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LCEA Alumni are graduates of the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, a post graduate research centre at Middlesex University in the UK.

Many alumni have set up their own new media businesses and consultancies. Other alumni careers include graphic design, interactive media design, new media research, game design, web site development and design, animation, teaching, film making, audio design, journalism and various management roles.

LCEA alumni have a good record for winning new media awards, including BAFTAs, Milia, BIMA and others.

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GameDev.Net
Maximum game development!

The GameDev.net Daily WHY HELLO THERE. FANCY MEETING YOU HERE. Maryland has declared September 21st as Civilization V day. In a gubernatorial proclamation, Martin O'Malley, the governor of Maryland, said that September 21, 2010 is henceforth to be known as "Sid Meier's Civilization V Day." A statement went on to say that "Sid Meier is known throughout Maryland and the world as a pioneer of electronic gaming, having co-founded his first studio in Baltimore County, Maryland in 1982, and today continuing a tradition of developing the talent and creativity of future generations." The official proclamation as spoken was: "Now, therefore, I, Martin O'Malley, Governor of the State of Maryland, do hereby pay tribute to the outstanding achievements of Sid Meier on this day, July 28, 2010, and hereby recognize September 21, 2010, as Sid Meier's Civilization V Day, and call upon the people of our State to join in celebrating this salute." What a weird thing. Vanquish looks great. It also has five amusingly-titled difficulty levels. In earnings news: Nintendo reports sales down 25%, Capcom reports a 90% drop in profits year over year, and Sony Playstation Hardware and Sales increase, despite still operating at a loss. Green Bay, Wisconsin-based developer Frozen Codebase confirmed to Gamasutra that the company's Metalocalypse game has been cancelled. The game, based on the Adult Swim series of the same name, said that they "were making the game for Konami, and Konami lost the license." The studio has, apparently, known this since December of last year, though, so this is not news to them. Studio founder Ben Geisler went on to say that the company is "still moving on. We had to think quickly, but we're small, and because of that we're able to be pretty agile, so we just moved onto some new opportunities." APB and Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds revealed their new game earlier this week: Project: MyWorld. I'm, uh, actually not really sure what to think here. The game is being described as a "3D social gaming experience" and is scheduled to launch in 2011. Earlier this week, the Independent Games Developer Association announced that Zynga founder Mark Pincus would be delivering the keynote for the 2010 IGDA Leadership Forum. Mark Pincus is--wait, what? Did I miss something here? Did the definition of leadership change at some point in time and I missed the boat on the dictionary updates? Think what you will about social games -- and I'm sure there are plenty of opinions on that alone to go around -- but Mark Pincus is well-known for saying: "So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away." Clearly this is someone to aspire to. I just have no idea what's going on. So, I've been on this total portable game kick lately, so this weekend is likely to be filled with rest (because I'm exhausted), dqicks (Dragon Quest IX), Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 & Devil Survivor, and maybe one of any number of other great DS games I've picked up recently. Oh, Starcraft 2 a bit too I guess. Happy weekend, dudes and dudettes! The Daily GameDev.net Starcraft 2!!! I beat the campaign early this morning and just woke up about an hour ago after sleeping - I haven't been doing much of that since the game was released on Tuesday - which also happened to be my birthday. Best. Birthday. Ever. Now I'm hunting achievements and working on my ladder ranking - I'm currently 75th in the Platinum League (and falling fast, LOL). Best of all, however, is playing with the same friends I played the original StarCraft with back in high school. I actually made a program to steal my dad's internet password so I could sneak downstairs at night to log on and play - I generally slept through my first 2-3 periods of school classes :P So hey, if you're on Battle.net you can send me a friend request via gaiiden@blade-edge.com - or you can add me directly via name/code Gaiiden/400. But that doesn't seem to add me to your list, so if you do that, message me to say hi! StarCraft II didn't cost $100M+ - World of Warcraft did. Turns out the report I mentioned last week of StarCraft 2 topping $100M in budget monies was in error, as it turns out to actually be a figure related to the development of World of Warcraft. Blizzard says it will not be disclosing SC2's development costs "for competitive reasons". Can someone who understands business and finance explain that to me? I wanna know, dammit! It would be interesting to see where it stacks up in regards to GTA4 and GT5, for example. Tax breaks for North Carolina game devs. Says the release: "North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue on Thursday signed into law a game industry-friendly bill that will grant tax incentives to interactive digital media productions in the state beginning January 1, 2011." Looking for tax breaks in your state? It may help to organize something like North Carolina's Triangle Game Initiative. GameStop buys Kongregate. In one of the more surprising acquisitions this week, retailer GameStop has snatched up indie Flash games portal Kongregate. What does this deal mean for indies? Gamasutra rustles up some interviews and finds out. