Crazy Backyard Mushroom
I’m not fully sure when it began to grow, but it has now been a staple curiosity of the backyard ecosystem for several weeks now and has even spawned several unsucessful artistic forays. Behold something straight out of my imagining of Lewis Carroll’s imaginings.
Ok, it has now been removed from the front page of UGA.edu, so I feel a bit more comfortable posting about it. About a week and a half ago I was featured in the UGA Faculty Newspaper, Columns. This was then turned into a lead story on the UGA Website. What this meant was that for a brief moment (about 4 days) I was on the front page of the UGA website. Eeek! Well, I’ve finally been cycled off in favor of something about Second Life, which I don’t mind in the least. For those interested, however, I’ve posted a PDF here of the site while I was on it. I’m sure everyone is dying to see more photos of me, so I must not disapoint… That was sarcasm.
So I feel compelled to blog it when it happens, but Georgia Trend recently published an article about the growing industry in Georgia. You can read the particular quote from me after the break. But what I’ve been screaming about since arriving here is that the real opportunity for Georgia is the opportunity to make a different kind of industry. This is why I’m so interested in independent game development. Rather than importing existing large companies, Georgia has an opportunity to really forge their own industry. Ian Bogost’s comments seem to capture this far better than mine did, but at their heart are close to my own:
“Most graduates go off to California or Seattle or wherever the industry is thriving. A lot of them would happily stay here if there was more of an industry to graduate into,” says Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost, researcher, critic, designer and author of the recently published Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. “We’re not going to be viewed as a serious player in the industry until we see some successful products released, with critical acclaim and all that stuff.”
…
“Georgia doesn’t need to create an industry. It needs to create a unique industry,” he says. “We should be looking at what a regional games industry would look like. Every state is looking for ways to capitalize on this new form of entertainment, but the opportunity we haven’t cashed in on is the specific voice of Atlanta or Georgia or the Southeast.
After the break you can read the text of an email that was sent out to Clinton Lowe and the attendees of our first Athens GGDA/IGDA meeting. Overall the event was very successful. I think we came away with a core group of people interested in making the chapter a success. I think the chapter itself will also be an excellent starting point for independent game development efforts in the Athens area. GameJam time!
The Inaugural Meeting of the Athens Chapter of Georgia Game Developers Association (which I’m hoping will be co-branded as an IGDA chapter as well) will be today, November 11th, at the Pub at Gameday. The full annoucement of the event can be found on the GGDA website. The synopsis listed on the site is:
The launch meeting of the GGDA Athens Chapter will focus on letting interested members of the Athens community know about these efforts and the role that the GGDA and IGDA plays in assisting the efforts of members. Dr. Casey O’Donnell of the University of Georgia and President of the Athens Chapter will be updating attendees of his and UGA’s gaming related efforts as well as discussing what he hopes will be a new pocket of game development and innovation. It is also an opportunity to gauge interest in participation in the Global Game Jam events on January 30th
I will post photos and event notes here after the meeting. The slides have been posted as a SWF file here.
