Category Archives: Judges

11.26.13
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DUBLIN GAMECRAFT 4 JUDGES

Some of our Dublin GameCraft 4 judges… make sure you register for the 7th of December here

Declan Doody

“I’ve been playing games since I was four years old and giving out about them since I was five! I am Editor for theArcade.ie and I’ve been writing critically about video games for the past four years and organising one of the largest gatherings of gamers and geeks in the country, ArcadeCon, for the last three.”

Editor – www.the-arcade.ie

Colm Larkin

Colm has been making games since his family got their first computer when he was 6 years old (a ZX Spectrum 128). Nowadays he’s a software engineer for Swrve by day and a hobbyist game developer by night. Since co-founding the Dublin One Game A Month group this year he’s finished a number of small games and is now working on his first commercial game ‘Guild of Dungeoneering’.

Twitter :

 

09.27.13
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Cork GameCraft Judges

Phil Bourke

Philip is a Lecturer with LIT-Thurles and course coordinator for BSc. (Honours) Degree in Computing (Games Design and Development).

Philip is founder of the computer games festival, Games Fleadh, which includes games design and programming events such as DirectX, Robocode and Game Studio Ireland Challenges.

www.gamesfleadh.ie |

James Daly

James Daly is CEO and Co-Founder of . Based in Thurles Co. Tipperary, James set upwith Michael Murphy, Martell Malone and David Kelly in 2012. Since starting,  has won the “LIT – Company of the Future” competition, gained entry onto Enterprise Irelands’ New Frontiers programme and has just released their first title ““.

Dave McCabe

Dave McCabe is a filmmaker, video game narrative designer and all around writer sort who has worked on more things than he’d care to remember. He’d give you a list, but it would just depress him when you’d heard of none of it. He has been playing video games since he couldn’t get past the first boss of an early 80′s version of ‘Green Beret’ that is so old he can’t even find a video for it on youtube. You can find him on twitter  where he’ll probably say something about your ma.

Paul O’Brien

Paul is the Course Coordinator for the Computer Game Design Level 5 course in St. John’s College.

Paul has been playing games since 1980, which is terrifyingly long ago.
Originally from a video and sound background, Paul has in the past been involved in the production of shows for NEAR FM and East Coast Radio and numerous video productions.

His main interests are narrative and its use in games and the computer game as a creative and artistic medium.

Farad Raissa

Farad Raissa teaches in St John’s College and is Course Coordinator for the Computer Game Design Level 6 course.

Farad is a coder in C sharp, C++ and more. He introduced 3D Design (3ds Max, Cinema 4d and Blender) into the Game Design Course. His background is in web development and game development with Game Engine (Unity 3d).

He has developed training programs for various companies in Cork (CSO, DAA, Quinn Healthcare, College of Commerce…) and is hugely involved in the E-learning platform development across FE colleges in Cork.

09.20.13
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Cork GameCraft & our first judge announced

With New York GameCraft under way…

… there’s no rest for the wicked. We would like to announce that Cork GameCraft will be on Friday 22nd November at St. John’s College. Tickets will be available at https://dublingamecraft.com/events/cork-gamecraft/.

Thanks to our sponsors so far:

And we have our first judge, it’s

James Daly

James Daly is CEO and Co-Founder of . Based in Thurles Co. Tipperary, James set upwith Michael Murphy, Martell Malone and David Kelly in 2012. Since starting,  has won the “LIT – Company of the Future” competition, gained entry onto Enterprise Irelands’ New Frontiers programme and has just released their first title ““.

Twitter - 
More to be announced. #Excited
09.17.13
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Our New York GameCraft Judges!

Matt Parker

Matt Parker is a game designer, teacher, and new media artist. His work has been displayed at the American Museum of Natural History, SIGGRAPH Asia, the NY Hall of Science, Museum of the Moving Image, FILE Games Rio, Sony Wonder Technology Lab, and many other venues. His game Lucid was a finalist in Android’s Developer Challenge 2 and his project Lumarca won the “Create the Future” prize at New York Maker Faire 2010. He created the game Recurse for the inaugural No Quarter exhibition at the NYU Game Center. Recurse was a finalist for Indiecade 2010 and won the “Play This Now!” award at Come Out and Play 2012. Matt is a partner at the Brooklyn based game studio, Gigantic Mechanic, and also teaches at the NYU Game Center.

