In about a week and a half, Come Out & Play 2007 will kick-off as part of PICNIC ‘07 in Amsterdam. Unfortunately I am not able to make the festival due to scheduling issues, but past collaborators David Jimison and Jeff Crouse have a game so Georgia Tech will be proudly represented. Hopefully my accepted entry Disavow! will find its way into to CO&P ‘08 this coming spring in NYC.

Out of curiosity I surveyed this year’s entries based on my sub-genres for appropriative games (list below), and was surprised at what I found. Given the perceived mobile sophistication of Europe compared to the US, I expected a large percentage of games to heavily leverage mobile and fall into the realm of pervasive prototyping/ubiquitous gaming. Now while a few of the games do leverage higher end mobile features (the Nokia N95 seems popular), just as many employed no computation at all. In fact, I would go as far as to wager that the big games will be the stars of the festival.

I’m hoping to get a few on site reports, and will post them if they come in.

Big Games

• Bocce Drift
• Censorsh**
• CounterSquirt
• Human Snake
• Manila
• People Watching
• Safari

Pervasive Games

• 3001
• CollecTic
• FUSE INVASION
• Lumenatio
• Navball
• OMMRPG
• Snap Shot City
• The Target

Ubiquitous Games

• Can You See Me Now?
• de Pong

Alternate Reality Games

• TAH II

This showed up in my in-box today, and sounds very cool. So if by chance you’re going to be in Spain in July, I’d say it is work checking out. All the info you need should be here.

Modding, Reversing and Intervening in Today’s Gaming Worlds
02.07.07 – 27.07.07
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

In July LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries is organizing four workshops exploring the intersections between videogames, art and reality today. A different side of videogames will be revealed by creators who can uncover their codes, subvert the standards imposed by the industry and can even address social and political issues through them.

Game hardware and software will be used for performances, activism and critique and participants will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the language of videogames and create new meanings and results.

MODDING
An intense workshop tackling the basic notions about modding and editing of Quake III Arena levels with the aid of open source code elements. In order to create fully redistributable games, participants will learn to generate interactive 3D contents for Quake III and to engineer new game features in the game engine’s source code.

BORDERGAMES
The Fiambrera Obrera team will work with digital cameras and image editing, teaching basic levels of 3D modelling as well as some “tricks” and activities related with their software: narrative design and characters, modelling and remodelling of scripts and characters. Participants will be involved in field work in the area of Gijon.

ENTERING THE TERRITORIES OF SECOND LIFE
Second Life (SL) is an online virtual world currently inhabited by over six million “residents”. This workshop explores SL as a platform for art expression, activism and critique. It will be led by a machinima professional, two media artists and a programmer who work on SL on a practical and theoretical level using it as an ideal platform to share ideas and to perform. Participants will learn through collaborative work how to make machinimas, how to write basic scripts and how to use SL as a platform for social action and artistic expression.

CHIPTUNES – 8BIt MUSIC
8bit sound and music is a distinctive feature of early videogames, and has become a seminal contemporary music style utilized by artists and DJs in engaging live audiovisual performances and remixes. This workshop will bring together creators from US and Spain who will work with young people to create music using Gameboys. The workshop will close with an evening of Chiptunes performances with sounds by the artists, the workshop participants and visuals by media artists Entter.