So my main thing, at least so far as my university degree would tell you, is that I do music. I like music, music is great and I still want to aim for being a game composer, but over the past year I've wanted to dabble in making games myself.

That dabbling has came to fruition today, as my first game, TEETHING, was accepted onto the iTunes App store, and is available here.

Because it was my first app I tried to make something simplistic, but still really polished, so it is meant to be a kind of throwback to vintage games, with its pixel art, chip tunes music and all that good stuff. You're a tooth, avoiding falling sweets that will disintegrate you, and toothpaste will occasionally drop down to heal you, and a fairy comes by to drop power ups. Every sweet avoided is a coin in the bank, which can be spent on moustaches for your tooth because why the hell not?

Got to say though, I never imagined even something this small in scope could get so complicated, and how difficult and lengthy bug fixing would be.

Anyway, if anyone downloads it please feel free to offer constructive criticism. Here are some promo codes, because Giantbomb was the website I would visit to relax when development stress was getting too high.

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PY7TW9N6HKMX

LTN663Y4XE4M

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For quite a while now I've wanted to dabble in podcasting, but it's hard to get people together at the same time and so things always fell through. But I finally just decided "I'm doing a podcast, i'll invite lots of people and most won't turn up, but it will still get done".

Though I knew I wanted it to be about games, I wanted to stay away from the Bombcast format, those guys are podcasting pros and when normal people just chat for an hour plus it isn't anywhere near as entertaining. Instead this podcast will be more influenced by Radiolab, and will focus on individual stories happening in the game world, weaving in the things that we're talking about. I think it went pretty well, apart from once it was over and Garageband corrupted the file. Thankfully I could go into the project and pull out the individual sound files, but it was a pretty stressful experience.

Our first episode was discussing Indie Game: The Movie, its strengths, weaknesses and controversies. This week we're considering maybe the Hitman & Tomb Raider stuff, but if you guys could suggest anything more recent that would be great. Also constructive criticism is welcome.

As an aspiring videogame composer it was natural that I would do my university dissertation on videogame sound & music. I'm pretty proud of it, so I've made it into an iBook with nice photographs/videos and such. I thought that there are probably some people interested in reading something about game sound, especially if it's free so the link is below:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/aesthetics-videogame-sound/id508567380?mt=11

Feel free to offer constructive criticism, I'm alway interested in improving my skills.

The book's aim is to look at different aesthetic approaches to videogame sound & music and to analyse their effectiveness. This means looking at the games of yore and explaining why they were so melodic, all the way to games like Red Dead Redemption that use dynamic soundtracks to offer more immersive experiences.

I had the pleasure of organising the London based Molyjam 2012 event, which I also filmed for a little documentary project. I thought I would write up my experiences about it, and if anyone wants any advice on trying to organise a gamejam i'll do my best to help.

Originally I simply wanted to participate and provide some music for people, but I then decided it would be interesting to film the event and it would also double as some university coursework. Unfortunately the nearest Molyjam was in Brighton, and it seemed impractical lugging the camera equipment to the sea so I thought, “Why not organise a London Molyjam?”

Having never organised an event before and having no budget it was quite a stressful experience. A lot of emails were sent in the two weeks before the event, and it turns out not a lot of people are able to give you the keys to their building on such short notice. Thankfully Siobhan Thomas was able to secure us London South Bank University’s Game Studio for Friday and Saturday, while the Centre for Creative Collaboration was happy to let us use their space on Sunday.

During my attempts to find venues I accidentally called a wrong number, and before they could correct me I explained what Molyjam was and the situation I was in. Luckily it happened to be a guy called Tom Walker, who was big into games and ran a company called Framework Training with his friend Ian Watson. After some discussion they agreed to sponsor the event, allowing me to provide participants with T-shirts, food and drinks.

As the buzz around Molyjam grew I was eventually put in touch Peter Molyneux himself, as he wanted to attend the Friday night, and it didn’t take much to convince him to start the event off with a speech. The rest of Friday night was relatively tame, as people got to know each other, form into teams and discuss ideas, before congregating to the pub.

Saturday was when the real work started, with people coding away, while my friend Paul Mitchinson and myself shot interviews. Turns out asking people who they are and why they got into videogames is a good way to break the ice and put faces to Twitter accounts. After Sundown the most dedicated of participants continued working at the London Hackspace, which was an awesome place to see. It’s full of gadgets and do-dads that all do something cool.

Sunday was a little more stressful, with people desperately trying to finish their creations, all the while working around compile errors. Once the showcase started at 7pm though, everyone had something to show, and it was really interesting seeing projects from start to finish that I had only been catching glimpses of previously.

Since the event I’ve stayed in touch with most of the participants; it seems obvious in hindsight, but I never realised what a great place a gamejam could be to make friends. I also spent the best part of a month wrestling all 11 hours of footage into a 15 minute documentary, and writing the soundtrack. It was a lot of fun though, and I’m hoping to do it again next year.

I feel dirty doing this just to get experience, but i must reach level 5!