Tag Archives: Dr Ben Kirman

Huge success of Global Game Jam

February 6, 2015 Marie Daniels Leave a comment

Lincoln’s School of Computer Science was again an official site of the Global Game Jam (GGJ).

More than 50 jammers joined from all over the UK in what is becoming one of the School’s most enjoyable events.
The GGJ is the world’s biggest hackathon focused on games development, which this year involved more than 28,000 people from 78 countries creating 5,437 new games.

The theme was the simple question “What do we do now?”, which served as inspiration for a wide variety of games from imaginary skipping ropes, through to idol worship simulators, co-op platformers, games of Celtic mysticism and even a game that uses a real coffin as a controller.

All the games created by the University of Lincoln jammers are open source and downloadable for free and there is a video of the event.

It was organised by Dr Ben Kirman and Lincoln Computing Society, with special thanks to School of Computer Science technician Matt Ashton.

The weekend stirs a global creative buzz in games, while at the same time exploring the process of development, be it programming, iterative design, narrative exploration or artistic expression.

The GGJ encourages people from all kinds of backgrounds to participate and contribute to this global spread of game development and creativity.

Games development, Research, School news, Staff

First workshop for Performance and Games Network

March 24, 2014 Marie Daniels Leave a comment

The first of three workshops for a new research project looking at creating new videogames will take place this week.

Led by the Games Research Group at the University of Lincoln, the Performance and Games Network involves several researchers from Lincoln’s School of Computer Science, including Dr Patrick Dickinson, Dr Duncan Rowland, Dr Conor Linehan, Dr Ben Kirman, Dr John Shearer and Kathrin Gerling, working with Dr Kate Sicchio from the School of Performing Arts and Dr Grethe Mitchell from the School of Media.

The first session, which will bring together games developers, performance practitioners and academics, will be hosted by the University on 25th and 26th March.

Themed around movement and gesture based input devices, the core of the activity will be centred around a “hack” style event in which participants will work in small groups on design and/or prototyping exercises around a number of sub-themes and software.

Some of the sub-themes include mobility impaired performance; physical games in playgrounds; and audience and movement games.

Experts in the field will also be giving special talks. Guests include Ida Toft and Sabine Harrer from Copenhagen Game Collective at IT University, Copenhagen; Nick Burton from Rare Ltd; David Renton from Microsoft; and Matt Watkins from Mudlark.

The research group is also collaborating with Performance and New Media Professor Gabriella Giannachi, from the University of Exeter, and Arts Queensland, based in Brisbane.

The project is being sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of a wider initiative to develop the creative industries and put Britain back at the forefront of creative technology.

There will be two more inter-disciplinary workshops in Nottingham, UK, and Brisbane, Australia, where researchers working in games studies, human computer interaction and technical aspects of game development will continue to work with developers and performance researchers/practitioners to prototype new collaborative game ideas.

University of Lincoln, UK