Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.07.2010, Síða 8

8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2010
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R E STAU R A N T
AND LOUNGE
The Icelandic Gaming Industry is a
relative newborn among the organisa-
tions here in Iceland. Formed just over
a year ago, the IGI was created with
the hopes of fostering a stronger and
more supportive environment for gam-
ers and game designers alike. One of
their many projects is an annual awards
competition, aimed at attracting new
talent to the field. The first IGI Awards
took place this past winter; the win-
ners were just announced at the end
of May. We sat down and chatted with
some of the folks involved in the IGI and
the awards to get a better sense of this
fledgling industry.
A MAN OF MANy HATS
Kristján Friðbertsson has played many
roles for the Icelandic Gaming Industry.
He has done web editing, event plan-
ning, public relations, and a smatter-
ing of other things to support this new
community. But, that’s the point he
says; the IGI was set up to be an egali-
tarian club. “The whole organisation is
based on everyone donating what time
they have and it makes for a very nice,
collaborative feeling. The only people
with specific titles are the board, but
most of them do other things inside the
organisation as well,” Kristján explains.
Kristján hopes that this style of organi-
sation will prevent barriers from form-
ing, allowing any and all who are inter-
ested to take part. “We want this to be a
grassroots thing and we're also trying to
get many interested people who aren't
involved in the industry yet. A lack of
titles is a good thing.” Along with this
egalitarian set-up, the IGI Awards is
another measure that, Kristján believes,
will bring in new members.
“We knew people that were trying to
create their own games, so we wanted
to try to activate these people more and
give them a chance, not just to show-
case what they're doing but to give
them a platform to express that and
try to formalise it,” Kristján says of the
motivation behind forming the awards,
a long winded competition that intro-
duces newcomers to the entire process
of creating a game. The end goal was
to offer support and encouragement
to those who are interested in game
production, but may lack the proper
resources and guidance required to
break into the field.
COLLABORATION IS KEy
The non-hierarchical nature of the IGI
and its principles results in the organi-
sation being completely separated from
advertisers and money for market-
ing. Because of this, getting the word
out about the awards relied largely on
word-of-mouth—through Face book,
bloggers, free media and the IGI’s on-
line forum.
Officially starting in November 2009,
the Icelandic Gaming Industry Awards
consisted of a number of monthly
meetings, intended to familiarise all the
applicants with the field of game pro-
duction. The meetings featured talks
by industry experts who explained the
comprehensive steps involved in build-
ing, creating, and designing a complet-
ed game.
Another purpose of these monthly
meetings was for interested partici-
pants to meet other like-minded game
enthusiasts and hopefully form produc-
tive collaborations. From the beginning,
Kristján and other IGI members expect-
ed that interested entrants would band
together, combining their individual
skills, in hopes of creating a successful
game.
“We never expected everyone to
have the entire skill set,” Kristján com-
ments, “because it's quite a big skill
set you need to create a computer
game. The hope was that if you were
interested and if you had a skill in art
or programming, you’d show up and
see if one of the other group’s projects
was something you could see yourself
working on.” In most cases, particularly
with the winning teams, this was what
happened.
qUALITy & qUANTITy
This long competition came to an
end on May 29th at the University of
Reykjavík’s Day of Games celebration,
where winners were announced and
prizes were awarded.
This being the very first IGI Awards,
Kristján and the judging panel, com-
posed of industry professionals, were
unsure of what to expect from the en-
tries. However, Kristján tells us that,
“every one of the judges said that they
were amazed by the quality of what
they were shown. It was definitely a
close competition.”
The entries were judged using a
number of criteria, with special focus
placed on the game as a whole. “We
were looking at the big picture, the
entire product. Game design is always
important, but we looked at the whole
package,” Kristján explains. With the
large number of quality entries re-
ceived, honourable mentions were also
included at the awards ceremony.
AND THE WINNERS WERE...
A group calling itself Clockwork Alien
took home first prize. The group is
eleven people strong, and consists of
programmers, artists, designers, and
writers. Project leader Auðunn Jónsson
and lead writer Kristjón Halldórsson
had been working on their own game
world for years, but had never really
gotten off the ground.
“We had nearly everything we need-
ed. We were just waiting for talented
programmers, designers and things
like that; we couldn’t do anything with-
out them. So this competition really
did it for us, because before, no mat-
ter how much we advertised, no one
responded,” says Auðunn. Having the
IGI Awards in their pocket, Auðunn and
Kristjón can solicit for programmers
and artists with an actual, tangible
backing to their project. “The competi-
tion gave us the grounds to start talking
to people,” Auðunn comments.
Clockwork Alien’s winning entry
was a demo of their large-scale project,
‘Path To Ares’, an alternate universe
adventure RPG featuring a biopunk (a
slightly different variety of steampunk)
society. This competition has helped to
provide their project with some legiti-
macy and encouraged them to follow
through with this game, for which, they
assure me, they’re very grateful.
The group took home an HP com-
puter from Opin Kerfi, software from
Microsoft, books and a workspace from
Innovation Center Iceland, and a free
semester of a business course from
Klak—basically everything a develop-
ing, independent company needs to get
up and running. Through this competi-
tion, Clockwork Alien has turned itself
into a real gaming company.
Similar sentiments were offered by
the second place group, aGame Com-
pany, who captured both the ‘Most In-
novative Entry’ as well as ‘The Best En-
try from the North’. Their approach was
slightly different from Clockwork’s, in-
stead focusing on completing a simple,
level-based flying game.
At the IGI Awards, aGame Compa-
ny’s eight-person team scored a work-
space in Reykjavík and Akureyri from
the Hugmyndahúsið, as well as books
and a course from the Innovation Cen-
ter.
aGame project leader Kjartan Jóns-
son says that his “main goal with this
competition was to get to know people
who also wanted to spend time creat-
ing games.” It appears this was a suc-
cess, as the group is now working on
several mini-application games for vari-
ous gaming platforms.
LOTS OF THINGS ON THE HORIzON
It appears that this grassroots industry
is undeniably taking off. The IGI is cur-
rently negotiating a partnership with
the University of Reykjavík as well as
Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík. At the same
time, ideas are being tossed around
to ensure that next year’s IGI Awards
are bigger and better. Other goals for
this budding industry focus on govern-
mental lobbying, to ensure that gaming
companies can continue to flourish and
operate here in Iceland.
The Icelandic Gaming Industry
Awards are only a small part of this
new exciting industry, but they have
certainly had an auspicious beginning.
In attempting to increase accessibility
to the industry and attract newcomers,
they have helped birth two new Ice-
landic gaming companies; something
quite unexpected in the aftermath of
the kreppa. More things are on the ho-
rizon for the IGI. Keep your eyes peeled
as this organisation focused on creat-
ing virtual realities, manages to change
our own!
Will We Foster A
Nintendo-Of-The-North?
Feature | Supplement
The Icelandic Gaming Industry is starting to grow some roots
These 'Icelandic Gaming Industry' guys are part of the 'creative economy' that's the focus
of former Grapevine ed. Sveinn Birkir Björnsson's excellent feature (see page 20). We think
they're pretty cool, but what's with that 'Icelandic Gaming Industry' moniker? Sounds odd.
ALLISON SAvAGE
jULIA STAPLES
1. Auðunn jónsson & Kristján Friðberts-
son 2. Fly On The Wall, the entry from
aGame Company 3. The team from
Clockwork Alien posing with their new
HP Computer.