DiGRA, First Day Recap (and a bit of yesterday)
Posted 2011-09-15 - Archived under: boardgames, conference, DiGRA, game design, ludic attitude - Reply
A long day of conference is over. I’ll try to recap it… It’s late already and I’ve been active the whole day, so we’ll see what happens.
Yesterday was the reception party. Some fun stuff and some nice people to talk to. I especially I liked to finally be able to play Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally Okay Now, or for short B.U.T.T.O.N. from Copenhagen Game Collective. I’ve seen it online before and really like how the game rules is moved from the game console out into the social space.
After introduction and a keynote from Eric Zimmerman, today begun with a Ph.D.-workshop on investigating games and play. Two hours of intense work and one minute madness presentations lead to some new thoughts around my thesis. Focus of the discussion was on ludic attitude as not necessarily fun, and why people choose to engage in them anyway. A new angle of thoughts and a new acquaintance is good work for two hours!
Interesting moments in the afternoon was a Panel on Research Practice, and Social Dynamics. In my opinion the focus was a bit to high on how research can be useful for the industry. Not that strange maybe, since thats where a large part of money comes from, but a more pressing issue is how research can function for itself, when industry is such a big part of it and lies so close.
Further a keynote by Reiner Knizia, right after eating lunch with him. Actually I think the lunch gave me more thoughts, it’s quite obvious that he left his research career behind him, but it’s nice to get an inside into how one of the greatest board game designers proceed with his work.
Finally a panel on boardgames and how they are interesting for the game studies. Really interesting, with views from some of the names I relly like (yes, I know, I’m a fanboy when it comes to boardgame design). Afterwords I got to speak a bit with James Wallis, inventor of the Indy Role-Playing Game the Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Münchausen, and Andrew Sheerin, the man behind War on Terror the Boardgame.
Finally a couple of beers with ”the Norwegians”. Nice day, nice evening, long day. Now tired and time to res. There’s a day tomorrow as well…
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