Twitter: 

Nikita Mikros

Nikita Mikros is a game designer/developer living in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He is the founder and CEO of SMASHWORX and Tiny Mantis Entertainment, two independent game studios located in New York City. Mr. Mikros’s most current project is a 10 player arcade game he co-designed with Joshua DeBonis. At SMASHWORX, Mr. Mikros designs and works on original titles including “Propaganda Lander” and his current project “Super Dungeon Force”. At Tiny Mantis, Mr. Mikros has worked on many games for clients including Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, LEGO, Bloomberg Tradebook and others. Before his current positions Mr. Mikros was co-founder of Black Hammer Game. Mr. Mikros was the lead designer of “The Egg Files” which was a 2002 Independent Games Festival finalist and was published by Manifesto Games. In addition, he was lead designer of Supremacy: Four Paths To Power which was also an Independent Games Festival finalist in 2005 and was published by Matrix Games.

Twitter:  /

Phil Trelford

Phil Trelford is a Software Architect at an ISV supplying real-time electronic trading software. His career so far spans over 15 years, with experience in video games, leisure, retail and financial sectors.

Clara Fernández-Vara

Clara Fernández-Vara is Associate Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. Her main research interest is the study of narrative in games and how it can integrate with game design, focusing on adventure games. She spent six years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a researcher, where she taught courses on game studies, writing for games and game design and development. Clara holds a Ph.D. in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. Clara has presented her work at various conferences, such as DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association), Foundations of Digital Games and GDC (Game Developer’s Conference). She has worked on several experimental adventure games as part of her research, Rosemary (2009), Symon (2010), Stranded in Singapore (2011), and The Last Symphony (2011). At the moment, she is working on a book, Introduction to Game Analysis, which will be published by Routledge.

Twitter:

Ida C. Benedetto

Ida C. Benedetto is a Brooklyn based media strategist and experience designer. She is Co-Founder of Antidote Games, a design studio making playful experiences for understanding complex realities. For more out-there adventures, she created , which practices transgressive placemaking through adventure, intimacy and exploration. Her contributions to the games community include work for Babycastles, , Games For Change, IndieCade, Different Games, and the Come Out & Play Festival. She studied Design & Technology at Parsons and History at the New School.

www.uncommonplaces.com /

09.06.13
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Derry GameCraft Judges

Mark-Philipp Hugo

Mark-Philipp is the European Director for Sales Planning & Strategy and Lotcheck Departments at Nintendo of Europe. Starting as Games Tester for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64) in 1998, he now is responsible for game evaluation and software strategy as well as the technical certification group. He is 38, married and father of two children.

Nic Magnier

Nic Magnier is a Senior Product Analyst at Nintendo of Europe where he evaluates titles in development on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS and gives feedback to developers. Before joining Nintendo in 2006, Nic worked in game development as a programmer and game designer. He got the programming bug when moving a turtle on his Thomson TO8D monitor for the first time in 1986. Over the years, as he was spending more time playing games on his Game Boy than programming, he decided that one day he will work in the games industry.

Oliver Burkietowicz

Oliver is a Senior Network Business Specialist at Nintendo of Europe. He started his gaming career as a Decathlon and River Raid addict at the age of five. At some point he turned pro gamer and ran a gaming news site, which eventually led to proper jobs such as a community manager or producing gaming clips for TV. After going to Uni for a second time to study Japanese, he finally joined Nintendo of Europe in 2008. At Nintendo, Oliver was responsible for planning the digital releases across their various platforms for years. Nowadays, he works on the company’s digital strategy, including Nintendo eShop and its business policies, aiming to make it a better place for all developers.

Andrea Magnorsky

Andrea is a professional software developer and has accrued many years of experience building applications. After a long life in the entreprise development world she is now developing games and the proud co-founder of . Andrea is involved in the organisation of GameCraft, Alt Net in Dublin and other code related communities in Ireland.

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Dave McCabe

Dave McCabe is a filmmaker, video game narrative designer and all around writer sort who has worked on more things than he’d care to remember. He’d give you a list, but it would just depress him when you’d heard of none of it. He has been playing video games since he couldn’t get past the first boss of an early 80′s version of ‘Green Beret’ that is so old he can’t even find a video for it on youtube. You can find him on twitter  where he’ll probably say something about your ma.

More judges TBA…

 

08.06.13
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London GameCraft Judges

We are so excited to announce our London GameCraft judges!

