Tuna news
Sheffield DocFest Fun and Games
Monday, December 7th, 2009 | Tuna news | No Comments
As part of internationally renowned documentary festival Sheffield DocFest, CEO Alex Amsel participated in the Crossover Summit Panel hosted by Matt Locke from Channel 4. The panel discussed ‘The Creative Studio of the Future’, primarily about how independent studios should be looking at a range of new media and distribution platforms.
On Bonfire night, Andrew Crawshaw, Nick Wardle and Sarah Quick premiered Tuna’s first location based game - The Sky’s the Limit. Despite the terrible weather there was a great turn out of people willing to dive into our part-challenge-part-treasure hunt game featuring illuminated, helium-filled balloons, on the main concourse outside Sheffield train station. The event was held as part of Hide and Seek’s first Sandpit Tour of the UK, and Tuna was delighted to fill the ‘local talent’ slot.
Tuna Speak at GameHotel and on Radio Sheffield
Friday, December 4th, 2009 | Tuna news | No Comments
Tuna CEO Alex Amsel (above left) recently spoke at the acclaimed international broadcast show GameHotel in Zurich. Alex took part in the ‘Battle of Ideas’ alongside Marten Brüggemann (TechVision), Jeroen Ellferich (Ex Machina), Kevin McSherry (DJ Hero) and Matias Myllyrinne (Max Payne). GameHotel is run as a number of flagship events that spotlight the worlds leading interactive entertainment visionaries.
Meanwhile, Creative Director Andrew Crawshaw was interviewed on BBC Radio Sheffield’s Breakfast Show, covering topics from Eurogamer to the latest game releases.
Cletus Clay a Hit at the Eurogamer Expo and BAF
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | Tuna news | No Comments
Cletus Clay was shown to the general public for the first time at the Eurogamer Expo this year and received extremely positive feedback from attendees. It was described as one of the most beautiful games featured in the show and warranted a feature on the BBC News: Look North segment of the programme.
Also at the Expo, Tuna CEO Alex Amsel and Creative Director Andrew Crawshaw hosted seminars on behalf of BAFTA to students wanting to enter the games industry.
Claymation Artist Sarah Quick ran a workshop at this years Bradford Animation Festival, teaching the basic skills used in the creation of Cletus Clay. Participants were taught the basic techniques for creating scenery models and non animated characters.
Latest News
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 | Tuna news | No Comments
TUNA ARE HIRING: CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
The past 4 months have been incredibly busy for the Tuna team. Four of us attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and previewed Cletus Clay on the IGF stand to great success. As well as players taunting each other in two player mode, we also had fans joining in with Sarah and Anthony’s live clay modeling demonstration. The awesome Samarost deservedly won the Art award but we enjoyed the whole experience and met some wonderful people. Apologies to a certain bar owner who is now the proud owner of some Cletus graffiti.
We’re in the process of refinancing Cletus Clay following Pinnacle Entertainment’s administration and we can now reveal that Screen Yorkshire are one of our new investors.
We’ve also been working with Screen Yorkshire and 4IP on a non-gaming project, g-Angel. The UK is becoming known for being a Big Brother state, and we’re not talking about the Channel 4 programme’s celebrity wannabees. g-Angel is a project featuring the mapping of CCTV cameras within the UK, and encouraging discussion over their usefulness.
Again with 4IP and Channel 4, alongside Director/Producer Kat Henderson and IT Crowd Writer/Director Graham Linehan, Alex has been working on Twitter project HashDash. Focusing on encouraging a return to the television water cooler moment, the project successfully ran a comedic look at Eurovision (Twumpet) and leveraged Big Brother onto Twitter on the BB10 launch night.
Our latest project is something quite new for Tuna. The lovely people at Channel 4 Education have commissioned one of Andy’s somewhat madcap ideas that would never have seen the light of day through any regular publishing regime. All we can say right now is that the project is provisionally called Covergirl and our research involves buying a few too many copies of Heat magazine.
Finally, Alex spoke at the UK’s top game developer conference, Develop, as part of Margaret Robertson’s Crossing Over panel. Subsequently described as the most positive panel of the entire event, it was a great success.
Oh, and we have another DS title being released later in 2010 while Puzzler DS has continued to sell phenomenally well.
As we said, it’s been a busy 4 months!
The IGF Awards Beckon
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 | Tuna news | No Comments
In a few days’ time we’re off to GDC in San Francisco. This year it’s a special conference for us as our independent claymation game Cletus Clay has been nominated for an IGF Excellence in Visual Arts award. We’re up against some awesome competition so we’re incredibly happy even to be considered.
It’s particularly rewarding for our collaborator Anthony Flack. He’s the driving force behind Cletus and has been working on it for several years.
Whatever happens on the night of Wednesday 25th March, the real prize is to meet all the other amazing developers, from bedroom programmers to the small studios on the leading edge of the indie games scene.
Whilst much of the old guard in the game industry is struggling badly, it’s these forward thinking people who are leading the way by making affordable, innovative and high quality titles.
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