The Chilean Game Developers Association (VG Chile), the New Media Department of the National Council for Culture and Arts (CNCA), and USM Games of the Federico Santa María Technical University, with the support of ACM SIGGRAPH Santiago and DUOC UC L90, have the honor and pleasure to officially announce the Videogames Week 2014.
This event, which features the high sponsorship of Logitech, seeks to promote the videogame industry in Chile, to show its relevance in the national and international context, to spread technical and scientific knowledge and promote the development of new ideas and projects in the field of videogames, and in general, to celebrate the gamer culture with the Chilean community. It also has Scirra as sponsor, the creators of the popular Construct 2 engine, and the support of Unity.
The 2014 edition will be held between August20 and 24 in the city of Santiago and consists of three different activities: the Series of Talks, Lectures and Workshops about Videogame Development; the Scientific Videogames Lab; and the already traditional Videogames Extreme Workshop.
Series of Talks, Lectures and Workshops of the Videogames Week 2014 (#SVJ2014)
From Wednesday 20 to Friday 22, in the DUOC UC L90 Theater (located in José Victorino Lastarria 90, Downtown Santiago), a total of twelve talks will be held, aimed at industry professionals, university students and game development enthusiasts who look to have greater knowledge to break into the industry.
The speakers will be both exponents of the Chilean industry as well as renowned international guests, who will deliver academical, practical and experiential information about the reality of game development in Chile, Latin America and the world.
There will also be some workshops in which participants will be able to deepen their expertise in industry matters.
International Guests
- Deborah Todd (San Francisco, USA), one of the first women who became designer, writer and producer of videogames in the industry, winner of many prizes and author of books on game design;
- Luis Wong (Lima, Peru), founder and producer of LEAP Game Studios, which provides games for mobile devices, web and consoles. He was Executive Director of IGDA Perú and currently is Co-President of the APESOFT Videogames Chapter and organizer of the Lima Game Jam.
- Daniel Benmergui (Buenos Aires, Argentina), renowned independent game developer, winner of various prizes and special mentions for the games “Today I Die”, “I wish I were the moon” and “Storyteller”;
- Kate Edwards (Seattle, USA), Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), founder and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy for content culturalization, and an applied geographer, writer, and corporate strategist;
- Enrique Fuentes (Bogotá, Colombia), founder of Teravision Games (currently NDiMedia), Studio and Product Development Director in the creation of games for Disney, Namco, Nickelodeon and Atari, among others, and member of the directive board of IGDA Colombia;
- Martina Santoro (Buenos Aires, Argentina), co-founder and CEO of Okam Studio, and one of the main game developers of Argentina.
Videogames Extreme Workshop 2014 (#VGEW2014)
The most important gamejam of Chile comes back to its original location, the Campus San Joaquín of theFederico Santa María Technical University, and will be held on the weekend of the 23 and 24 of August.
Keeping true to its traditional format, it is an open development competition, in which a total of 200 students and aspiring developers work in an uninterrupted 24-Hour session, joining teams to create a videogame prototype.
This gamejam will feature the mentoring and tutoring of 25 professionals from the various companies associated with VG Chile, with the co-production of USM Games, and the participation of a jury composed of the international guests. At the end of the event, the participants will attend a closing ceremony where the best games will be awarded in different categories.
Scientific Videogames Lab(#LABVJ2014)
Between friday 22 and sunday 24 of August, a second gamejam will be held, this time it will be closed to the general public and oriented exclusively to professionals of the industry who will have to, in a 48-Hour uninterrupted session, develop a videogame or prototype, having to apply content parameters from a scientific discipline to its development, creating an experience that seeks to transmit that knowledge to the player.
As in the first edition of the event held in March 2013, the organization chooses a particular field of science and invites various members of the scientific community to join the teams of developers to provide the knowledge to be taught through the games.
Source: Videogames Chile
