Hey folks,

Welcome to Games Week! This year marks Games Soc’s first involvement in this week and boy do we have a great line-up of events!

* Monday - Super Smash Bros. Tournament

* Tuesday - Playstation 3 Demo and Talk - Playstation 3, Wii and XBox360 Console Event

* Wednesday - Guest Speakers From The Games Industry - Retro Gaming Event #2 - XBox Live Gaming Centre Trip

* Thursday - Lab Gaming

-Monday- Monday sees our first Super Smash Bros. Tournament ever being run on campus. The event takes place in the Seminar Room at 12pm and features some great prizes for the winners. We’ve already had significant interest in this event so come early to ensure you get a place.

-Tuesday- Tuesday sees us bring the Playstation 3 to DCU as we host a talk by Neil Costigan, a senior researcher working on the console in the area of Cryptography. The talk will be at 12pm in the Seminar Room and will encompass his work with the machine as well as his thoughts on the consoles inner workings. But this is the Games Society and we do, after all, like our games, so Neil will also be showing us what the console is really capable of with demonstrations of the likes of Warhawk, Call Of Duty 3 and Full Auto 2.

Following this talk we’ll be running our Console Event which will again feature the Playstation 3 except this time you guys will be able to have a hands on test of the machine. We'll also have a Nintendo Wii and XBox 360 for you guys so you'll finally be able to see which console is the current champ!

-Wednesday- Wednesday sees us hosting more talks, this time based on the Games Industry in general. The first will be given by Aphra Kerr, a DCU graduate, researcher and author of “The Business and Culture of Digital Games: Gamework and Gameplay”. Ms. Kerr will be giving a talk on the design, development and marketing of games as well as her involvement in the Irish games development community site, gamedevelopers.ie

The second talk will be given by Mal Duffin, Director of CanDo Interactive, one of Irelands leading solutions providers for interactive 3D content ranging from the educational to the entertainment based. The talk will also include an introduction to Blender, the free 3D application and game engine.

These talks start at 12pm in the Seminar Room and refreshments will be provided throughout.

The talks will be followed by our second Retro Event of the year in the Old Bar starting at 2pm. Whether you’re a Nintendo or Sega fan, in love with Mario or Sonic or yearn for a return of the Dreamcast we’ll have something for you.

Lastly on Wednesday we have our second trip to the Xbox Live Gaming Centre in town. Places are once again limited so book early on the Events thread on the forums to ensure your place. Tickets will cost €10 and the event will be running from 7pm to 12pm. We’ll be leaving The Hub at 6:30pm so if you want to grab a bus with us be there before then, otherwise we’ll see you in the Centre on South William St!

-Thursday- Our final event of the week will be on Thursday as we run our weekly Lab Gaming session. For Games Week we have a special surprise, however, as we add Dawn Of War to our list of games available for play. The event kicks off at 6pm as usual in C204 in the Henry Gratten. Hope to see you guys there!

As you can see from the posters up around campus STOCS and Poker are also getting involved but I’ll let them tell you about their events. The full schedule for the week can be found here, http://games.dcu.ie/gamesweek and hopefully there's something for all of you guys to enjoy. Hope to see you around!

Regards, Simon Kilroy

Chair, DCU Games Society