Screen Australia in concert with ABC TV are supporting a Serious Games Initiative and are looking for interested people to hook up to propose and develop a serious game. As someone with extensive interest and knowledge in the area, alongside practical experience in the game and entertainment industries, I’m looking for similarly interested and experienced individuals to partner up with. Feel free to contact me via the Contact page of my blog.

So come and join me… and lets develop a serious game together

You can find more about the initiative at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/seriousgames/default.html.

Last week I was privileged enough to be invited as a consultant on a commercial videogame project from a local studio. While the project itself is under wraps (usual deal, personal appendages are under threat from any disclosure so I’m just saying nothin’), what I can say was it was an exciiting and rewarding experience being asked to be involved in such a project (even if only in a small way).

For me, what made the project interesting was that it was a project that required transfer of an existing game from another platform. While in some cases this could be considered a port, in this particular instance, it required a rethink of the design : game design, interaction design and visual design being the most prominent, with audio design also requiring a radical rethink. It definately wasn’t a situation like “Well we’ve got this game on PS2 and want to port it to PSP”. It was more like, “We’ll we’ve got a card/board game and we want to make a version for the Wii or PS3.” And that brings its own sets of constraints, opportunities and challenges.

My view is that this will be an exciting project (and its great to have a local Australian studio involved), and I look forward to seeing the progress of the project before its public release. Plus, it was great to be involved in a studio gig with some of the local game developers.