Posts Tagged ‘Industry’

Onteca have once again expanded their digital clan and taken on-board 23 year old Public relations (PR) graduate Sophie (yes you read it right, PR not a games programmer). You may ask why does Onteca, an interactive media company need the likes of a publicity thirsty PR hound? Because somebody needs to spread the word and show off all the boys hard work.

That is where I come in, my name is Sophie, I have moved ever so graciously from my home in Newcastle to the lovely city of Liverpool to do a 6 month internship with Onteca and North West Vision and Media. My role within the company over the next 6 months will to organise the press / social media and the marketing campaign of their new Nintendo WiiWare game Monsteca Corral.

I come from a background where video games were only played when I was procrastinating from university work, forced upon me at family gatherings and the odd time when my curiosity for my mental age was tested on the DS Brain Train. So basically long story short, I am not a gamer, I don’t know any of the techy lingo I hear spouted around the office and when someone asks me what is my favourite video game I just go blank.

However there is this myth that to market a game the marketeer must know the ins and outs of the gaming industry, this I am proud to say is not true. To market a video game the most important thing to know is who your audience is, how to communicate with them and ability to promote your material in a way that they can relate to.

Leading up to the games release in January 2010 Monsteca Corral will gradually build upon its presence within the on-line stratosphere, giving gamers a sneak peek into what the game has in-store for them.

Over the next 6 months you can follow Monsteca Corral’s journey through the Onteca blog, Twitter feeds and Facebook updates. Watch first hand the release of a new video game and see its progress.

Feel free to drop me a line at sophie@onteca.com if you have any questions about the game.

An industry event that appears to be useful and thought-provoking. Then again we are living in ‘interesting times’, especially for old media. I’m tempted to point out ‘all their base r belong to us’, were that not all a little 1997.

In the meantime, it looks like the ARG horse is still being flogged, Was there ever a point  in time when this particular format was alive, rather than just a seam of digital fake-gold seeded in the internets to lure investors? Thing is, giving life to simulacra is what we do, so maybe the next iteration will go beyond the existing tiny demographic into a mass market or two.

Oh, and they have finally noticed that ‘gaming is a force to be reckoned with‘.  Astonishing, although the speaker admits the old media industry is still sceptical. The guy who posted the article added his own comment, as you will see if you look closely at the following: (http://www.reedmidem.com/mipblog/index.php/2009/04/02/108-arse)

Onteca’s forays into the merging of of gaming and TV have shown plenty of scope for the field. In fact our collaboration with the BBC for the Brainbox Challenge series of games has become a talked-about proto-type of the genre, demonstrating the truly disruptive potential of this approach.

Onteca is going to do  further work in this area. Three of our programmers have just returned from BBC training in MHEG, a language for creating terrestrial interative TV. Under a hundred people in the country can code using this rather useful language.

Good job, though, that we didn’t pursue our plan to create a widget for helping content creators to make interactive TV. As it seems Yahoo had the same idea. Reason why Onteca has a policy of not getting over concerned with IP;  if your idea is any good, someone else is thinking along the same lines anyway.

Still, looks like an entertaining event. Made us hungry for more. Roll on BTween, which is in Liverpool this year.

Onteca is proud to announce the unveiling of a playable Alpha of our Mediabox Project, ‘Liberatis’ (a name thought of by a young person working on the project). This is an MMO created by young people, for young people. It involves some violence, within a Tolkienesque ‘fantasy’ setting, because that is what the young people called for. It is still at an early test stage, but is playable.

Given the theme ‘Freedom’ this is what a group of 14-19 year olds came up with

A screenshot from liberatis

Over 50 young people worked for four months to make this game. First the young people planned out an overall story, a premise, a series of characters and detailed paper-based maps and Level Design Documents for each section . Next they had to painstakingly learn the skills they would need: Maya to create the 3D assets; Photoshop to create the mood-boards and textures; the Torque level editor to create landscapes full of trees, mountains, valleys and towns in which the game could be played. Onteca provided support and training at every step.

Onteca then worked on integrating all these elements into a playable game, to the design of the young people and under the direction of their representatives.

Some of the most academically inclined young people on Merseyside worked alongside young people from a local Special School who had learning disabilities. Everyone addressed themselves to the same tasks and were expected to prodice the same results. Sometimes the young people would work alongside each other, sometimes they would split into school and project based groups. Standards were high across the range of schools, with genuine talent and IT ability coming from all groups involved.

Areas worked in were amonst the most economically disadvantaged in the country. That said, the young people who involved themselves in this project were eager, polite and creative. Hopefully, they will learn from being part of the making of Liberatis, and consider a career in the North West’s still healthy Games Industry.

Thanks to all the young people involved, and Onteca hopes you like the game you helped create.

An alpha version of the game is available to download here to install it, just download and run.

if you get an error message mentioning python when running the game on certain versions of vista you will need to run the game as an administrator