Freeplay — Freeplay Independent Games Festival

Game/Play Playday Extended….

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Paul

We had to get permission sorted, but we’re glad we did because it means our Playday on the 29th will be spreading out from NGV Studio and into Federation Square, who, it just so happens, will also be playing Pac Man on the big screen in the Main Square!

Come down to the Studio from 1:00 to 2:00 and play Earpiece or Lose The Tail throughout Federation Square, or head out to the Main Square from 2:00 and find the Picnic Blankets to join in a game of Checkpoint.

From 6:00 until 10:00, we’ll be back down at the Atrium to play Bacterius and Double Agent before a playful Show and Tell Salon at 8:00 with some cool people doing micro talks about play and playful things to finish the whole day off.

Game/Play Playday

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Paul

On October 29th (this Satuday!), we’ll once again be turning the NGV Studio into a place of play. This time, we’re excited to have Pop Up Playground and Coney playing with us to run a bunch of games, some playful secret agent missions, and a few surprises that you’ll just have to come along to check out.

We’ll be there from 10:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night, and you’re welcome to join us for the whole thing, but if you can’t make it, here’s a handy schedule and links to the games we’ll be playing so you can see exactly what we’re going to be up to.

And yes, there will be Lemon Jousting.

10:00 – Lemon Jousting
11:00 – Werewolf
11:45 – Off With Your Head
12:30 – Lunch
13:30 – Lemon Jousting
14:15 – Capetown
15:00 – J’Accuse
15:45 – Ninja
16:30 – Lemon Jousting

There’ll also be some games running all day and some drop in game design exercises:

and between 3:00 and 5:00, you can come and do some Playful Secret Agent Missions run by a representative from the Society of Coney.

Phew. That’s enough for now. Details of the games we’ll be playing in the evening – and a playful salon – will go up later this week.

We will see you there.

Game/Play Jam

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Paul

Over the weekend, we ran a bit of a game jam at the NGV Studio.

On Saturday, we had people come through and draw pictures that we’ve now stuck on the wall of the gallery, and which we’ll leave there until the end of the show in November.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

On Sunday, we had 5 game developers come in and make games out of them all – in just 7 hours. It was a little hectic, but in the end they managed to put together 3 completely different games – BBQ Attack, Inklings, and Terrace. Enjoy!

Thanks to Jason Bakker, Russell Dilley, Harry Lee, Chad Toprak, and Eberhard Graether for making them all possible.

Cherchez La Femme

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Paul

Coming out of Freeplay were really concrete and tangible themes of inclusion, accessibility, gender, and recognition, which we hadn’t really given space within the festival itself to properly explore. We didn’t want to wait a whole year before doing that though so we decided to put our feelers out and see if any other groups would be interested in exploring those topics in relation to gaming.

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Game/Play Events

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Paul

This Thursday we have our first Late Night Board Games in NGV Studio. Come along and play from our collection or bring your own.

Then on Saturday, we’ll be running a Playday of pervasive games. Come along for the whole thing or just drop in whenever you feel like it. The schedule is:

10:00 – Lemon Jousting

11:00 – J’accuse

12:00 – Lunch

13:00 – Lemon Jousting

14:00 – Humanagrams

15:00 – Ninja

16:00 – Off With Your Head

17:00 – Lemon Jousting

If you can’t make it along, head over to check out the games we have in the space and the artwork of local game artists.

Game/Play runs until November 5th.

Game/Play

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Paul

Time warps in strange ways after a festival. We know it’s been a month since Freeplay because our calendar says so and also because we’re gearing up for…

Game/Play at NGV Studio

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria, we’re running an exhibition titled Game/Play which runs from in the NGV Studio September 24th until November 5th. It’s a mix of concept art, the digital, the physical, the pervasive, and the playful. As well as the exhibition component which includes over 40 pieces from local artists, playable versions of Solar 2, Antichamber, Once Upon a Spacetime, Captain Forever, AND the Winnitron, along with a bunch of game and playful events throughout our 6 week run.

Late night board games

Every Thursday evening during the exhibition, we’ll be letting the games out of their cases and playing them. Our current list is Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Brass, Zombies!!!, Fluxx, and Once Upon a Time, but we’ll be adding more throughout the exhibition – and of course you can bring your own. Be prepared to explain the rules though

Playdays

On October 1 & 29, we’ll be running some playdays. If you missed out on Lemon Joust Club during the festival, this is your chance to see what all the fuss might have been about. We couldn’t play that all day though, so we’re working on scheduling a bunch of other games. For a clue, check out ludocity.org and lose an hour or two in there.

