Nottingham. Nestled in the bosom of Nottinghamshire (the clue’s in the name), it’s been home to names and faces that have looked at life from a different perspective and whose works have had a lasting impact, bringing people together and sparking debate and passion around the world. D H Lawrence, Lord Byron, William Booth, Robin Hood; they’ve all contributed something to the idyllic location we call home, and it’s because of this history that we like to think GameCity could only ever exist in Nottingham.

In our aim to celebrate games in new ways, spark cultural debate across sectors and generally open people’s eyes to an entirely new way of thinking, we think our home is a perfect setting. Being based in one city, however, means GameCity can’t come to you…..until now.

GameCityTV is an online video service sharing our long and successful history of exploring and celebrating the very best in videogame culture. GCTV will bring you weekly videos of everything from our six year history, and even create bespoke content in the near future. For now, go and have a look and enjoy what we’ve posted so far.

thatgamecompany’s Journey with Robin Hunicke (GameCity6)

Masaya Matsuura’s Bafta Vision Statement (GameCitySquared)

Richard Lemarchand and Scenes from Uncharted (GameCity6)

Phil Fish & FEZ DEZ REZ (GameCity6)

Stay tuned for more every week and we hope you enjoy.

Hello all and welcome to a new year!

So, with this, our very first post of the year, we were going to spill the beans on all of our upcoming activities for 2012. It was going to be an epic story of our hopes and dreams, our aspirations for world domination, on par with some of the most grandiose literary tales humanity has ever feasted upon. Think Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey, but with more cake and games and fewer wars.

Then we saw that ROME ’3 Dreams of Black’, the interactive WebGL project we worked with during GameCityNights, has been entered into The FWA’s People’s Choice Award 2011. It’s a closely run  race so far, and we absolutely think it deserves to win. Written and directed by Chris Milk, it’s an audiovisual treat and we can’t recommend it enough, especially as it’s totally open for anyone and everyone to experiment with.

Go here to vote - http://www.thefwa.com/pca2011/

To see the project, go here – http://www.ro.me/

To see details of the competition we ran during a previous GameCityNights, go here – http://nights.gamecity.org/news/when-in-rome

Time. It’s a funny thing. Pay attention to it and everything seemingly runs in slow motion. Look away for what feels like the briefest moment and suddenly you’ve lost a week. It still feels like only yesterday we could count GameCity’s age on one hand.

With this being the yearly wrap up blog post, rather than count down all of our many, many achievements of the year in a giant list (and end with the hilariously festive line “And a partridge in a pear tree”), instead let’s reflect on some of our personal favourites;

GameCity6 – Easily our best year yet. An amazing four days with over 45,000 of you visiting the main festival structure alone, and here are some stand out moments that we just have to acknowledge;

Eric Chahi’s Bootcycle – We’d been developing the Bootcycle idea for a while so when Eric said he’d do it we got very excited. And then scared. But it turned out to be an incredible day full of experiments, fun and things we never thought we’d do at the festival. Nous vous aimons, Eric. Is that right? Je ne sais pas.

Zelda Day – We knew this would be big. We knew lots of you wanted to celebrate Zelda in GameCity’s very special way (this being largely focused on cake and general merriment). But we didn’t know it would be as well received as it was. Hundreds upon hundreds of people queued to tackle the Hero’s Quest, play Skyward Sword ahead of release and generally revel in 25 years of Link’s adventures. Also, we learned to never do anything with Ocarinas again. Even the word Ocarina is like a trigger for rage at GameCity HQ. Say it in our presence at your peril.

The Prize – As an end to GameCity6, it was perfect. Minecraft won, Tom Watson presented the award and we all danced the night away. There’s photos to prove it. We were also in several national newspapers, on BBC World News Today, BBC Radio 4 and lots more. Go us.

Journey Live – Ever since Robin Hunicke’s serene flower playthrough during GameCitySquared, we’ve always wanted to tackle an event with the same beauty and sense of majesty. The answer? Invite Robin back for another late night event, this time to explore the sandy dunes of Journey. That tear in our eye during the performance? A bit of sand blew in our face. That’s right. We weren’t crying at all.