Lewis Harvey

Lewis Harvey is the Associate Producer at Lionhead Studios. “Video games have been a lifelong passion for me. I’ve been working in the industry since I was 17 working with multiple studios such as EA, THQ and Rare. I joined Lionhead in 2009 as a producer for Fable III. It was a dream come true and a fantastic, ambitious and often crazy project. Over the years I have had the fortune of seeing Fable grow and develop as a franchise, pioneering Kinect experiences and returning to its roots with Fable: Anniversary. Now I’m responsible for expanding Lionhead beyond our huge Fable franchise and opening a new door of opportunity, getting excited about new talent and new ideas! With that in mind I can’t wait to see what GameCraft brings!” http://lionhead.com / 

David Johnston

David Johnston is the man behind Smudged Cat Games, based near Cambridge. David has been designing video games from the age he could reach a keyboard. After getting his first work published when he was only 11 David designed the game TimeSlip for the Playstation One before even graduating from university. He founded Smudged Cat Games in 2007 to release The Adventures of Shuggy for the Xbox 360; a game which Indie Game Magazine called “Bitesized Brilliance” and gave 93% while Eurogamer and Gamespot gave it 8/10. More recently David developed Gateways which Game Informer gave 9/10 and listed as one of their top 50 games of 2012. Gateways was also one of the winning entries in Microsoft’s 2012 competition and received an honorable mention in the technical excellence category of the 2013 IGF competition. http://www.smudgedcat.com /

Gorm Lai

Gorm Lai is a co-founder of the , which was the World’s largest site jam for 3 years, as well as a co-founder of the Global Game Jam. I have worked on games of almost any genre and platform; from casual set top boxes over AAA console to indie classics like LIMBO. After living a rootless existence across the planet for a couple of years, I have now set up my company,  in London, and am currently working hard to finish MULE Returns, a remake of the early 80′s classic strategy game.

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Dave McCabe

Dave McCabe is a filmmaker, video game narrative designer and all around writer sort who has worked on more things than he’d care to remember. He’d give you a list, but it would just depress him when you’d heard of none of it. He has been playing video games since he couldn’t get past the first boss of an early 80′s version of ‘Green Beret’ that is so old he can’t even find a video for it on youtube. You can find him on twitter  where he’ll probably say something about your ma.

Vicky Twomey-Lee

Vicky Twomey-Lee (a.k.a. )  is a coder, GameCraft co-organiser, general tech event organiser (/ Ireland are her main ones), helping out with , organising and mentoring female coding workshops, and also this year’s invited to w00t’s Copenhagen Game Festival. She was also the researcher for Science Gallery’s recent flagship exhibition, GAME. She first fell in love with console games when her father brought back the Famicom in ’85 from Hong Kong with all the mod-cons followed by the Super Famicom. She has never looked back since.

She is also an aspiring artist (of sorts), loves kittehs & unicorns.

You can find Vicky at http://about.me/whykay

05.15.13
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DGC3 Judges

/drum roll

*Ahem* Announcing Dublin GameCraft 3′s judges.

Dan Bergin

Dan Bergin is an theatre director, game designer, and academic. He runs the 10 Days in Dublin arts festival, and is currently working on a *live* point and click adventure game for the dublin Fringe festival. He’s just submitted his phd thesis on videogames and theatre in TCD and has been into talking about games since his childhood arguments about which was better: Commodore or Amstrad. He’s got a , but its not very good.

Dave McCabe

Dave McCabe is a filmmaker, video game narrative designer and all around writer sort who has worked on more things than he’d care to remember. He’d give you a list, but it would just depress him when you’d heard of none of it. He has been playing video games since he couldn’t get past the first boss of an early 80′s version of ‘Green Beret’ that is so old he can’t even find a video for it on youtube. You can find him on twitter where he’ll probably say something about your ma.

Dominique Boutin – Digit Games CTO

Dominique Boutin is the CTO at Digit Game Studios. He was previously the Technical Director for Bigpoint, a world leading authority in online games, and has a wealth of experience in building and leading technology teams.

You can find out more about Domique at http://digitgaming.com/tag/dominique-boutin/

Séadna Long

Technical Lead – SixMinute

Previous:
Séadna was brought in as one if the core team to bring a classic PopCap game to a new social audience.  He was then made lead of the development of the meta game, having a large part to play in the design and operation of that side. During that time he also worked on various prototypes for that side of the game, single codebase, multi-platform (Web, iOS & Android) solutions, and other prototypes for PopCap. He was brought in to PopCap from Jolt Online Games where he was lead frontend developer, released 2 games to the Facebook and Kongregate online games platforms. Previous to entering game development, he joined IBM’s Extreme Blue graduate scheme chosen as one of 16 students, from a pool of over 800.  He then joined permanently and spent 3 years working as a Virtual Worlds developer, developing solutions for large corporate clients like the US Army and Imperial College London.

