You may soon tire of igfest self-congratulation but we’re still buzzing from it. And here for your image-based viewing pleasure (though word on the grape-vine is that someone has uploaded a **VHS** recorded version to Vimeo) we enclose some funny little stills of our moment with BBC Points West on Friday, just before the headline game La Noche De Los Muertes kicked off.

Thought Den have been working hard over the last few months helping igfest get off the ground. We were bought in to help with business development and festival promotions which involved talking with international brands, national newspapers, local heros and the great and good of Bristol’s media scene. Sadly Howies fell at the final hurdle despite their enthusiasm to come on board, but thanks to some fantastic support from the Arts Council the festival is going to be a huge success. The TV crews have been mobilised and the reporters are on standby. And best of all it’s going to be sunny!!!

The festival eases into action this evening with a Moose Safari, and the headline game La Noche de Los Muertes kicks off on Friday. It is already massively over-subscribed and is shaping up to be a spectacular chase across the city.

My other two personal favourite games Rainbow Rain and Sneaks and Blaggers are also fully booked, which is a shame, but I’ll be doing my best to bagsy a spot.

And before signing off I’d like to draw attention to a special little sub-game that will be running throughout the festival. It’s a battle between Bristol’s media agencies to see who is – Bristol’s Biggest Player! The ideas is that agencies get points for playing igfest games and the more they play the more points they get. Given all the press the festival gets, it’s a nice way to shout about the great media talent we have in this city, and encourage the agencies to get out into the streets and play.

Hello Thought Den blog, I haven’t paid you enough attention lately. But here’s some good news! The Fire Kills campaign managed and seeded by Team Rubber and built by Thought Den has clocked more 800,000 plays. The COI (Central Office of Information. Sounds a bit George Orwell dunnit?) are thrilled and plan to make a case study of it, because we’re all just so good at what we do…

In other news, Thought Den have joined Simon Games in the igfest engine room, provided commercial-minded support. This basically means we’ll be pestering some bad-ass brands over the next few weeks to get them involved. It’s too good a proposition to miss. Look at the similar event-based marketing activity of brands like Red Bull (Air Race, Formula 1), Virgin (V-Feset), Orange (Glastonbury), T-Mobile (Trafalgar Singalong etc) and Jack Daniels with their music programme.

If anyone has any thoughts on how we could pimp igfest, please do get in touch. And if you want to volunteer to help run the festival, please get in touch. And if you want to play – get your arse down to Bristol town centre on 11, 12 and 13 of September for some serious frivolous mental fun-ness. Over n out Cap’n.

As the bloggers, tweeters, compulsive status-updaters, cyber-geeks and games fans return from the recent SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, the Guardian’s tech writers are already drawing their conclusions. It seems the buzz this year is all about developing location-aware experiences, be they online, over mobile or using close proximity technologies like RFID. There are countless enterprises (BrightKite, Foursquare, Fire Eagle, Bliin, Gypsii etc) whose core offerings revolve around organising, sharing and distributing location-specific information, with an increasing trend to connect with existing social networks such as those on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and LinkdIn.

This is all good news, considering the nature of the next Happy Packages release! We’re currently beavering away on our iPhone application which, funnily enough, revolves around location specific information, social network connectivity and even a little hint of gaming! Read the Happy Packages journal for updates, discussion, prototype launches etc

As an aside, Simon Games have been the talk of the festival with their Hat game, which was mentioned again by Alex Krotoski but in print this time – Thursday’s Technology Guardian. See Other articles here.

Know anyone invited to go to the MIA awards and win something? We do, us! The Pervasive Media Studio, where we’re currently residents, scooped the ‘outstanding contribution to innovation’ award.

The sexy awards night showcases the best in the South West’s talent through a wide spectrum of Media categories.

I found some of the best pieces were, Scayrecrow a dark and twisted animation that scared the cr*p out of me in the screening.

Moose Hunt, which let loose ripples of giggling from all tables as Simon from Simon Games meandered through the New forest with nothing but a moose costume on….

Finally, we were honored to be the guests for the University of the West of England‘s table, red-wine included. It’s was very warming to see all their School of Art, Media and Design staff talking so passionately about their job roles. Lots of chatting about how they’re making their MA the best, discussions about maximizing students employability and the direction of their courses. Even better however is how much fun they all are, comments about ‘interesting’ Satin dresses, the 2 course Dean and school photos… What goes on tour, stays on tour.

Let’s see what Thought Den can win on their own next year!