World-renowned Game Designer Greg Costikyan keynotes NGJ

[Anders Højsted]

The American games industry veteran Greg Costikyan will host the keynote at Nordic Game Jam 2011.

The keynote sets the tone for the whole event and deals with the future of independent gaming.

Independently developed games - indiegames - have been gaining momentum over the last 5 years. Artistic titles like Braid, World Of Goo, Darwinia, Machinarium & Minecraft have been commercial successes and companies like Microsoft, Nintendo & Sony have opened up online-distribution on their gaming platforms to give the independent developers direct access to the audience. The danish games Limbo, Max & The Magic Marker and B.U.T.T.O.N. have been released though these new distribution channels.

Greg Costikyan is a veteran of the games industry and has been a fierce advocate for independently developed games for more than a decade. He is widely renowned and respected in the global games industry and a passionate speaker at international conferences.

He was one of the initiators of the "Scratchware Manifesto" in 2000, where a group of game designers argued for a break with the traditional publisher/developer business model and has been advocating this issue ever since.

Greg Costikyan has a 30 year history in the games industry with more then 30 published titles in all types of genres: boardgames, roleplaying games, computer games, online-games, mobile games & social network games. He worked with global franchises like Star Wars & Star Trek and founded the first American mobile game publisher.

Manifesto Games
In 2005 Greg Costikyan founded Manifesto Games as an independent distribution channel for independently developed pc- and Mac-games. Manifesto Games pioneered digital distribution of independently developed games, but was overtaken by other distributors and closed for sales in 2009. The webblog PlayThisThing.com was created as a spin-off from Manifesto Games and is still active as a place to learn about innovative alternative games.

About Nordic Game Jam:
Nordic Game Jam is the biggest Game Jam in the world; last year 300 game developers attended the event at IT-University of Copenhagen. Game developers gather for a weekend to experiment with game development and to make prototypes of new games. In 2009 Nordic Game Jam spread it wings and was made into a Global Game Jam with more then 140 countries jamming at the same time. Nordic Game Jam 2011 takes place from Thursday 27th to Sunday 31st of January.

It is organized by the Danish chapter of the International Game Developer's Association.IGDA is a volunteer organisation with an aim to advance the careers and enhance the lives of games developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the game developer community.

The event is organized in partnership with the IT-University Of Copenhagen and sponsored by the Nordic Game Program.

For further information:
Nordic Game Jam: http://nordicgamejam.org/
Global Game Jam: http://globalgamejam.org/
Greg Costikyan's homepage: http://www.costik.com/
PlayThisThing: http://playthisthing.com/
International Game Developer's Association Denmark. http://igda.dk/
International Game Developer's Association: http://www.igda.org/
IT-University Of Copenhagen: http://itu.dk/en/

For further information, contact
NGJ Press Liason Anders Højsted
Phone. + 45 50 53 15 38
Email: ah@igda.dk