2009
Freeplay 2009 took place at the State Library of Victoria on August 14 & 15. Over 200 people came along to our panel, lecture, and workshop programme taking place in the Village Roadshow Theatrette and Seminar rooms, hearing from over 50 speakers including developers, educators, students, programmers, artists, film-makers, and cross-media practitioners.
For the first time, Freeplay held a public expo program that took place in the Experimedia room at the State Library. Over 300 people had the chance to play locally produced independent and professional games, take part in discussions about games and the broader gaming culture, and workshop their own ideas in a game design challenge run by Infinite Interactive.
Our international speaker, Pteri Purho, drew large crowds to talk about not only his process for creating games, but also the role of creativity in creation and play, and his return in our Freeplay Greatest Hits Panel saw him create rag-doll peggle in under 5 minutes.
In the wake of Freeplay, we’re hoping to continue to build the creative community, supporting independent developers through discussion spaces and events, and putting together our plans for 2010.