EIF 2008
Sponsors & Media Partners
Nintendo UK is once again proud to support the Edinburgh Interactive Festival for a third year. EIF raises our industry’s profile into the wider cultural arena and celebrates the input, talent and creativity from all with a common interest in video games. The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii™, Nintendo DS™, Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube™ systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.7 billion video games and more than 460 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario™, Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda™ and Pokémon®. As a wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of Europe, based in Grossostheim, Germany, was established in 1990 and serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in Europe.
LittleBigPlanet is the new game for PlayStation®3 that will take gaming into the era of Game 3.0. Developed by Guildford based Media Molecule and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, LittleBigPlanet can be defined by three distinct categories of interaction – Play, Create and Shared. At its most basic level, LittleBigPlanet lets you Play. You can play offline and online, with friends or on your own with over fifty 50 levels available on the BluRay disc at launch.
If Codemasters was hot property last year, with hits that included Colin McRae: DiRT and Overlord, then this year they’re blazing ahead with a portfolio of gaming excellence for the rest of 2008.
The summer began with real style on the circuits of Europe, the US and Japan in Race Driver: GRID, called ‘the driving game of the summer’ by Top Gear magazine. Race Driver: GRID and the technology that drives it, the EGO Game Technology Engine, comes from the teams within Codemasters Studios. With an already enviable reputation, the Studios recently won the coveted UK Development Team title at the MCV Industry Excellence Awards. The trophy joins the Golden Joystick award for UK Developer of the Year and the TIGA award for Best Technology 2007.
Further ground-breaking titles include Overlord: Raising Hell on PlayStation 3 and this autumn will see the arrival of an epic RPG with Rise of the Argonauts and a new title for the winter in Damnation, an adrenaline pumping action title that takes the shooter vertical. Now major a player in the MMO market, Codemasters Online will launch The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria and in 2009, Jumpgate Evolution.
For younger gamers, Codemasters’ entertainment line will include the official games of the smash hit books Dragonology and Wizardology for Wii and Nintendo DS, and Bella Sara this winter. Codemasters has never been in better shape or more ready to deliver a sure-fire line up. There’s never been a better time to play so come and see Codemasters in action in the Strathblane Hall of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre during the Festival.
http://www.codemasters.com
Guitar Hero on Tour is the latest instalment in the Guitar Hero Series.
As with other Guitar Hero games, the player attempts to follow the lead guitar portion of a rock song as note patterns scroll by on the game’s screens. Instead of the normal guitar peripheral used in other game console versions, On Tour is packaged with the “Guitar Grip”, a unique four-fret controller that fits into the Game Boy Advance slot on either the Nintendo DS or DS Lite. The player strums each note by dragging the stylus across the touchscreen while holding down the fret buttons. Guitar Hero on Tour allows players to rock out, anytime, anyplace anywhere.
For the 4th year running, Gamestation have joined forces with the Edinburgh Interactive Festival – with this year being bigger and better!
For the first time we will have our own retail area within the site - allowing us to showcase the Gamestation experience to all Scottish gaming fans!
Edinburgh is particularly special to us - being home to our Flagship store in Scotland, which also happens to be the largest Scottish video games store! In addition, we have just opened a new store in Leith – where even Mario and Sonic showed up to get involved in the festivities!
Bringing our stores to life is always important to us, especially for those customers who have yet to experience the gamestation culture. Be it staff dressing up for product launches, hosting in store tournaments and competitions or simply advising customers on the best games around, we pride ourselves on going that extra mile, and our attendance at this festival will be no exception!
We feel the festival culture provides a perfect partnership for us and our customers.
gamesradar.com - world’s no. 3 games information website
bikeradar.com - the world’s most comprehensive bike website
musicradar.com - the place for music makers
techradar.com - deep into technology
computerandvideogames.com - the latest games news
cyclingnews.com - the first cycling results and news web service
t3.com - the world’s biggest gadget magazine
next-gen.biz - interactive entertainment today
computerarts.co.uk - tutorials from experts
Scottish Screen is the national development agency for the screen industries in Scotland. We aim to inspire audiences, support new and existing talent and businesses, educate young people, and promote Scotland as a creative place to make great films, award-winning television and world renowned digital entertainment.
