November 2024 Sponsor Newsletter
Future content updates, plus submit your AI and Games GOTY 2024!
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Hello all,
here and welcome to our monthly sponsor newsletter. A big update on everything happening behind the scenes of this little enterprise of mine.Now I’ve managed to once again create another weird scheduling hiccup. We released the October newsletter 4 weeks ago, and that was after we failed to get a September sponsor update out due to ‘stuff’ (i.e. lots of things happening). But then I now have another newsletter coming so soon afterwards. The November newsletter is so up to date, it’s coming out in October, what gives?
The short of it is, we have a bunch of BIG things dropping here on
in the next couple of weeks. A conference, a Kickstarter, and still we’ll have updates too! So given next week is of course the AI and Games Conference, I figured let’s release the sponsor update now, and then we will have a slimmed down newsletter next week given I suspect I will have 101 things to do in the 48 hours prior to the event starting.So a reminder of what we talk about in the sponsor issues
Upcoming issues of the bi-weekly Substack Newsletter.
Future AI and Games YouTube videos (which appear as case studies here on the Substack)
Upcoming content on AI and Games Plus on YouTube, which also includes the Branching Factor podcast.
Plus some updates on announcements coming soon for both the AI and Games Conference and the upcoming Kickstarter for Goal State.
For this issue, I’m going to focus on what’s happening in the next two months. Given of course the conference and Kickstarter are messing with production quite a bit at the moment.
As always, parts of the newsletter are made available for everyone to enjoy, but to find out more about what’s coming up, and also give feedback and suggestions, please consider signing up as a paid supporter right here on AI and Games.
But before that, I want to get your input on an upcoming feature!
Game of the Year 2024
Yes if you ever find a good idea on the internet, you steal it and call it your own (it’s a big thing in AI a the moment). After
made it such a rip-roaring success over at the last year, I wanted to run our own AI and Games GOTY series.Is there a game that’s really held your attention this year? Something that’s really hold onto you. Well why not share it with the AI and Games readership? I’m looking for a couple of paragraphs sharing the love for a game you’ve played this year (it need not be a game that was released in 2024 - otherwise I’d have nothing to talk about).
Drop me a message in the AI and Games Discord, or via the messaging app here on Substack to be considered for publication in December!
Alrighty, with that out of the way, let’s talk about the next big thing on my schedule…
AI and Games Conference
The conference is now in its final stages of preparation, given at time of publication we’re a mere 9 days away from kicking things off. All of our content is locked down, we have a schedule that looks really strong. So we’re very much in the process of sorting out the logistics at the venue.
As mentioned in previous newsletters, we’re very excited for this event, and happy that it’s received such a positive response. All we have to do now, is ensure that the event on the day goes well, no pressure!
Some quick bits of info for anyone interested, particularly for those attending.
As mentioned previously, all talks will be recorded, and we will moving towards editing up and sharing these talks in the early months of 2025.
Two quick things for attendees:
We will have a cloakroom available for storage of coats and bags. We expect the venue on the day to be busy, but there is a lot of additional open space within proximity of the venue for people to go outside and get some air if needed.
We’re planning to host a social event after the day concludes. We’ll be announcing the venue next week.
We plan on having some sort of post-mortem of the event. What that looks like at the moment I don’t know. No doubt I’ll talk about it on the newsletter, but we hope to have some photographers and recording teams on site to capture a lot of what happens at the event itself.
Goal State
As mentioned last week, Goal State now launches on November 15th on Kickstarter. So here we go, it’s a big scary moment, and one that I’m nonetheless excited for. I’m happy to see that the announcement lead to a roughly 33% increase in followers for the campaign on the Kickstarter page. I’m happy with that.
I have sat and made projections on this, and by my math we can reach the funding goal if around 200-220 people sign up for one of the main course packages. So that’s rather encouraging. Plus of course hopefully some folk will throw a little bit of cash in even if they don’t go all in on the main course project itself.
Right now I still have a lot of backend stuff to do. Notably the Kickstarter page needs a fresh lick of paint after I initially wrote it several months back. So I’m going to be doing that in the next week or so when lulls in the conference workload permit it.
I mentioned in the recent newsletter what the funding goals are the first main stretch of the project. Should we get to a point that it warrants discussion, then I’ll give a more thorough breakdown of the ML for Games 101 course. Right now just getting all the ducks lined up for the launch is the main priority. Critically the week it goes live I will discuss the funding tiers here on Substack before people log on to support it on the Kickstarter page.
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