The schedule for those will go up very soon.

Game Jam

We loved the project we did at State of Design, inspired by Adam Saltsman’s Game City Idea Bucket project so much we wanted to do it again. Drop in on October 15th to draw creatures, backgrounds, level designs or just scribble down your ideas for games, then come along on October 16 to see developers turn all of those into fully functional games – in a day.

And if that wasn’t enough, we’ll also be exhibiting in the gallery all of the drawings for the remainder of the exhibition!

*phew*

Hopefully we will see you there.

Game/Play at the National Gallery of Victoria

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Paul

This year’s Freeplay is barely over and we’re already turning our heads to our next project with the National Gallery of Victoria in their newest gallery space, NGV Studio.

We’re helping to curate a mix of the digital, analogue, playful, artistic, and creative from Saturday 24 September – Sunday 23 October, and we’re looking for art, games and people to showcase their work.

Concept / Game Art

First up is a curated wall of concept and game-related art. We’re looking for everything: design sketches, level outlines, character studies, target renders, mood boards and more. The final versions will need to be print ready (300 dpi, a5–a3), but for consideration it’s fine to submit jpgs. Selection will be made by us in conjunction with the Gallery’s curators.

Artwork can be submitted to ngv-art@freeplay.net.au

Board Games

We’re hoping to look at the evolution of contemporary board games, how they’ve been influenced by what has come before, and how they’re influencing the emergence of digital games. We also want to make sure people have a chance to play them, so as part of the month-long program, we’re looking for temporary donations of interesting contemporary games, as well as people who can break them out of their glass cases and play them as part of Late Night Board Games currently scheduled for Thursdays throughout the exhibition.

Expressions of interest for games or running play-sessions can be emailed to ngv-boardgames@freeplay.net.au

Game Jam

We’ve already run an event at State of Design inspired by Adam Saltsman’s Idea Bucket game from Gamecity, but we thought we’d do it again – but go one step further and exhibit the artwork & games at the gallery.

Tentatively scheduled for the exhibition’s mid-point on the weekend of 8 and 9 October, this is a chance to show off your game development mettle or just come along and see how games are made. To see what was cooked up before, check out our blog.

Expressions of interest for taking part can be emailed to ngv-gamejam@freeplay.net.au

Other stuff

We have loads of other stuff planned – a month is a long time to fill – but for now, we’ll keep it back as a surprise. Looking forward to letting you all know what it is.

2011 (un)Keynote Slides…

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Paul

Thanks to everyone who submitted a slide for our (un)Keynote this year and who then generously gave us permission to put their slides up online. They’re a mix of insight, wisdom, call to arms, reflection, science, and art, and reflect the individual views of their creators, but stitched together perfectly illustrate our theme of Handmade.

Enjoy.

A note from our director…

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Paul

I knew going into this year’s festival that gender was an issue for us in terms of representation in our program, but coming out of the festival, it has obviously evolved into a much larger conversation centred around our panel The Words That We Use.

While I wasn’t physically present, I have read through all of the articles, blog posts, and twitter commentary – which I’ve linked to as best I can at the end of this post – as well as spoken to our board, our program advisory committee, audience members who were there and some of the speakers too. In response, I thought it might be useful to explain some of the choices we made in the leadup to the event, the specific panel, and what I think we might be able to contribute to going forward.

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Wrapping up…

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Paul

When we came up with our theme of Handmade for this year’s festival we sketched out a list of ideas that it meant to us, one of which was the realisation that a festival wasn’t actually a concrete thing without an audience. In many ways the process of designing a festival is like designing a game. You’re creating a possibility space for an experience – an experience that becomes unique for everyone who comes along, influenced by their focus, their desires, their relationship to the speakers or the topic or each other, and things as simple as where they sit in the room.

And, just like in a game, you can’t predict exactly what that’s going to look like. You can’t hold a beta phase for a festival or playtest it or run metrics to find out what will happen when 200 people get together in a room.

And that’s brilliant.

Because for us it means that people feel a sense of ownership over the event, the conversation that comes out of it, the space we’ve created, and the realisation (which is easily to forget in the emotional up and down of actually producing the festival) that what happens during Freeplay actually matters to people.

Thanks to you all for coming, for being passionate, for being engaged, for sharing, and for letting us continue to do it all.

We look forward to the conversations between now and Freeplay 2012. And we look forward to announcing our first post-festival project taking place in late September with the National Gallery of Victoria. More on that very, very soon.

In the meantime, we’ve put up the photos from all of our events. Enjoy!

Freeplay 2011 - The Games That Made Me