What's new

  Young Finance Manager 08/09 update

A lot can change in a new financial year, so Scarborough Building Society has gathered all this information and created a new update for Young Finance Manager.

The new data has incorporated all the new tax and National Insurance bands for the current year, which changes all the characters’ budgets. It also has increased costs for some of the shopping items, to make the game as realistic as possible. In addition, having taken onboard feedback, the statistical data questions has been updated to make them more current and relevant to today's market.

Get it here(www.scarboroughbs.co.uk/together/fe-young_finance_manager.asp).

  Apply Serious Games 08

This year’s apply serious games conference opened with a keynote from Lord David Putnam. He made some interesting predictions about the future of the education system including the belief that, “when you leave school you should not just be asked what you learnt but also what you taught!” A view advocating peer-2-peer learning, something we are exploring through several of our new developments.

During the conference we gained an insight into the projects of other serious games developers such as Pixel Learning, Red Redemption, Coole Immersive and Six to Start, who are doing some interesting developments with ARGs (augmented reality games). We also saw a range of serious games and simulations targeted at the medical sector, including a game to educate cancer patients about their chemotherapy.

By and large the conference was a good insight into the current developments in the serious games industry; we walked away with some interesting prospects and plans for the following year.

Labels: apply serious games 08, ASG08, Lord David Putnam

  Commotion over Showcomotion

We travelled down to Sheffield last week (2nd – 4th July) to attend the Showcommotion Children’s Media Conference 2008, and it was well worth the trip. The conference, traditional geared around broadcast media, has really opened up to the world of 360⁰ content. With over 80 speakers the conference covered a variety of topics from public service broadcasting and animation right through to in-game advertising and virtual worlds.

The BBC had a strong presence at the event and showcased many of their activities in the Children’s Media market. Lego unveiled plans for an exciting MMOG in 2009, which has the potential to be really groundbreaking. Disney also spoke of their plans; a truly inspiring company, their current endeavours into gaming are doing great things for the media popularity of video games.

One of the most enjoyable talks was the keynote from Mark Walsh of Pixar, who spoke about the development process behind ratatouille. Not necessarily the most educational talk but certainly fun. We gained an insight into the work culture at Pixar and definitely saw a few things to imitate… we shall all soon be working in sheds at Babel Digital :-)

Labels: BBC, Disney, Lego, Mark Walsh, Pixar, Showcommotion Children’s Media Conference 2008

  GameHorizon 08

19th – 20th June was the GameHorizon conference 2008, a first-rate conference organised by the Codeworks GameHorizon team. It was hosted by games industry legend Ian Livingstone of EIDOS and featured an inspiring selection of the games industry pantheon.

We opened with a talk from Chris Satchell of Microsoft talking about XNA and Microsoft’s vision for the future of community gaming. One of his key points being, the need for developers to create games which have social relevance; a goal that we share.

A large portion of the conference was then dedicated to discussing the future of online games both multiplayer and casual, including the various business models that can be used to finance them. This is indeed an interesting area and something we are also looking into, watch this space…

We were also fortunate enough, to see some exciting demonstrations of technology including an innovative voice control system for real-time strategy games, in Ubisoft’s Endwar. Euphoria the natural motion synthesis engine used in GTA4 (Grand Theft Auto); I imagine this will soon be the approach used for realistic character animations in most game. Real-time worlds also unveiled APB (All Points Bulletin) a GTA like MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), which had an impressive level of detail for its avatar creation system.

Overall it was a great conference and another great event for the NorthEast.

Labels: Chris Satchel, Codeworks, GameHorizon 08, Ian Livingstone, NorthEast

  Apply Serious Games & Visual Web Conference

July sees the return of the Apply Serious Games conference. We have attended the past two years since its launch in 2006 and plan to attend again this year.

This year it forms part of the Visual Web conference and looks to be bigger and better than ever including online games, virtual worlds, visual web 2.0 and much more.

Following discussions with the organisers they have agreed to offer a 20% discount for companies in the North East. If this sounds like your cup of tea, then find out more and how to take advantage of the offer here (www.babeldigital.com/visualWebConvention.html).

Labels: apply serious games, North East, online games, virtual worlds, visual web 2.0, visual web conference

  Thinking Digital 08

“The dominant interaction paradigm of the next 20 years will come from games” said by Matt Locke (of Channel 4) was one of many great insights in the future, given at the Thinking Digital conference on 22nd – 23rd May.

Ray Kurzweil digitally projected across the ether, to tell us about the exponential growth of technology and thus the amazing innovation, which will be made over the next couple of years. Doug Richard was not half as scary as he appears on the TV, and we also got to see Declan Curry with no breakfast in sight.