Raise the Game is a new initiative from NESTA to help drive growth, collaboration and innovation in the UK video games industry. The £450k project is the second in a series from NESTA’s new Innovators Growth programme.
Raise the Game focuses on the following areas for driving business growth:
• Talent – finding and developing talented games developers
• Business Skills – building commercial skills through a unique mentoring programme
• Building Networks to share production resources
• New Buyers – broadening the commissioning opportunities for games SMEs
• Developing IP over convergent platforms
NESTA and TIGA are calling for video games developers to come forward who want to explore the potential of resource sharing- including recruitment, job sharing and job swaps, business mentoring, innovation internships and cross collaboration projects.
The new ways of driving business growth that emerge from the project will be shared with support agencies across the UK to help other businesses.
Since 2003 , the British Academy Video Games Awards have provided an international stage to celebrate the creative endeavour of the industry’s many talented individuals. In 2007, Awards were presented in 13 categories including Action & Adventure, Strategy & Simulation, Gameplay, Innovation and Best Game. All nominations were judged in each category by a jury of industry practitioners including a range of developers and publishers.
The Rough Guide to Videogames offers a tangible, dip-in-and-out guide to a once scorned
hobby that has fast become a cultural phenomenon. Covering everything from the very first
arcade machines, to today’s more time consuming, tactical games, The Rough Guide to
Videogames examines the historical context of videogaming, looking at the advancements in
technology, the design and narrative that have characterized recent games, not forgetting of
course the most memorable characters.
Whether you’re a seasoned player with countless all-nighters under your belt, or a novice
wanting to embrace the phenomenon, The Rough Guide to Videogames is an invaluable
source, providing both a comprehensive breakdown of the industry and a nostalgic look at its
journey so far.
Harbottle & Lewis provides high quality legal services to organisations and individuals, in particular those working in the media and entertainment industries.
Established in 1991, Datascope Recruitment is widely regarded as the market leader in games industry recruitment. With offices in central London and Chicago, Datascope deals with games developers and publishers world-wide. For the sixth year running Datascope has won the management contract for all the development recruitment needs of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. In 2005 and 2007 Datascope was honoured by the Develop Industry Awards for Excellence as Best Games Recruiter.
The Creative Assembly is the development team behind the hugely successful Total War franchise. From Shogun, through to Medieval and Rome: Total War; The Creative Assembly have continued to develop an award winning series of titles. Having recently released the acclaimed Viking: Battle for Asgard, The Creative Assembly are currently working on the epic and visually spectacular Empire: Total War.
ELSPA(the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association) was founded in 1989 to establish a specific and collective identity for the British computer and video game industry.
Since then, the membership has steadily grown from 12 to nearly 60 companies, including almost all the major companies concerned with the publishing and distribution of interactive leisure and entertainment software in the UK. ELSPA works to protect, promote and provide for the interests of all its members, as well as addressing issues that affect the industry as a whole through:
Industry Promotion
Sales Charts & reports
Conferences & Seminars
IP Crime enforcement
Reviewing proposed Legislation
Content ratings
Research reports
Careers promotion
Tiga is the national trade association representing the business and commercial interests of games software developers in the UK and Europe.
Tiga’s key objective is to keep its members at the heart of the global games industry by helping to create a successful business environment for them and by representing their interests to Government, Europe, and financiers.
Media partners
Leading Recruitment in Entertainment and Technology. The Mary-Margaret Network encompasses a diverse clientele in the games, electronic media, and entertainment industries. We place outstanding candidates - from individual contributors to C-level executives - in positions in every department: from art to engineering, production to sales, and graphics to operations. Since 1996, our focus on superior service to employers and candidates has earned us an unsurpassed reputation for recruitment services and career management.