At Six to Start, we’re worked with a number of interns over the years, and we’ve found it to be a great experience for everyone involved; we’re able to provide interns valuable experience of game development in a real working environment, and for our part, we value the new ideas that interns bring.

So we’re very pleased to offer a six-week paid internship, beginning in October. We’re looking for smart people who are interested in making social and story-based online games. You must be able to demonstrate experience of having worked on games in the past, whether you helped make a big game, or worked on your own in your spare time, and we’re particularly interested in:

• Front and back-end web developers
• Game designers
• Artists and graphic designers (aimed at games)

You’ll be paid £1300 before tax, and because this position is made possible by the Funded Graduate Internship Scheme at Ravensbourne, you must have graduated from a UK university within the last two years (including BAs, MAs, and PhDs). We’ll also expect you to work from our office in Vauxhall, London.

During the internship, you’ll work with our team on developing and running live projects, helping create concepts for new projects, and coming along to pitch and client meetings. In other words, you won’t be just making the tea and photocopying – see what our previous interns say! In return, we’ll need you to be reliable, highly motivated, and very hard-working.

How to Apply

If you’d like to apply for the internship, please email us at internapps@sixtostart.com by Monday August 23rd with:

• Examples of your work (e.g. a game design, a story, artwork, a demo, etc.)
• An email talking about the work you’ve sent us – what it’s about, why you made it, why it works/doesn’t work
• A CV (two pages maximum)

We may then invite you for a phone or in-person interview.

Please do not call us or email us separately. We’re expecting a lot of applications and we won’t be able to respond or give feedback to everyone, so if you don’t hear back from us by Friday August 27th, then unfortunately you haven’t been accepted.

Tips

• Your degree, A-levels, and GCSEs are much less important than any work that you can show us, whether that’s a demo game or sample writing or artwork. We want to know what you can do.
• It’s a good idea to know the sort of company you’re applying to. Have a look at our previous games and projects to see if you’re the right fit – not everyone is.
• We’re just as interested in failure as we are in success. Have you tried making a game, but it wasn’t perfect? Well, so have we.
• Spelling and grammar actually matter.

We’re very happy and excited to announce that Six to Start is working with New Scientist and Profile Books to create The Last Word Challenge, a social game/quiz that for New Scientist’s forthcoming book, Why Can’t Elephants Jump?

There aren’t many science quizzes out there, and even fewer of them are:

a) fun
b) scientific

But by joining forces with Profile Books and New Scientist, we think we can make a game that’s really special – something that’s a lot of fun, that helps you learn some very neat science facts, and also harnesses everyone’s competitive spirit. The Last Word Challenge will be out in September, shortly before the book, so watch this space for more information!

Read the announcement on Profile Books’ site, and download the press release (PDF).

Award-winning online games company Six To Start hires Bryan Hill as new CEO

Bryan Hill was formerly Senior Vice President of video company Fifty Lessons and prior to that, spent nine years in various senior positions at visual imagery giant Getty Images.

Adrian Hon, Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Six to Start said, ”Previously, we split the CEO role across three of us in the company but eventually we realised this wasn’t tenable. We spent over six months to find the right person – someone with real senior management experience, a great background in digital and IP, and a good understanding of the creative process. In Bryan Hill, we found that person.”

Bryan Hill said, “Six to Start has already gained critical and client acclaim for the work they’ve produced for companies like Channel 4, Wired magazine, and the BBC.  They have a great reputation in their sector; I’m looking forward to taking the company to the next level in its growth and to the development of our own IP. It’s an exciting time to be working in this area. Companies are increasingly trying to figure out new effective ways of building and engaging online communities, whether they are on free to air platforms or behind the paywall. Online social gaming is becoming an increasingly important tool in the marketing mix and we look forward to continuing to be at the forefront of its development and use.

About Six to Start

Six to Start is an award-winning online games company, specialising in browser-based social games. We’ve worked with clients including the BBC, Channel 4, Penguin, Warner Music, the National Maritime Museum, and Disney, to design, build and run online games. Our games have social interaction built-in, with players sharing their achievements and experiences with friends via Facebook and Twitter.