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Some people collect coins and postage stamps. This dude collects CPUs. And he has a lot. Looking for work in Salt Lake City? You may be in luck, as EA just opened a new office there. Read this post in Chinese The Daily GameDev.Net Well, I completely forgot about my Daily yesterday. That's what I get for working a twelve hour day, I suppose. Today's Hump Day is Not Literal GameDev.Net Daily awaits! The obvious bit of news? StarCraft 2 is now out. I'm not actually a fan myself, and will probably merely play through the single player once the game hits ten dollars just like I did with the first one. However, SC2 is practically a world distorting force, so it's not a huge shock that there are a few bugs. They'll probably be patched up soon enough, but if you're having trouble you may not be alone. Social games are continuing their unstoppable, Facebook driven march across the game industry -- Disney just bought social developer Playdom for $763 million. If only I'd founded a wildly successful social games developer. And speaking of Facebook, it looks like they're in for a world of privacy related pain. You might be familiar with Curt Schilling's 38 Studios. They finally announced their joint project with Big Huge Games last week, called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Well, the rumors are true and the company is leaving the Boston area for Rhode Island. The decision appears to be driven by a loan offered by Rhode Island in exchange for job creation. Other game developers in the area were somewhat critical, claiming that 38 values money over people. Personally I'd suggest that maybe they value not going bankrupt and firing everyone at 38 and Big Huge. It looks like Australia's fight for an R18+ game rating isn't over yet, as the motion was defeated as both major political parties failed to strongly back the change. Nintendo's been fighting hard against piracy, and it looks like they've won big in the UK; London's high court has ruled that the R4 and similar DS flash cartridges are illegal, because it requires bypassing Nintendo's security. This comes right on the heels of a decision in the US that jailbreaking iPhones, with the court determining that the DMCA only makes bypassing DRM illegal if the bypass is actually used for copyright infringement. I'm sure some of you in the UK have thought to yourself, "I love ice cream trucks but why isn't there an ice cream truck for my dog?" Well good news everyone. The Daily GameDev.net There isn't any kind of Daily like a Monday Daily; the Daily in which I try to salvage some news from Friday that Trent missed and then cobble it together with whatever happened over the weekend. Luckily Comic-Con happened, so some nerds were doing things on the weekend that I can report definitively on. First off is this really bizarre decision to make a hybrid of Tekken and Street Fighter. Why anyone would think to do such a crossover is beyond me. I can't be too upset at Capcom considering Mega Man Universe is going to let you play as Mega Man from the first game's atrocious North American box art. Sega continues to get mileage from its backlog of 16-bit games (where it was the leader regardless of what Nintendo says), and considering I just spent a lot of freaking money on a certain used-videogames website this weekend buying up holes in my Genesis collection, I am probably the target market. After repeatedly trying to drive me insane by limiting the number of demos given out to people who signed up on their website, Eidos is finally bothering to release the Kane & Lynch 2 demo to the public. I am not entirely sure what their plan was with this one; were they thinking they would build positive buzz around the game by handing out what appears to be a couple hundred free, immaterial demos and then snubbing everyone else who signed up without even a "sorry" email? Bungie wants you to edit levels. They also wanted you to do it back in 1996. A lot of you liked Infamous, and I did too. Well, now there's Infamous 2, which comes with this teeny documentary about its development. Hey, did you know it's the Virtual Boy's 15th anniversary? Celebrate by taping your Nintendo DS to your forehead and running down the street pretending to be a plane. Oh wait, what? Even though it was Comic Con in The America, in The Japan, there are still people dressing up. But what they don't have is Daft Punk scoring a movie about destroying Recognizers. Nor did Japan have - oh finally - a crossover between Metal Gear and Front Mission. In indie game news, an ambitious project is underway to make games based on Action 52, the cynical garbage-cartridge exercise of 8- and 16-bit systems. Do you want in on this? check out the signup list immediately. Immediately. Before you go today, check out another super cheap Indian laptop. They're down to $35 now, but apparently they'll be $10 if you wait long enough. Plus, it has a touchscreen. I'd wait for the 3G version if I were you. IGDA Reorganizing Infrastructure, Bidding Farewell to Joshua Caulfield The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is continuing the reorganization of its infrastructure to better serve our members. Earlier this year the Board of Directors enacted a new committee system, to better focus on the primary needs of the organization. Each committee is chaired by a board member and they include Membership, Policy/Advocacy, Events/Sponsorship/Partners, Technology, Marketing/Communications, Special Interest Groups and Chapters. Members-at-large and other directors also sit on these committees, allowing a broader base of game developers an opportunity to drive organization-wide efforts in these areas. Each committee will be profiled in the coming months in the newly relaunched IGDA Perspectives Newsletter (http://newsletter.igda.org). The Board of Directors will also be launching a search for a new Executive Director as Joshua Caulfield, who has held the post for the last year, will be leaving the IGDA to become the Executive Director of an association for architecture students. Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land Entries from 7/16 - 7/23 Journal Land Pick of the Week Just Glad to Be Here - rmadsen discusses some options for getting into the industry as a game tester, programmer and artist Greetings and salutations to new Journal Land citizens InfectiousGames and EternityZA! The GameDev.net Daily HELLO GAMEDEV.NET. I am Trent. I also just got home from my fourth sequential fifteen hour day so this may be short. I'm sure you're curious as to the results of my trip last week, and I shall briefly discuss those! In the last paragraph. TO BE CONTINUED. Microsoft has announced a Halo: Reach branded Xbox 360 Slim and controller. The bundle will retail at $400 USD and come with Halo: Reach, a 250GB Hard Drive, and other miscellaneous goodies. I actually think that the Reach-branded Slim looks better than the standard Xbox 360 Slim, so that's neat. I also really want to play Halo: Reach. This is probably not a surprise, but I'll state it for the record anyway. 38 Studios/Big Huge Games announced Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning this week. It's a single-player RPG, which is neat, and it has an impressively generic name. Big Huge Games has done nothing but excellent games, though, so here's hoping. I'm not even kidding when I say that this is the coolest news all week: Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is getting a remake for the PSP. Tactics Ogre was originally released in Japan on the Super Famicon back in 1995 is, to my knowledge, the forefather of one the strategy RPG (SRPG) genre and is a game I've always always always wanted on my PSP. According to source Shacknews the game "being developed by a team of developers responsible for the original game: Hiroshi Minagawa (Director), Akihiko Yoshida (Character Design), Yasumi Matsuno (Game Design), Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata (Composers)." I AM SO EXCITED. And according to Square-Enix: "Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, is being reborn from the ground up, with reworked visuals and effects, a re-arranged soundtrack by the original composers, new character growth mechanics and a new Wheel of Fortune system that adds even more replay value to the game." SO VERY EXCITED. The game has no release date yet, so it's a fair bet to say the game wont' be released for a fair while now, but that doesn't dampen my excitement one iota. EA Los Angeles is now named Danger Close. The studio is currently working on the impressive-looking new Medal of Honor game due out this October. And that's it for me this Friday. Apologies for the abbreviated Daily. I can tell you that my trip out to see the girl went, at first, disastrously with poor little Trent getting kicked out (and no, not for a real identifiable reason) and having to find a new place to stay. I ended up staying with a friend in Long Island and spending every day in Manhattan which is completely and thoroughly gorgeous and amazing and filled with creative energy. I adored it. Among many other things, I was able to check out the NYU Game Center a week ago and I was absolutely impressed at what Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, and Charles Pratt have put together there. It's a great organization, and something that I'm hoping to actually see about getting organized here in Austin (so if anyone reading this is associated with or knows anyone at the University of Texas interesting in such a thing, please contact me). Have a good weekend, GameDev.net denizens. I'm off to play about five minutes of Dragon Quest IX before falling immediately asleep while drooling on my DSi. The Daily GameDev.net Studio News: Rare, Silicon Sisters, SOE. Rare has opened a new studio in Birmingham, and has put up a YouTube video tour of the new digs. The studio will be hiring temp staff and students for contract work. Silicon Sisters, over in Vancouver, sets up shop as a predominantly female-focused studio, co-founded by Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch and Kirsten Forbes. The female focus isn't on staff though, but on creating games for a female audience. Over at Sony Online Entertainment, another round of lay-offs has been implemented to "improve operational efficiency". StarCraft II budget weighs in at $100M+ In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick revealed the figure, although it has yet to be corroborated by any real financial data. For instance, marketing costs were most likely not included, and it is unknown whether the development of the new Battle.net service set to launch with SC2 is a part of that figure or not. Regardless, it's no surprise a game that's been in development for so long could rack up such a high price tag (and rival the $100M dev cost of GTAIV). Of course, Activision expects to easily rake in 5 times as much in profits very quickly. Epic VP Mark Rein apologizes to indie dev for being a jerk. In an extensive letter published by Develop, Mark Rein writes to indie developer Cliff Harris of Positech games (Gratuitous Space Battles) and apologizes for his behavior at the Develop conference, where he proceeded to "educate" a panel of indies from the front row of the session during the topic of handling customer emails. Given the fact that developers are flinging mud all over the place these days, Cliff decided to respond to Rein's action by calling him a jerk and telling him to "fuck off". Stay classy, game devs. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Here's a report from Develop on what went down during their Develop 2010 conference recently. I don't quite understand what the hell is going on here, but this Mario Kart board game is supposedly coming out soon in Japan. Looks... interesting? Read this post in Chinese Shotgun Coming out of Beta at SIGGRAPH 2010 Los Angeles, CA (July 21, 2010) -- Shotgun Software will formally release Shotgun at SIGGRAPH 2010; the production tracking and collaboration system has been in private beta for over a year and has already amassed a dedicated client base of over 170 visual effects, video game and post production facilities. Hansoft Project Management and QA Tool Hansoft Project Management and QA Tool implemented by Arkadium Casual Connect, Seattle, U.S. - July 20, 2010 - Hansoft the leading vendor of tools for project management and defect tracking for Agile and Lean software development, today announced that Arkadium has successfully implemented Hansoft.

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