At the end of late last year, after the dust had settled from Freeplay 2009, Eve and I sat down to decide what shape Freeplay 2010 should take. 2009 was very much our first experience of running a festival, and we learned a lot just through putting the whole thing together.  One of the things we felt was the need for a specific theme to bind everything together.  While we curated 2009 pretty closely, there wasn’t a unifying topic or take home by design. In hindsight, the program coalesced around practical, mid-level skills – less about getting started and more about managing the process, less about the state of the industry and more about the opportunities.

In thinking about it, we noted that coming out of 2009, there was a really strong creative energy – a desire to just get out there and make things – that also seemed to be trying to figure out how to focus itself and how best to approach the sometimes thorny issues at the root of all creativity.  In planning 2009, it’s very much that energy that we’ve chosen to focus on in 2010.

Which brings us to our theme and to our program.  We chose ‘Play is Everywhere’ because we wanted to look at the creative process from a wide range of angles.  We wanted to look at how we come up with ideas, how we take them to completion, how we foster the ones that work and let go the ones that don’t. We wanted to look at play in the context of our audience, of the classroom, of the work we do day to day.  We wanted to encourage experimentation and exploration of the form, and a greater awareness of opportunities beyond what most of us consider the industry holds.

We wanted to build a festival of ideas.  We wanted everyone to come away from it with a sense of possibility.  And we wanted everyone to feel part of not just a development community, but an artistic and creative one too.

So, with just under a month to go, we’re launching the program for Freeplay 2010 and putting our tickets on sale.  Over the coming weeks,  we’ll fill in the remainder of the speaker info, give you details of our after parties, let you know the projects you can get your hands on in the gaming expo, and tease some of what you can expect from the inaugural Freeplay awards.

We’d also like to thank our brilliant Program Advisory Committee, without whom this program wouldn’t have been possible.

See you at the State Library of Victoria on August 14 & 15.

For the full program, click here.

For details of sessions, click here.

For speaker details, click here.

For ticketing details, click here.

For the full media release, click here.

Tags: 2010, Program, Speakers, Ticketing

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