Contact us at hello@sixtostart.com!

Six to Start Ltd., the award-winning online games company responsible for We Tell Stories, Misfits, and Smokescreen, today announced that one of its co-founders, Dan Hon, will be leaving the company.

After three years of helping to build the company, Dan is fulfilling a long-held wish to move to the U.S. He has taken up a position with Wieden + Kennedy based in London and aims to relocate to Portland to take on a greater role in W+K’s global network.

Fellow co-founder and brother of Dan, Adrian Hon said, “I totally understand my brother’s decision, and wish him all the best at W+K. He’s been an invaluable part of Six to Start since we founded the company, working on some of our top projects including Misfits for E4, and Ununited Eurasia for Muse, and I’m sure he’ll do very well in the US.”

Dan Hon said “It’s been a difficult decision moving on from Six to Start but I’m incredibly happy with the company that Adrian and I have built together. It’s brilliantly placed for even greater success with its expansion plans, and I wish Adrian and the team all the best for the future.”

Misfits, our project for E4 with Clerkenwell Films, has been nominated for two awards!

• Broadcast Digital Awards 2010: Best Multiplatform Project
• Association of Online Publishers/AOP: Cross-Media Project

Have you heard of Grubtown? It’s the home of Beardy Ardagh (the beardiest man of all, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), Jilly Cheeter (duck-gatherer), Mango Claptrap (shorts-wearer), Smoky’s Cinema and an Aquarium and Carwash. That’s right. An Aquarium AND a Carwash. Not separately, but together.

We’ve teamed up with our friends at Faber and Faber to launch Visit Grubtown, a new website from Grubtown’s Tourist Board, that features six Grubtown locations and a special new Grubtown Story: Grubtown and the Golden Pineapple.

But that’s not all: we’ve also built The Grubtown Daily Herald, a fun way to involve fans in the Grubtown universe by submitting news articles, restaurant and film reviews. We’re even teaming up with our friends at Newspaper Club to give children the fantastic chance of having their work published in a limited-edition 16-page printed edition of the Grubtown Daily Herald, gathering the best stories from the five weeks, as selected by Philip Ardagh.

Last night, Smokescreen won the General Education Multimedia Award at the BUFVC’s Learning on Screen 2010 conference; the judges found that Smokescreen was the most innovative and most timely multimedia project they’d seen. Smokescreen was in great company, with other winners including standout documentaries from the BBC and The Open University (including BBC2’s brilliant The Love of Money).

This isn’t Smokescreen’s first award either, having won the Best Game category at SXSW 2010 – so this proves that Smokescreen is both fun and educational!

This month Meet ‘em Up hosted by Game Central will be taking place in Birmingham. On April 28th, join us to talk about games with people equally passionnate about games. We will be giving a little show & tell about our last award-winning project Smokescreen.

7pm - Arrive, grab a drink and a seat

7:30pm - Show and Tell

8:30pm - Very important drinking and networking time

10pm - Hometime

Go check your evening here and see you soon!

UK Trade & Investment praises Six To Start’s success at the last South by Southwest Festival (we won Best Game in the 13th SXSW Interactive Web Awards).

“Six to Start is pioneering the art of real-time multi-platform digital tales that mix time and space across the internet.”

Dan has had the opportunity to share the company’s inspiration and vision, especially concerning the “We Tell Stories” Project:

“The idea [for WTS] was inspired by the “emerging field of alternate reality games (ARG) or cross-platform entertainment; this intersection where you have creativity and technology”.

And he says the company’s ambition is “to take devices like mobile phones and transport people into a fantastical, magical world that is playful, has great game design and story-telling”.

We’ve been invited to take part in Campus Party EU, held this week in Madrid. There’s going to be 800 people from every science and technology sector you can think of – space, games, computing, robotics, transport – holed up in a massive convention centre, complete with tents so that the conversation never has to stop. If you’re going to be at Campus Party EU, get in touch via Twitter to @sixtostart or @adrianhon, and we can meet up!