Zelda Zine – Another part of the Zelda Day that we couldn’t have anticipated. It was staggering to see the calibre of talent, *international* talent no less, who bombarded us with enough content to fill not just one, but THREE volumes. We’re still working through everything and hope to have the issues out and available to buy early next year. Thanks to Cory Schmitz for putting in so much effort to put the zines together. Speaking of Cory, the illustrations he provided for the festival posters were AMAZING. He’ll go far, he will.

Look at the queue for the zine. LOOK AT IT! (Sorry Stephen at Page45).

Chris O’Shea at GameCityNights – A departure from the developer lead talks, Chris has not only created some particularly amazing large scale interactive artworks, but also tinkered with Kinect to make Air Guitar a reality. Oh, and made us laugh hysterically with some racing chickens.

Amanita Design’s double world premiere – Another coup for GameCityNights, our good friend Jakub Dvorsky gave us the unveil for new titles Samorost 3 and Botanicula, as well as music video Osada.

Kooky UK Premiere – We must’ve seen the trailer for Kooky about a hundred times in the office. Seriously. The hype we created around Jan Svěrák’s film about a lost little toy was huge. We’re really happy you got to see our favourite film of the year with us at GameCity6.

You – Yes, you. You’re one of our favourite things of the year, every year. We could not make GameCity happen without your support, your feedback, your presence at Nights, the festival, and everything else we do. So thanks.

So, 2011 is done and dusted. Those are a few of our favourite moments. How about yours? If you’re on Twitter or Facebook share some of yours with us @GameCity or on our Page. Enjoy your holiday breaks, thanks for joining us in 2011 and here’s to using our next 4 fingers (or three fingers and a thumb if you’re going to be pedantic) as we work our way through many more years of celebrating interesting things. See you all in 2012!

We’re really pleased to announce the winner of CrytekUK’s CryENGINE®3 Level Design Competition held at GameCity6.

Here’s a message from CrytekUK HQ:

This year at GameCity we had an amazing turnout for the CryENGINE®3 Level Design Competition. The task was to build a game world that was fun to race around in a vehicle using the latest CryENGINE® Sandbox(tm) toolset (the same tool used in the development of Crysis®2). We had lots of really great entries over the two days (including a scaled down recreation of the entire UK!), and it was a really difficult task for the team at Crytek to choose a winner. However in the end one level stood out above all the others.

The winner demonstrated natural level design flair and a great understanding of the CryENGINE® Sandbox(tm) terrain editor. The landscape is extremely fluid with some great changes of height. The vehicle track is smooth and easy to drive around but includes a number of sudden drops and precarious edges to dial up the excitement. The painted ground textures show an eye for detail and the level is finished off with some fantastic decoration in the shape of trackside trees and plant life. We had a great deal of fun racing around it.

The winner of this year’s CryENGINE®3 Level Design Competition is… Karl Livesey!

Karl wins £100 GAME voucher and a tour of the Crytek UK Studio. Crytek would like to say a big congratulations to Karl and a huge thank you to everyone who came along to see us and take part in the competition over the course of the two days.

Isn’t that great! Well done to the winner and to everyone involved. Spend your winnings wisely!

And here’s some of Karl’s handiwork. Impressive!

If there’s one thing the Zelda Takeover Day at GameCity6 did, it was cause us to reach maximum levels of excitement for Skyward Sword, the newest game in the legendary series.

Finally, it’s here!

To celebrate, here’s some photos taken on Saturday 29th October at GC6.

While we’re on the subject, here’s the cover and a sneak preview of Volume 2 of our’s and Cory Schmitz‘ Zelda Zine which will be available very soon. Featuring submissions by Madeline Flores, Roman Muradov, Daniel Carneiro, Kel McDonald and lots more.

Happy adventuring! Let us know what you think of Skyward Sword on twitter (@gamecity) or facebook (Our Page).