Big news coming in for Europe, as we announce that preparations are underway for this year's London Games Festival. Wondering exactly when 2008's celebrations begin? Visit the full article for the rest of the details!

In light of the upcoming London Games Festival, Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond is scheduled for a special appearance in the HMV branch at Oxford Street. [cue shrieks of joy from the male populace] Ahem. Now let us get our bearings please. Raymond is to showcase never-before-seen levels from the latest build of the upcoming PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC title of Ubisoft.

Notch these details down your calendars: the event down at HMV is to be held on Saturday, October 27. The presentation will kick off at 3 p.m., and will be repeated at 4:30 p.m. of the same day.

But see, what's a special appearance without some audience interaction? Jade Raymond is also going to welcome open questions from the public and answer them on the spot (keep those questions clean, boys). You can also have her sign some Assassin's Creed merchandise, so better try to scuffle for that Altair figurine quick.

Buy: [Assassin's Creed (PS3)]
Buy: [Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)]

We'll be laying down announcements for two more events expected to kick in during the upcoming London Games Festival 2007. The first will be a gaming workshop titled Design Rules!, and will have attendees taking part in a simulated professional design environment. Attendees will be randomly assigned a specific role to play, as their team attempts to create a designated game idea. The workshop will be hosted by Ernest Adams, who had this to say regarding the event:

In this workshop you gain the knowledge to develop compelling and emotive games through interactive group working with your peers. It is open to all who have a love for games whatever their background or professional interest.

Moving along, we also make mention of the ongoing preparations for the It's Showtime - with Machinima workshop. As its title implies, this workshop will educate its visitors with the finer lines of making Machinima, from learning how to make a tidy profit from your works, to understanding new creative techniques within this art. Attendees will also be treated to a tutorial of the MovieStorm engine, as well as the appearance of several noted personalities in the Machinima industry:

• Ricard Gras (LA Interactiva)
• Hugh Hancock (maker with WoW, Halo 2, Sims 2 & Never Winter Nights)
• Matt Kelland (Moviestorm, engine developer)
• Chris Carella (Electric Sheep)
• Dr Tracy Harwood (Machinima Festival Europe)
  

Later on in the day, the Machinima workshop will culminate in a screening of the winning and nominated  films from the European Machinima Festival. Both Design Rules! and It's Showtime will take place on October, and are scheduled to run from 10 am to 1 pm, and 2 pm to 5 pm respectively. The events are expected to take place at 76 Portland Place, London W1, close to Oxford Circus tube. Festival visitors interested in booking a place for either of these workshops may do so via the read link below.

 

With 2007's London Games Festival arriving in two weeks' time, organizers have mapped out the game-centric celebration starting October 22 until November 2, 2007. Though the London Games Festival will also coincide with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), it will also return with a bigger collection of consumer-related events.

First up in the organizers' lists is the Video Games Live! concert which is set to take off at opening day. It will be followed by the British Academy Video Games Awards on October 23, coupled with a session presenting Guy Debord's Game of War as part of the London Games Fringe.
 
Dare to be Digital takes flight on October 24 - apparently also the first day of the GameCity Interactive Entertainment Festival to kick off in Nottingham. Dare to be Digital is the London Games Festival's bid to expose the next generation of game developers to PR and marketing, where budding game design students can showcase their projects for attendees to see.

The London Game Career Fair, the London Gamer Geeks Quiz Night, and the Computational Brain fill the rest of the day's events. Attendees can apply for a position in the industry, try their hand at game trivia, or take a peek into the future of game interactivity: controlling games through thought.

Modding get-together Dorkfest - Console Hacks follows on October 25 with technology demo Eyes on the Game close in tow. The two events continue to delve into technology in relation to gaming, with Dorkfest showcasing mod projects made by the craziest folks to even have held a solder gun, and Eyes on the Game presenting how games can be controlled with eye movement.

Zero Gamer and Sense of Play 07 top the closing day schedule for attendees, where participants can flex their neurons and partake in a healthy discussion of how game design is viewed - from both outside and inside the game industry. The refreshing eye-opener will also be coupled by a London Games Fringe spectacle: developer and publisher media showcase of their upcoming games.

Expect London Games Festival 2007 to sport more consumer-related events and business-to-business sessions when it starts on the 22nd.

If you're somewhere near London on October 23 or 24 this year, you'll probably want to check out the London Game Career Fair which happens as part of the London Games Festival. The career fair will have a variety of activities in store for those interested in breaking into the industry. Exhibits and panel discussions with the bigwigs are all in the programme.

Industry heavyweights Electronic Arts, LucasArts, THQ, Rare, Evolution Studios, and Team 17 have all promised to support this event and share what they have to enlighten the visitors.

The London Game Career Fair, organized by Gamasutra.com and GamesIndustry.biz, attracted over a thousand visitors last year and more are expected to come in this year's gathering.

If you're interested in this free event, you can follow the Read link and visit the official site to learn more. Here's hoping that all those who attend will have a fun and productive time out there.

The London Games Festival is on its way back after a year and organizers are touting it to be the biggest series of gaming events the city has ever seen as it spans four days and more than 40 activities spread across different locations.

The expansion from last year's game extravaganza is geared towards catering to all possible audiences from the casual crowd to hardcore game enthusiasts. It's backed by industry heavyweights like Activision, Atari, Eidos, Electronic Arts, Konami, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega and Ubisoft, all strutting their wares to make the experience one to remember.