Current:
In his current role as technical lead, Séadna handles everything outside of the core game, all backend and ops work and connections with any third-parties (Facebook, Twitter, In-App purchasing, Stats tracking and analytics), while also having a strong voice in game design, and tech & framework choices.

Vicky Twomey-Lee

Vicky Twomey-Lee (a.k.a. )  is a coder, GameCraft co-organiser, general tech event organiser (/ Ireland are her main ones), helping out with , organising and mentoring female coding workshops, and also this year’s invited to w00t’s Copenhagen Game Festival. She was also the researcher for Science Gallery’s recent flagship exhibition, GAME. She first fell in love with console games when her father brought back the Famicom in ’85 from Hong Kong with all the mod-cons followed by the Super Famicom. She has never looked back since.

She is also an aspiring artist (of sorts), loves kittehs & unicorns.

You can find Vicky at http://about.me/whykay

 

03.13.13
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Game Fleadh’s GameCraft Judges

Dave McCabe

Dave McCabe is a filmmaker, video game narrative designer and all around writer sort who has worked on more things than he’d care to remember. He’d give you a list, but it would just depress him when you’d heard of none of it. He has been playing video games since he couldn’t get past the first boss of an early 80′s version of ‘Green Beret’ that is so old he can’t even find a video for it on youtube. You can find him on twitter where he’ll probably say something about your ma.

Vicky Twomey-Lee

Vicky Twomey-Lee (a.k.a. )  is a coder, GameCraft co-organiser, general tech event organiser (/ Ireland are her main ones), helping out with , organising female coding workshops, and also this year’s invited to w00t’s Copenhagen Game Festival. She was also the researcher for Science Gallery’s recent flagship exhibition, GAME. She first fell in love with console games when her father brought back the Famicom in ’85 from Hong Kong with all the mod-cons followed by the Super Famicom. She has never looked back since.

She is also an aspiring artist (of sorts), loves kitties & unicorns.

You can find Vicky at http://about.me/whykay

Andrew O’Connor

Co-founder, business mogul and grumpy programmer of .

10.03.12
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Judges

Dave McCabe

Dave McCabe is a filmmaker, writer and designer who has worked on more things than he’d care to remember, including writing and designing video games and teaching games developers how to write. The first video game he played was a version of ‘Green Beret’ that is so old he can’t even find a video for it on youtube…
Online, he lives at davetheallthing.com

Adam Renardson

I am currently head of online and new media and Siliconrepublic.com and somehow found myself writing video game reviews for Siliconrepublic since arriving in 2009. I would profess to being a seasoned gamer with (un)fond memories of EGA graphics and 64kb RAM being “top of the range” and blowing furiously into C64 cartridges in an attempt to prolong their gaming life. Outside of gaming I enjoy music, films and having my heart broken every season by Arsenal.

Elaine Reynolds

Developing a SimCity addiction at an early age meant Elaine was destined either to develop games or else to become a city planner. So far the games are winning. After finishing her MSc in Abertay, Dundee and competing in Dare to be Digital, she worked as a gameplay programmer on Prince Caspian at Traveller’s Tales. She then moved to Lionhead Studios to work as a designer on Milo & Kate and more recently on Fable: The Journey. Now back in Ireland, she’s launching a serious games startup and is on the New Frontiers entrepreneur development programme. You can find her online @elaine_reynolds.

Rose Farrell

I am an event manager with a keen interest in all things nerdy. I’ve been involved with Eirtakon, Ireland’s largest anime convention for years and recently started to run GameJam events in Dublin. I’ve loved computer games ever since I first played Sonic the Hedgehog when I was 11. Having played all Fallout games, including Fallout Tactics, I feel fully prepared for a nuclear apocalypse. I absolutely love the GameJam concept and am constantly in awe of those that can design, write and build a game in such a short time. It’s the people that can do that who will produce the next generation of amazing, time-eating, award winning games!

Bryan Duggan

Bryan Duggan is a lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology who has been teaching course on games technology (maths, physics & programming) since  2006. Bryan mentored several teams to success at the Imagine Cup and Games Fleadh and has been a Judge at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals (in New York), the Nokia Digital Media Awards and the Appys. In his spare time, Bryan plays traditional music on the flute and writes apps for traditional musicians.