GameCity5

Nottingham, 28/09/10 – GameCity, the World’s best loved videogames festival, today revealed further details of Adam Saltsman’s videogame development challenge and announced singing games critic Rebecca Mayes will compose an original score for the title. The pre-development workshop will take place in the GameCityLounge on Wed 27th, 10am and the unveiling will be in the Lounge on Friday 29th, 5pm. The Saltsman and Mayes project is part of the GameCity5 festival. GameCity5 runs from October 26 ^th – 30 ^th throughout several Nottingham venues.

Gravity Hook and Canabalt creator Adam ‘Atomic’ Saltsman and singing videogames critic Rebecca Mayes are to both make a welcome return to GameCity5 this year and combine their talents on an exciting project.

Saltsman will spend Wednesday and Thursday working with families as they contribute ideas towards an original videogame, including storyline, themes, characters and other features.

The creative process begins on Friday 29th October at 10.00am, as the pair begin their working day in front of the entire festival audience, with Mayes composing the original score for Saltsman’s title, as well as inviting people to bring their own instruments and join in.

As the public watch, Saltsman and Mayes will work for 8 hours, after which they will unveil the finished game, complete with original soundtrack for public to enjoy, as well as being uploaded to the GameCity website for the world to play.

Saltsman said, “I’m hugely excited about this new collaboration with my co-worker Rebecca. We'll leverage agile resources, action items and synergy to create a forward-thinking, outside-the-box solution with immense market potential for our demographic.  Or, we'll make a rad game.  We still haven't decided."

Mayes added, ”This project is the height of craziness. It is such an honour to be working with Adam and GameCity on a groundbreaking venture. I'd like to get as many people involved as possible, I hope everyone turns up with their instruments and best singing voices, or even just to see whether we actually pull it off.”

GameCity Director Iain Simons said, “With the financial climate as it is, it makes much more sense to invite the public to create large amounts of assets for videogame projects, bringing developers in at the last moment to ‘gameify’ them. I believe Project Milo came about in a similar way.”

The Saltsman/Mayes 72-hour event is just one part of GameCity5, the yearly festival from GameCity that explores and celebrates videogames culture. There is no booking required for this event. For the full details on the festival line-up, go to www.gamecity.org.

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NOTES TO EDITOR

Rebecca Mayes’ Blog:  http://www.gamepeople.co.uk/rebeccamayes_blog.htm

Game People:  http://www.gamepeople.co.uk/

Follow all the latest GameCity news on our website,  www.gamecity.org

Get the latest updates on our Twitter page,  www.twitter.com/gamecity

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*GameCityNights is a series of after-dark monthly events that brings together developers, students and players in a celebration and exploration of videogame culture - with prizes. Every month a brilliant headline speaker will be making their way to Nottingham to share their thoughts, passions and give a unique insight into their work.

GameCity is what a videogame festival should be. 

The Centre for Contemporary Play is a research centre based at Nottingham Trent University which pioneers innovative thinking through new partnerships. Since 2008 it has worked with a variety of leading organisations from the commercial and public sector to deliver major research and inclusion projects. These include the ITAG conference, the GameCity videogame festival and the National Videogame Archive - a unique collaboration with the National Media Museum.

Driven by leading thinking at NTU, the Centre for Contemporary Play continues to create radical and innovative projects in the academic and public engagement space.

Gamecity’s aim is to bring together developers and the public to explore and celebrate videogames and videogames culture, with a particular focus on students. We attract the best speakers in the world, offer up-and-coming artists and developers a platform for their games and create totally unique events.

Some of GameCity’s greatest hits include a world-record breaking zombie gathering, Keita Takahashi designing a children’s playground and Masaya Matsuura, Lorne Lanning, Alexey Pajitnov and Media Molecule having headlined.

We’ve worked alongside some of the most prominent names in gaming, including; Warner Bros, TTGames, Crytek, Activision, Namco Bandai, SCEE, Xbox, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Freestyle Games, David Braben, Media Molecule, Splash Damage, Harmonix, Rare, Denki, Monumental Games, Midway, Zoe Mode, ThatGameCompany, Nana-on-Sha and lots more.

Going way beyond just playing games, GameCity offers other new ways for people to interact with videogame culture. Art exhibitions, director commentaries, playground building, live recreations of videogames, gigs, gong-shows, three World Records, arcade trails, club nights – nothing is off limits for this most radical of videogame festivals.

Don’t just take our word for it, see what others have said after working with us,

GameCity looks poised to become our industry’s ?rst Sundance. A truly unique approach for hosting a game festival that seems long overdue.

Lorne Lanning, Oddworld Inhabitants

GameCity is unique. Any games festival that can reunite industry legends, lead to a Japanese game developer designing a playground, and evoke religious sentiments in a shopping centre is doing something very right for sure.

Edge Magazine

The year’s most inventively programmed new arts festival

The Times