The London Game Festival starts on the 22nd of October and comes to a climax on the 26th. Headlining the festival are the British Video Game Academy Awards which honors the elite in the industry, Videogames Live which is a concert for 2,000 people and The Virtual Worlds forum that gives a lecture hosted by the industry's masters.

Exhibits will also be on hand to provide gamers stuff to drool over. The Science Museum: Quantifying Immersion in Games is one such exhibit and it features pieces of gaming history so that today's gamers can learn more about the roots of their beloved games. The European Careers Fair will have a leg in the event to orient and try to find people with the drive and the skills to break into the business.

"We are delighted by the response to this year’s festival," says Keith Ramsdale, Chairman of the event. "This event is a celebration of one of the world’s most exciting industries, designed to facilitate artistic and cultural recognition, as well as raise awareness of the games industry as a whole."

If you're interested to participate, Simon Watts on 020 7307 3100 or Duncan Best on 020 7534 0584 will be more than happy to help you. You can also check out www.londongamesfestival.com for more details.

 

The London Games Festival, a significant success last year, will be returning for a repeat performance with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) as its primary focus this year. The event will begin October 22, 2007, reports Games Industry, and will continue for four more days to October 26, with an invite to all gamers from MMOs and PCs to consoles and handhelds.

Aside from several game-related forums which tackle legal issues and corporate opportunities, a Video Games Live concert will also be held at the Royal Albert Hall, while the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) plans to discuss the perception of gaming. The Science Museum will also host a study of immersion in video games, and the London Game Career Fair will be offering aspiring game developers a chance to enter the UK game development scene.

It appears that the Europe will be celebrating more than just an Oktoberfest come late fall (or early winter) as the GameCity Interactive Entertainment Festival, or simply the GameCity Festival, will also be partially coinciding with the London Games Festival, on October 24-28, 2007, in Nottingham, England. More details on these two events, including participating companies and studios, as they come in.

That is, if some new programs by a lesser-known company become the industry standard for making games. At the Games Developers Conference (GDC) of the London Games Festival, the company known as Allegorithmic claimed that it could reduce the texture file sizes in games by up to 70 percent.

The two programs, known as ProFX and MaP Zone 2, should potentially lessen the file sizes of textures even while the files keep the same quality as current texture files today. A show of their programs' capabilities came in the form of a demo for RoboBlitz, which is coming out for Xbox Live Arcade. With a 50 MB cap on the file size for these game, file sizes did have to be lessened, and according to the report, the game ran well on its Unreal 3 engine with only a 280kb size for the overall texture files.

What does this mean to us? First, that can potentially mean more content, should it become and industry standard. Since file sizes for those textures could be reduced from 1GB of textures to 300MB, hypothetically speaking, that could mean additional missions or quests or at least more places to explore for new games. Of course, not every game uses that many textures, which leads to the second, more impressive point. Smaller file sizes means a faster download for certain games, and that's definitely a plus.

Of course, now we have to wait and see what the industry will do with this interesting development.

Thanks to Badam for the tip!

Epic Games VP Mark Rein was very much the entertainer during his stay at the London Games Festival's first event, GDC London. During his talk about Unreal Engine 3 and Gears of War, he proudly declared this: "Sony says the next generation starts when they say so - bullshit!"

He also added that Gears as a "second-gen" Xbox 360 title is likely to look better than PS3 launch titles. Of course Playstation fans will probably counter with, "How did the Xbox 360 launch title look?"

Flame-bait-topic aside, Rein showed some Gears of War Xbox 360 preview stuff, and explained that they are currently doing their best to get the Unreal Engine 3 for the PS3 to work better. According to Rein, they "have a couple of worried customers" who are concerned about UE3's performance on the said console.

By the way, this may be a bit off-tangent, but in regards to their supposed "sweatshops" (more like subsidiaries) in China, Rein says that "Shanghai is a little too expensive for a sweatshop." They say they're paying top salary. I guess that just because it's in Asia it doesn't necessarily mean that it's cheap.

So here we go again to the never-ending question. What's better, PS3 or Xbox 360? I'll stick to my opinion that it's the games and the developers' abilities to push gaming to the next level, and not the console hardware itself. What do you guys think?

UK's first major trade show event since 2004, the London Games Festival, started the week-long celebration of interactive entertainment. It includes a variety of events that will surely delight gamers.

First is GDC London, an annual gathering of video game developers which comprise an expo and a variety of tutorials, lectures and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business, legal issues, and art. Next is the London Games Summit which provides the most hard-hitting business content specifically developed for the industry. This is where top industry executives and key government ministers provide honest insights on the gaming business today.

Gamers will be in paradise as London Games Festival features other events which may interest them like the HMV's Games Showcases which feature a handful of playable games like Pro Stroke Golf, PDC World Championship Darts, Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007 and Rockstar Games' Table Tennis, to name a few. It'll also feature The Game/Play and the Artful Gaming Exhibition.

The festival does not only cater to the gamers audience as it also provides diverse events that cater to parents who need advice on games or people who want to learn more about games and where the future of entertainment is currently heading. So its a festival that caters to almost everyone, not only to the gamers. And this also reflects that gaming is serious business. The festival aims to add learning to fun. Families can attend this celebration and take part in the activities. Check out the schedule of events here.