Did you play the news today? GameTalk Mini on September 12th

[Vigild]

Join us next Wednesday for the premiere of GameTalk: a upcoming series of inspirational and provocative game conferences starting next Spring in central Copenhagen.

When: September 12th - 16-18
Place: Room 3A12 (3rd floor) - IT-University of Copenhagen
Host: Thomas Vigild
More info: http://www.facebook.com/events/424311697606544/
Free admission - no sign-up required

GameTalk Mini is a small teaser for the bigger GameTalk event next Spring in Copenhagen, were we will invite 12 bright innovators and gamemakers from across the globe to take the stage and give us their personal views on how they play - which games, interactive experiences, current developments and trends are the most important, wacky, creative and inspirational right now - and how will this define the future of games?

This first GameTalk Mini will focus on games as a journalistic and provocative tool of expression with a keynote from the pioneer and guru of News Games Gonzalo Frasca. After that professor Espen Aarseth from IT-University of Copenhagen will dispell the myth of news gaming and open up for a debate.

Program
16:00 - 17:00 Keynote
Newsgames: Playing to understand our world - Gonzalo Frasca

Just like political cartoons brought some soul to the printed newspaper industry, videogames have been attempting to find their place in journalism for almost a decade now. What are the technical, design and business challenges for creating games based on the current events? And, more importantly, why is it relevant?

17:00 - 17:20
Good News Is Not News: Dispelling the Newsgaming Myth - Espen Aarseth

Can games convey news? Can they convey anything at all beyond themselves?
Or is the exact same quality that makes a game a good game, the one that
makes it poor at anything else?

17:20 – 18.00
Debate and mingling
+
Next GameTalk
Introducing the next GameTalk event and its partnership with the Urban Gaming Festival. Meet program manager Jacob La Cour


About

Gonzalo Frasca
Gonzalo Frasca, PhD, is a game designer, researcher and entrepreneur based in Uruguay. For over 10 years, he has created games for Cartoon Network, Disney, Pixar, Warner Bros. and Lucasfilm, including a Top 4 Paid app at the US Apple App Store. He's a columnist at CNN en Español and Chair of the Videogame program at ORT University, one of the first undergrad programs in South America.

His most famous game is September 12, a response to the 9/11 attacks. It's based on the political argument that a direct military response will only increase the likelihood of further terrorist attacks on the West and in 2009 it received a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Knight Foundation.

Powerful Robot
http://www.powerfulrobot.com/



Espen Aarseth

Associate Professor and Principal Researcher at Center for Computer Games Research at IT-University of Copenhagen. As one of the true pioneers and founding fathers of modern game research, Espen is a world respected author and researcher with countless publications and articles on his CV.

Also co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Gamestudies.org - the first academic journal of computer game research and author of the book 'Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature', a comparative media theory of games and other aesthetic forms.

Espen is also a member of the Advisory Board of G|A|M|E, a journal of comparative videogame analysis.

Web
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espen_Aarseth

[egenfeldt]

Cool stuff - a real shame I can't make it

Btw - we did a news game prototype with the VJ Movement (http://www.vjmovement.com/) in Netherlands. If there is 10 min. I can try and convince our game designer to give a quick 'n dirty show of lessons learned and the game.

S

[Vigild]

Good news! We have updated the GameTalk Mini with a short speak from Jeppe Nielsen from Serious Games Interactive, who made a prototype of a News Game. Yay! Pitch

17:00 - 17:10 "VJ Movement - A news game prototype".

This is a presentation of a news game prototype that was made in cooperation between the independent dutch news organization VJ Movement and the danish game developer Serious Games Interactive in 2011. Through the use of real-life news stories players compete to become the most successful news organization and gather the most real-life followers. Do you have what it takes to identify the next news hotspot?

About
Jeppe Nielsen
Game designer & project manager, Serious Games Interactive, 2009-present
Game designer, Zentropa Interaction, 2005-2009
Cand. Mag. in Dramaturgi, University of Aarhus, -2005

See the final program on http://www.facebook.com/events/424311697606544/