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The stories were inspiring, deep, revealing, funny, complex, and personal. Which is exactly what we’d hoped for from them – and what we hope for from the rest of the festival.

Tonight, we joust in Lemon Joust Club, and tomorrow night we’ll be taking in the sounds of videogame music before we settle into our weekend program.

Tickets for the conference and remaining individual events are still available. Hope to see you at some or all of those

For those of you lucky enough to have grabbed some, you’ll be able to pick up your pass & program from the registration desk in the State Library’s conference centre.  To find it, use entry 3 from La Trobe Street on the map below.

Registration is from 9:00 on Saturday & Sunday.  Welcome happens at 9:30 and sessions kick off at 10:00.

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.

Tickets are $20 + booking fee, and are valid for both days of the festival. There are a limited number of tickets so get in quick!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Today, Next Wave officially announced that Freeplay 2009 was being put together, and we’re really, really excited about that.  There’s still a lot to do, but behind the scenes, we’ve had lots of meetings and conversations and emails, and we feel good about the event taking place in 2009.  We know, from talking to students and gamers and developers and artists that Freeplay is a really important event in the community and we plan to keep that going.

Stay tuned for more announcements about venue, speakers, ticketing, how to get involved, and all of the usual stuff coming over the next few weeks.

Oh, and subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on twitter, join our facebook group, or just drop us an email at info [at] freeplay [dot] net [dot] au, to say hi.