Thursday the 13th was a good night for a party, and it seems a lot of developers had the same idea - a few companies sent their apologies, saying it was their Christmas party on that night too. Nevertheless, Polygons #9 attracted well over 60 people. It was posher looking than previous ones, on account of our new venue at Markeaton Campus, University of Derby. We're looking forward to putting on more events here.

Conversation this time included the mainstreaming of games, to the point of celebrities like William Shatner endorsing them, the tension that exists between game reviews, PR and advertising, and the effect of Wii scarcity on publishers and developers.

The buyout of UK studios such as TT Games and Evolution presented an interesting disucssion on price: TT Games recently sold to Time Warner for upwards of £100M, yet has none of its own IP, and Evolution Studios, owners of Motorstorm and Pursuit Force, went for a comparably small seeming £16M. The panel's conclusion was that the context of a sale is critical. Rare went to Microsoft for a fairly large figure, because at the time they were seen as crucial in gaining Microsoft a competitive advantage over Sony. Additionally, as non-games big media companies buy into the industry, there's a lot of dumb money moving around. Obviously, TT Games have done some great things with other people's IP, but only time will show whether Time Warner have overspent on them.

Much more was discussed, on the panel and over pies in the bar afterward - see you at the next one.

The Polygons Christmas special is just a few weeks away. Join us on Thursday the 13th of December, not only for game dev discussion and free beer, but also mince pies and more entertainingly bad photoshoppery. Doors open at 18:00, with the panel to start at 19:00.

Guests on the panel this time will include Bruce Everiss, writer of the excellent blog Bruce On Games, and Dave Wilson, recently departed from Evolution Studios and now lecturing at the University of Derby. Our team captains this time are Iain Simons from Gamecity and Rob Yescombe of Free Radical Design.

Rare , magnificent as ever, are once again sponsorsing the bar, along with bluegfx, Autodesk, and CIN.

We'll also be in a new venue this time, Derby University's freshly opened Markeaton Campus, who are kindly offering us space to do this in style. Here's a google map to the venue, note that it is actually further along Markeaton Street than the postcode marker: it's the very large building that's still under construction in the google satellite imagery. There is also *very* limited car parking at the back of the building via Pybus Street.

We look forward to seeing you all there, meanwhile stay up to date via the mailing list and facebook.

The poster for NMTP #9 can be downloaded here.