1st Gamelan Meetup - Jogja and INAICTA 2011 Public Announcement

Gamelan - Jogja's GameDev Startup community, held its very first meetup on Friday, on May 27th 2011. The event was quite enthusiastically welcomed by its participants that come from game developers, be it business personages, programmers, artists, composers, as well as students. In the event, there was public announcement of INAICTA 2011 too. This first Gamelan meetup was supported by ADGY (Asosiasi Developer Game Yogyakarta or Yogyakarta's Game Developer Association), IGDA (International Game Developer Association), DEPKOMINFO, dan Wisely Management.

The speakers in the event that was held in Potret Cafe, Jl. Anggajaya III - Taman Kuliner, Condong Catur, Sleman were Frida Dewi (UB Games), Kris Antoni (Toge Production), then followed by a public announcement of INAICTA 2011 and then some sharing sessions from some of previous INAICTA's winners. There was this interesting "five minutes session", in which some local developers demonstrated, presented, their work or product only in five minutes.

Frida Dwi presentation was about her success story to become a game artist. By only being a game artist, she could reap thousands of dollars. And after that was INAICTA 2011 public announcement and sharing session by winners from previous INAICTA's that was presented by M Aditya Arief from Gama Techno, Andi Sunyoto from STIMIK AMIKOM Yogyakarta, and Vita Subyakti from RuangKerja.com. INAICTA 2011 submission was already begun at May 3 and will be ended at July 17 2011, and the main event will be held at 4 - 5 October 2011 in Jakarta Convention Center.

In the "five minutes session", there was a demo and a presentation from iCore. The demo was about supporting hardwares for game developers. The event was ended by a presentation from Kris Antoni whom had achieved several prestigious awards, The 2011 Mochis Award in San Francisco. One of the game that had won the award was Planetary Conflict, in Best Multiplayer Game cathegory.

Like previous article had mentioned, Gamelan initiators are game developers from several game dev studio in Jogja. They are Samuel Henry from Samuel Henry Interactive, Guntur Sarwohadi from Soybeansoft, Frida Dwi from UB Games, Fachry Bafadal and Didiet Noor from GuavaGames. Gamelan was actually inspired by Bancakan 2.0 that has refreshed digital community in Yogyakarta.

This yesterday's Gamelan was in fact Jogja's game dev networking event, from artist, composer, programmer, and business personages in the game world. From this community, I'm sure that game developement in Jogja will rapidly moving forward to build an excellent game product that could be compared to other cities' and could compete in international game industry. Long live Jogja's game dev!