After BBC’s announcement for a Dr Who tie-in video game, The Guardian investigates about new narratives and platform cross-overs. Our involvment with Channel 4 on the Misfits and Smokescreen Projects are mentionned. Adrian comments on both projects:

“It was obvious to E4 that they should do something online,” says chief creative, Adrian Hon. “It’s a young audience – the Skins audience – and a genre show. If you want to engage with these people and get them excited, you have to do it online. We worked with E4 to figure out the sort of community and experience that would really get people engaged, and to get fans of the show doing more stuff.

“The core of it was a website where you could get exclusive content and play games related to that week’s episode. The element that people were really interested in was the social stuff where we tweeted as the characters both during the show and between shows. Simon had a Facebook feed where he put up content – it was the first time a UK broadcaster had done that.”

He has then hinted at some issues regarding social viewing, interactivity and web functionality:

“If I was the BBC I’d think it was really smart to start doing enhanced iPlayer shows, so you have your window showing video from the programme, then you’ve got other stuff going on around it.

“The big problem is keeping up with all this. Imagine if you’re watching Lost and you have to keep up with one guy’s Facebook and someone else’s twitter feed – it’s too much of an effort. It needs to be, push one button and it happens. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that came out of the US soon, something for young adults like MTV or Nickleodean. That would be a smart move – something truly, truly cross-media …”

Full article is available here

90. Dan and Adrian Hon
Cofounders, Six to Start
The London-based brothers run this award winning entertainment company making pioneering ARGs and cross-platform productions.

To see who tops the ranking go here

The Guardian dedicates a paper to our recently award-winning Smokescreen game: Smokescreen game guides teenagers through dangers of social networking.

In recent weeks, moral panic over the safety of social networks has been everywhere in the media, sparked by the Daily Mail’s account of a man posing as a girl of 14 on a “well known social networking site” and being approached by sexually interested males within minutes. Smokescreen is a far cry from that kind of frenzy. Yet what it represents might just be a lot more significant; both in terms of understanding young people’s behaviour online and – most importantly – changing it. [...] Its success – not to mention the experiences and reactions of its tens of thousands of players – paints a rather different picture of the realm of online social networking than is usually seen in the mainstream media.

[...]

“Young people,” [Adrian] argues, “don’t make the same distinctions between different media and devices that older users do. They play games, watch videos and surf the web on every device they can get their hands on. But they are also comfortable with entertainment that doesn’t fit into easy categories.” He’s happy for people to think of Smokescreen as a highly interactive multimedia story – or as a lightly interactive game with a great story. Either way, it represents an important shift in the ground on which educators are attempting to engage with teens and students: and a recognition that new media can best be debated from the inside, through engagement rather than demonisation. Fire can be fought with fire: if it’s fun and engaging, so much the better.

[...]

If the experience of Smokescreen tells us anything, it’s that this means meeting teens on a common ground – and listening to, as well as telling, stories about the digital world as they are living it.

Find Tom Chatfield’s full article here

Six to Start was asked to participate in a session focusing on digital issues and the publishing industry.

Dan Hon of consultancy Six to Start exhorted publishers to get involved in other media, noting that “the games industry is full of people who are very good at making games – but not good at all at making stories”. (See the Bookseller’s report on the event: Publishers face ‘Copernican shift’ from digital)

See also Booktrade.info.

• Six to Start and Channel 4’s SMOKESCREEN wins BEST GAME at the 13th SXSW Interactive Awards (Gamasutra, MCV UK)
• Six to Start’s Smokescreen wins SXSW Best Game award (Casual Gaming)

Adrian Hon, executive producer and chief creative at Six to Start: “Smokescreen is the world’s first game about life online. Every time you hear about a teenager being hauled up at school because of their Facebook profile, or someone being conned out of their password on Twitter – that’s what Smokescreen aims to explore. And because our game puts players in a simulation situation, we can give them an experience that is far more powerful and immersive than any other media. Winning an SXSW Web Award is a fantastic recognition of this.”

Smokescreen marks Six to Start’s third SXSW award in two years.

• Six to Start’s Smokescreen wins at SXSW (Develop)
• Another SXSW Award for Six to Start (Knowing & Making Blog)
  

“One prize might  be regarded as fortune…two win two looks like carefulness.”

Thank you again and see you at the next SXSW Festival