Talk & Play #2

It's never been easier to make video games, thanks to the multitude of resources available and a growing worldwide community willing to help beginners. As a result, new games are being released every day, exploring different directions and tackling novel themes: playing is more stimulating and inclusive than ever.

Talk & Play is a bi-monthly meetup whose goal is to give a better idea of what it's like to create and play games today, providing the opportunity to local independent game makers to showcase their work in a friendly and relaxed environment. Everybody's welcome, whatever their background and knowledge level. If you like video games, we'll make sure you have a good time!

The event is split into two parts:

1. TALK: 2/3 short game-related talks, followed by a Q&A session – it's all about sharing knowledge.

2. PLAY: games made or chosen by the speakers will be shown; in addition, all participants are welcome to bring games they've made or are still working on – a perfect opportunity to discover and play new games, collect feedback and maybe find collaborators.

To give you a better idea, here's a recap of the first Talk & Play (http://linkli.st/LorenzoPilia/5351I).

The speakers at Talk & Play #1 will be:

• Cay Kellinghusen, founder and project manager of Game Science Center (http://www.gamesciencecenter.de/), an independent creative exhibition space slated to open in the next few months in Berlin. He will tell us more about the project, which looks very promising.

• Christian Stanke started working in the games industry about three years ago. He recently founded his first own company "embraase (http://embraase.com/)" together with a long time colleague to build developer tools that put the power to operate a game the way top tier studios do it into the hands of every aspiring game developer. He will share some tips on how to get game press coverage.

• U55 – End of the line (http://u55.eu/) is a "survival horror adventure set in the subway system of modern-day Berlin" inspired by H. P. Lovecraft: sounds a bit crazy, but it looks great – Alexander Kuprijanow will do his best to convince you to support the game on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/u55/u55-end-of-the-line).

• The organisers of the Science Hack Day Berlin (http://berlin.sciencehackday.com/) will give a short presentation of the upcoming event. It's the kind of thing some "game people" might find interesting...

During the second part of the evening we're going to have an Oculus Rift (http://www.oculusvr.com/), possibly showing some of the games made during the VR Jam (http://www.oculusvr.com/vrjam/) in Berlin – a great opportunity to try this device everyone's talking about.

Talk & Play is organised in collaboration with the monthly Berlin Mini Game Jam (https://www.meetup.com/game-developers-berlin/) and A MAZE (https://www.facebook.com/amaze.festival).