Talk & Play #5

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 (5 to 15 minutes), 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 of what you're going to find, check out the summaries of the previous Talk & Play: #1 (http://bit.ly/talkandplay1), #2 (http://bit.ly/talkandplay2), #3 (http://bit.ly/talkandplay3), #4 (http://bit.ly/talkandplay4)

The Talk & Play #5 speakers will be:

— Pedro Lopes (http://plopesresearch.net), a PhD student of Prof. Patrick Baudisch's Human Computer Interaction lab in Hasso Plattner Institut, Berlin. Pedro investigates the future of interfaces, such as muscle-interfaces. A believer on the unification of art and research, often gives talks about it [BodyControlled, Campus Party 2013]. Makes and writes music using turntables [in eitr] and writes about music too [in jazz.pt (http://jazz.pt/) magazine].

Talk Abstract: Muscle-Propelled Games: playing games through our bodies

Our research points out that "feeling forces" is the next step for increased realism in human computer interfaces, and a way of creating very small mobile devices. For a long time, the key to immersion in interactive experience and games was sought in photorealistic graphics. Now, interfaces and games became more immersive by requiring us to physically enact, such as with Wii or Kinect. With graphics and user interaction now part of many games, many researchers argue that haptics and motion are the next step towards increasing realism. However, when it comes to output, we have nothing more than vibrating buzzers, such as the ones that make our smartphones vibrate. In this talk, we show compelling new ultra-mobile technologies that provide exciting haptic feedback. Our approaches achieve a low hardware footprint by leveraging use our own muscle power! We will demonstrate several projects that allow for interaction to become more immersive. More info (http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/baudisch/projects/muscle-propelled-force-feedback.html) | Video preview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swmGaGT8lvs)

— Sjors Houkes (http://www.sjorshoukes.nl/) has supported starting game studios for years at Dutch Game Garden (http://www.dutchgamegarden.nl/), by organising network events, festivals and game jams. He wants to get good at making games himself, but for the moment is way more capable as a professional voice actor. His talk is titled Playing the Jam Game:

Game jamming is hot. All the hip devs do it. In the last ten years, the number of jams has risen to the amount that there's always a jam going on, whether online or local, and anyone is welcome to join. Lately, even scandals like the Candy trademark and Flappy Bird are popular jam material. But why? Why spend time with strangers, on projects that hardly ever get a release? What is the nature of a jam? And how can we use it to our advantage? Let's take a step back and talk about it.

— Giles Coope (http://gilescoope.eu), Javier Díaz (http://edokoa.com/) and Raphaël de Courville (http://vimeo.com/sableraf/) teamed up for the second year in a row to create a game during the Global Game Jam in Berlin. The result was にゃんこわん (Nyanko-Wan) (http://globalgamejam.org/2014/games/%E3%81%AB%E3%82%83%E3%82%93%E3%81%93%E3%82%8F%E3%82%93-nyanko-wan), a kawaii local multiplayer crowd game meant to be played by cats. They will tell us more about its development and then we're all (=all people with a touch screen device) going to play the game together.

On top of this, Lorenzo (http://tiif.it/) will talk a bit about A MAZE. / Berlin 2014 (http://www.amaze-berlin.de/) which is going to take place on April 9-11 – he's involved in the organisation of the festival and uses every available opportunity to promote it. By the way: have you bought a ticket already? Have you submitted your game for the awards? The deadline is February 15 (http://www.amaze-berlin.de/2014/introducing-new-a-maze-awards)!

During the Play part of the evening some of the games made during the Global Game Jam Berlin 2014 (http://globalgamejam.org/2014/jam-sites/ggj-berlin-wooga/games) will be shown, but as always all participants are invited to bring their own creations.

Would you like to give a talk as well in the future? Then get in touch (https://www.meetup.com/opentechschool-berlin/members/1939705/)!

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