2009 Ohio Game Developers Summit

 Jim Pickett

Student Staff - Designer at The Ohio State University


Hello, my name is Jim Pickett. I am the president of the Game Creation Club at The Ohio State University.
We are a student organization that is officially recognized by the International Game Developer's Association [IGDA]. Our purpose is to facilitate the education, research, and development of video games and provide resources and opportunities for entering the industry.

I'm posting this to inform you of an event we are planning and holding this October, a 2009 Ohio Game Developer's Summit. As it is now, there are countless unknown and/or disconnected developers in Ohio. A large portion of these developers move out of state to the other major development hubs (such as California, Florida, Washington, Texas) and take all of their business with them. Why not keep developers here in Ohio and bring great, fun business here to give a boost to our economy? These are the issues we are actively pursuing by putting this event on.

The event will be the 2009 Ohio Game Developer's Summit and we are shooting for a Saturday this October. We are still very early in the planning stages and are in need of any help anyone can give. We are looking for any suggestions for a location, times, dates, or other ideas for the event. Additionally we are hoping to spread the word to as many related parties/organizations as possible within and outside of Ohio. We are hoping to get an expected attendance list and speak directly with the various organizations so please let them know to contact us (gamecreationclub@yahoo.com). While we are trying to plan as big as possible, we also are aware of the fact that this is the first event of its kind for Ohio and that we are only giving ourselves two months to plan. We are also a non-profit student organization at Ohio State with very little funding. We know there will be difficulties but that is the reason we are asking for such a more collective help.

Here is a very early look at what we are looking into:

- Saturday October 17th, 2009
- A "show floor" with booths/tables/stations from various organizations and companies
- Various presentation sessions for topics such as internships, development, indie/student development, etc.
-Networking opportunities/station for keeping a central network for Ohio developers (email lists, business cards, linkedIn, etc)
-playable demos and more
-possible mini collective game jam
-possible game tournaments
-possible branches for closely related development such as various other digital media/film/etc
-showing the Ohio State football game on a large projected screen somewhere if held during the event