class went from one place to another, and I eventually got into the game dev whole thing. It all just fit cos I’d been raring to do it since I was a kid, so I hit the ground running.

What personal strengths do you have that you think benefited developing The Outpost Nine?

I’m an artist, so I know how I want it to look. Also I guess, my interest in creative writing. I’m not the best writer in the world, and I don’t think I ever will be, but I can tell when something is bad. Gaming dialogue is the worst, I don’t know if you know this, Cora –

Metal Gear Solid?

Yes! Dreadful. Gaming dialogue is quite possibly some of the worst dialogue in the world. If gaming dialogue was in a film, we’d laugh at it. What I was trying to do with The Outpost Nine was trying to write it in a way where it already felt tongue-in-cheek? So, the characters all use ’70s vernacular, which I think is something that I’ve never seen before. I have three vernacular dictionaries up all the time when I’m writing. Because I want you to play The Outpost Nine and feel like ‘This is Ben’s game because they all talk like this.’ I wanted to make something where the dialogue felt not-terrible.

What is the best way for somebody to get into game development?

Well, YouTube has become a fantastic resource for getting into game development. First of all, you have to pick an engine. There are loads. Picking the right one for you is the tough one, it just depends on what you want to work in more. I would recommend Unity, out of all of them. There are so many different things you can inject into Unity if you don’t know anything. I made The Outpost Nine in Unity, using really simple drag-and-drop tools. So there’s that.

If you’re making something very specific, there are engines specifically for those, and none of them are bad. What you wanna do is look at a game engine before you look at language, because if you’re going to code from scratch, that’s insane. That’s something that an intermediate person would do.

Once you pick an engine, watch YouTube tutorials. I used to teach a course, it cost 6 grand, that’s insane money. You don’t want to spend that much before you’re sure that it’s something you want to do. There are really dedicated people with YouTube channels that you can put a quid in on Patreon, and support them, or actually a tenner, that’s more fair. When I was making The Outpost Nine, I looked up a Youdemy course for Unity, cost me about a tenner (I got it half-price) and even then, that was so valuable. Look at Youdemy, look at YouTube.

If you would prefer a more hands-on approach, you could always do a course.

You worked at Pulse College, right? Did you find it good discipline to teach as well as learn?

100%, yeah! Everyone was great, too, it felt really nice to do that kind of thing. Pulse is a really good college, it’s really great. The price can be expensive for some people, but that’s how colleges are. And nothing forces you to learn more than being in that kind of environment. If you put money into a course, you’re going to finish that course.

So, the kind of gamer who’d like The Outpost Nine. What other games would they be fans of?

Older Hideo Kojima games, adventure games. But it’s so heavily based on Alien, I think that it could kind of fight itself into people’s Steam libraries even if they haven’t played this kind of game before. There’s a lot of people who really like the aesthetic of it, which is very strong. People see the ad and then they want to play it. I don’t think it’s for any specific type of gamer really.

Finally, Ben, what’s you favourite lame line from any game ever?

Oooh it’s… ‘Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?’

Is that Time Crisis?

No! It’s Bad Dudes.

Oh. I should have guessed. Thank you Ben!

The Outpost Nine can be checked out on YouTube right now, with some great Let’s Plays by users such as RiskRim and Yippee Ki Yay Mr Falcon.

Chapter Two of The Outpost Nine is in the works as we speak.

Like the Facebook page!

Let your pals here at GamEir know – have you ambitions of game development? Have you made anything or do you have anything in the works? There’s so much talent here in Ireland, and all you have to do is want it and work hard! Support small developers, my dudes.

The post Interview: Benjy Bates – The Outpost Nine appeared first on GamEir.

If you’d like to be in with a chance to win these tickets leave a comment below about who your favourite videogame character is and why.

• Be sure to include which day you would like to attend in your answer.
• This competition is open only to residents of Ireland.
• Travel and accommodations are not included, prize winners are expected to make their own way to the event.
• The winners will receive one pair of two tickets to attend the event.
• Competition ends at 13:00 pm GMT on Tuesday 21st of November 2017.
• The winner(s) will be notified by 18:01 pm GMT on Tuesday 21st of November 2017.

If you want to learn more about GXI and why wouldn’t you it’s set to be something outstanding check out all the links below.

Games Expo Ireland Facebook
Games Expo Ireland Twitter
Games Expo Ireland Official Website

The post Win tickets to GXI with GamEir appeared first on GamEir.

“Hey there!

Brandon here, Community dude for Token, a restaurant – bar – retro arcade – pinball parlour – event space that’s opening around mid-May in Smithfield. We’re really looking to build a community of passionate folks who enjoy what we’re doing. A little about us:

Token’s gonna have an interesting lineup of food that features the food-truck style items that torment us daily on Instagram lol. And we’ve got a full license so everyone can enjoy food and drinks while hanging out.

Our space is about 6000 square feet, so there will be around 30 games at a time to play. We’ve got more than we can fit, so we’ll rotate in others throughout the months, but I think we’ll start with Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat 2, Mario Kart, Addams Family and at least 2 dozen more. We’ve got all the machines listed here in Dublin already.”

Be sure and throw as many coins at the Token Kickstarter as you can, you’ll be making an already great event even greater and if you’re interested check out the full list of machines that are going to be on offer here.

Related Links:

Token Twitter

Token Facebook

Token Kickstarter

The post Token, the retro arcade restaurant needs your help to go that extra mile appeared first on GamEir.