And it does so with a pre-party to get us started and into the mood! Lots of 8-bit music in the background, people playing foosball, and even some of today’s guest speakers playing Ninja in the atrium against us and our teacher from last semester, Miguel Sicart, whom I ALMOST beat [if you read this Miguel, mind you that I lost to you on purpose just so that you wouldn’t fail me ]. If you’re wondering what Ninja is, it’s a physical game to be played in large groups in an open space, some people know the game as Kung-Fu.

Oh, and of course, there were also the talks from the SpilBar 3.0, with Jonathan Smith from TT Games and Jamin Brophy-Warren from Kill Screen magazine before the party. We were also shown a still unreleased trailer for LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean. Too bad I didn’t get that on video Talk about a journalist being late…

Today I will be attending the SpilBar 3 at the IT University of Copenhagen, a bimonthly event where videogame industry members and those close to it can meet and talk about their ideas for the future of the videogames market. And of course, also have some beers together (this is Denmark, what did you expect?)

It’s an International Game Developers Association event, organized by the Danish Game Council.

So, who else will be there?

First of all Jonathan Smith, former employee of LEGO Company and currently Head of Production at TT Games Publishing (the developer of highly popular games such as Lego Star Wars or more recently Lego Harry Potter) will give a speech called The LEGO choices, about how their LEGO games were developed considering the most basic idea of LEGO: creating a space of infinite possibilities.

Afterwards Jamin Brophy-Warren, president and editor-in-chief of videogames related Kill Screen magazine will talk about the importance of story in games and how developers need to do a better job of explaining the “how” of their games when presenting them to the public and the press.

Oh, and of course afterwards the Nordic Game Jam will open up with a party to start meeting all of the attendants. The rest of the weekend is all the Nordic Game Jam.

Quite an exciting weekend, right? And all this just before the Spring semester starts, which I’m already looking forward to (even though I do get scared about how much work we are to expect especially from our Game Development course).

Will I be able to keep this updated during these crazy days? Probably not. But if I find something interesting to tell you will probably find it on my Twitter account, so follow me!

Photo from Nordicgamejam.org

This weekend the Nordic Game Jam will be taking place at the IT University of Copenhagen, and I will be attending as a game designer.

For those who don’t know, the Nordic Game Jam, part of the Global Game Jam that takes place in many other places in the world at the same time, is a concentration of game designers, programmers, artists and more during an entire weekend to form groups and create innovative game ideas in just 48 hours.

There will also be several important game designers around, both hosting the event and as guest speakers.

Obviously as much as I would like to say that I will be blogging from the game jam, with a 48-hour time limit that will probably be… hard.

Anyway if you’re interested in learning more about the Game Jams or if you want to read about it as it happens this weekend, you can check out the Global Game Jam website.