Upcoming Events…Part 2

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At the very real risk of overexposure, I’ll be speaking about my usual mix of games, writing, and Freeplay related stuff at:

The ATOM Screen Futures conference on Sunday 10th July, 12:00 – 1:00

Teaching games and games literacy

While videogames sit firmly in the limelight, there is a whole world of games out there that are more accessible, more easily read, and which teach tangible skills that can feed into digital games and interactive development.

Drawing from a recent Department of Education and Early Chidhood Development research project into teaching games and games literacy, this session will look at games and design from physical and pervasive games, board games, improvisation, experimentation, and design exercises with the aim of separating out the creative skills from the technical and providing a base to support greater games literacy in the classroom – whether or not the final outcome is a digital game or something else.

Monash University’s Computer Games Boot Camp on Thursday July 14th talking about writing for games and indie development.

The next TEDxMelbourne event on the evening of Tuesday July 19th talking about Gaming and Innovation.

VITTA‘s annual ICT Week event at BMW Edge on Wednesday July 27th talking about the changing shape of the industry and what that means for students & careers.

IGDA Brisbane Game On

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Recently, I was invited up to Brisbane by their IGDA chapter to speak at one of their Monthly Game On events. It was a pretty open invitation so what I decided to focus on was extending some of the thoughts that I’ve had here about industry, culture, and how the words we use restrict our ability to properly think about things.

Here’s the video. A full copy of the talk – which isn’t really a transcript, but it’s what I wrote to say amidst a flurry of other deadlines – is beneath the fold.

Continue reading →

Upcoming events…

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Flurry of activity before I disappear into a Freeplay wrangling flurry.

I’ll be running a session at the Emerging Writers’ Festival as part of their Business of Being a Writer Masterclass on Process and Organisation. This event has sold out (hurrah), but there are still tickets available for their myriad other events.

I’ll also be running on of their TwitterFEST sessions on play and the creative process, building on and discussing my piece in The Reader that you can read online here.

Through Freeplay, we’ve also organised a few playful storytelling things with them. Head over to the event on their website or Freeplay to learn more.

Early June, I’ll be up in Brisbane to talk at the IGDA / Creative Industry Precinct’s Game On program. There isn’t much detail on the site, but this is what I’ll be talking about:

The words we use to describe the space we work in – development, industry, culture, community – all describe structures built, either deliberately or as a byproduct of other processes, by people. In the face of a shifting industrial landscape, how can we build new structures that might better reflect how we’d like to live and work, what would the values of such a community look like, and what does it mean to connect with a wider creative, critical, and artistic culture? This year’s Freeplay will explore these ideas – along with many others – but before it does, co-director Paul Callaghan will talk about some of the history and philosophy behind Freeplay, what to expect from this year’s event, and what to think about into 2012 and beyond.

After that,  I’m going to be at the Continuum Speculative Fiction and Pop Culture Convention talking games and storytelling. Look out for the launch of their full program here.

And lastly, I’ll be running a workshop with ExpressMedia on Innovative Storytelling as part of their Big Splash series.

The thin measure of success

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I’ve been thinking about some of the implications of my previous post about Screen Australia‘s All Media Fund and in doing so have clarified something that has been on my mind for quite some time.

In particular, this quote in the original piece from an unnamed executive has rattled around my head:

“Strong story-telling elements are found in AAA titles – like the recent LA Noire by Team Bondi – (but) the budgets for these projects are beyond what most independent games developers can expect to secure,” the source says.

“It’s no accident that Australia’s recent success has been on the iPhone platform – Flight Control and Fruit Ninja are examples, and there’s been a shift towards developing games for social media networks like Facebook.”

I’ve come across this thinking a lot and have started to wonder: are these our only measures of success – LA Noire or Flight Control? AAA or iPhone? I think we do ourselves a serious disservice when we put barriers up about what we can create before we even create it or when we fail to consider the other options that might work from a mechanical and storytelling perspective – options that might not have examples in Australia but which certainly exist as part of the wider worldwide gaming community. Just off the top of my head, what about Stacking or Sword and Sworcery or World of Goo (stretching it a little, but it certainly has a story) or Machinarium or Costume Quest or Limbo?

Not AAA, and not Flight Control either, but interesting and successful titles with a narrative bent. Would Screen Australia fund these? I don’t know, but they certainly won’t if nobody applies. To damn a project or an idea before it has even been born because it doesn’t fit into the thin measure of success of being either a mechanically driven iPhone game or a multimillion dollar title seems to me to be economic & creative folly.

And anyway, someone has already done Flight Control, Fruit Ninja, and LA Noire. Maybe there’s room for something that’s different.