Many other great speakers engaged us over the two days, with a variety of topics including the small challenge of Happiness. Codeworks done a fantastic job and it was nice to see so many great thinkers come to the North East – excellent job guys!

Ps. Richard St John, Thank you for the book!

Labels: Codeworks, Declan Curry, Doug Richard, Matt Locke, Ray Kurzweil, Richard St John, ThinkingDigital

  The Innovation Edge Conference 08

NESTA's innovation edge conference took place in London on Tuesday 20th May with over 3000 people in attendance. It was an insightful conference into the role of innovation in the UK. A fabulous venue and a great line-up of speakers made this a worthwhile event to attend.

Some of the highlights included Tim Berners-Lee (the creator of the Internet) who was extremely modest about his achievement and Bob Geldof (Humanitarian, pop star, broadcaster and businessman) who gave a motivational talk about changing the world. We were also treated to a surprise appearance from Gordon Brown, a strong advocate of innovation and entrepreneurship.

We look forward to next year's event!

Labels: Bob Geldof, Gordon Brown, InnovationEdge, NESTA, Tim-Berners-Lee

  Learning About Fashion The Saxon Way

Monday 28th March saw the launch of the Saxon Fashion CD-ROM at St Hilda's Church in Hartlepool. Saxon Fashion is an educational game we developed for the Hartlepool Museums & Heritage services. Focussed on natural dyeing processes, it requires players to complete a variety of ‘dyeing’ tasks by finding natural dyes in an Anglo Saxon scene.

Instead of using standard computer graphics we opted for artwork that had been hand painted by young people from the project. We then combined this artwork with some of our own paintings and some digital trickery to create a truly unique and relevant visual style, ideal for a large display such as an interactive whiteboard.

Free copies of the CD-ROM are currently being distributed to all Tees Valley primary schools to support the teaching of the history curriculum at Key Stage 2.

  North East Digital Awards

  Merry XMAS

It has been an exciting year and as we approach the festive end, we wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year from the team here at Babel Digital.

As a Christmas gift we have developed a little game to help keep your mental muscles stimulated over the holiday period, you can play it here.

  China bound

Tomorrow morning we will be departing to China where we will be exhibiting at the 3rd China (Nanjing) International Software Products Expo (www.cis-expo.com). This should be an exciting event, if you are going, then we hope to see you there else we will keep you posted with any interesting developments.

  Happy Birthday

Today we celebrate our first birthday since incorporation in 2006. It has been a successful year within which the business has grown a great deal. As we enter our second year with lots of interesting projects on the horizon, we are confident that this will be an exciting 12 months!

  Welcome to the new website

Welcome to the new Babel Digital website. We have incorporated a brand new design and aim to keep this website up-to-date with the latest news and information. We hope you enjoy the new look and feel, and are keen to hear your opinions!

feedback@babeldigital.com

  New Website... Coming soon

As we approach our second year in business, we believe it is the perfect time to launch a new and more comprehensive website, which hopefully we should keep up-to-date more often :-)

So... check back in about a week for the launch.

  Blog

Welcome to the new blog...

After much consideration, it was decided that a blog was the way to go. So now all news will be delivered through the blog. Enjoy!

  Another Award

Babel Digital have just be awarded a top business award from NESTA, after taking part on an intensive 6 weeks training programme (InsightOut), which was designed specifically for promising businesses in the creative industries.

  InsightOut

Jeremiah Alexander has been accepted on to the NESTA(National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) InsightOut programme, to take his business skills to the next level. Check it out on the Creative Match website,

  the DigitalCity Fellowship

Babel Digital has begun a fellowship programme with the DigitalCity to explore some exciting new ideas for serious gaming... more on this in the future.

  Website launched

Welcome to the Babel Digital website. Babel Digital is an innovative developer of computer games for education, training and creative learning. Babel Digital is part of a dynamic cluster of digital media companies in the Northeast of England. It has links with the University of Teesside, the DigitalCity and Codeworks GameHorizon. This site provides an insight into the activities of Babel Digital. Furthermore, it will become an online resource for advice, information and applications for game based learning. Enjoy!

  New Birth

Babel Digital Ltd was born this morning, under the star sign of Leo in the Chinese year of the dog. Babel Digital was incorporated as a company limited by shares. The company registration number is 5892404. Long live Babel Digital Ltd.

  Dungeons and Dragons Den

  UOT Blueprint Business Plan Competition

Babel Digital won the WardHadaway e-Learning award at the University of Teesside Blueprint Business Plan Competition today. The competition included the development of a complete business plan, a video interview and a finally a pitch in front of a panel. The e-learning award was for the best new digital learning based business. A great start for a brand new business.