The department of Game Design at Uppsala University, campus Gotland
Category: Guest Lectures
We use our ever-growing network to lure speakers from the game- & movie industry, academia and independent scene to the island. Unfortunately we’re very poor with keeping this category up to date; including the Gotland Game Conference we average 1 guest lecture every 14th day! Some of these are recorded – check the youtube channel. If you wish to speak with Sweden’s strongest game design students (or their staff), contact Ulf!
Posted on - Comments Off on Digital games and (un-)sustainability CategoriesBlog, Guest Lectures Tagsoutreach
Join us in the water (you will be soon anyway…)! The world is burning, and Gotland being swallowed by the sea. As Campus Gotland will be under water soon we might as well get used to lectures in the water right now!
Patrick Prax (Dept. of Game Design) will be giving an open lecture from the water at Kallbadhuset!
Put on your swimming gear, bring a towel, and join us for a climate protest and a swimming lecture on digital games and (un-)sustainability.
Wednesday 11th of September at 11:00 at Kallbadhuset Visby
Despite how often game developers talk about games for sustainability and social change, we tend to close our eyes tightly to the ways in which games are contributing, materially and culturally, to this catastrophe. Patrick Prax, at the Department of Game Design, will explain why this is and what we can do.
the world is definitely not fine.
This lecture is open to the general public but will be particularly relevant to students at Campus Gotland who are interested in questions of sustainable development and/or game design.
No previous knowledge is required.
The lecture will be in English and is expected to take 30-45 minutes.
Professor Doris Rusch and Mischa Hießböck moved to Gotland and started working with us earlier this month! They’re both giving an introduction lecture on Wednesday the 22nd, at 13:00 in B51 – swing by to say hi and learn what they’re about!
The lectures are open to the public and all GAME-students are strongly recommended to attend.
Where: B51, Campus Gotland When: Wed 22nd of May, 13:00 – 15:00
In my introductory talk, I am taking the opportunity to compare two of my favorite projects: I will discuss “Something Wicked” – a game project that serves as an example for how my passions for storytelling, game design and history can productively coalesce and inform each other. Something Wicked was a collaboration with Elizabeth Hunter, at the time a theater PhD student at Northwestern University in Chicago. It is a video game adaptation of the Norwegian invasion from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
The other project is “Cure Runners”, a collaboration with Three Coins and Ovos Media, that teaches financial literacy. The game is set in a not-so-alternate timeline in which a forgotten island in the Pacific Ocean emerges from cold-war-era oblivion.
I am looking forward to illustrating my approach to narrative and game design exemplifying these very different cases.
Deep Game Design & The Alchemy of Play
Doris C. Rusch
I think of games as interactive Pensieves. Pensieves are an invention by J.K. Rowling. They are magical basins into which you can put excess thoughts from your mind to see them more clearly, understand new connections. That’s what games are to me. What I look for, when I choose a game to play. What I strive for, when I design one: projective possibility spaces to better understand our Inner World, allowing an investigation of the Human Condition by making salient aspects of it manifest through rules, mechanics, art, and sound.
But games are not just passive receptacles you dump ideas into. They afford active engagement of these ideas in an embodied, enacted, experiential way. And as such, they are far less obedient and arguably much more magical than the humble Pensive! You don’t just look at a game and watch its ideas and themes unfold. You step into the current and are transformed – as player and designer – through the alchemy of play.
As designer and research, I want to unlock the secrets of this play alchemy. I do so by exploring how games can leverage the mind-body connection; how they can speak to our unconscious through mythical themes and ritualistic game mechanics; how they can raise questions rather than give answers by way of letting us act upon evocative possibility spaces; how they can touch us emotionally, disturb and confront us, so we see life with fresh eyes, we wake up to our own existence, and become more aware of the lived experiences of others.
There is much to do still, in regards to articulating design approaches that harness this alchemy of play. This intro talk is meant to provide a glimpse into how I think about games, why I believe they are the coolest medium on this planet and what I hope to explore further with students and colleagues at the UU games department on beautiful, magical Gotland.
Where: B51, Campus Gotland When: Wed 22nd of May, 13:00 – 15:00
Posted on - Comments Off on Guest Lecture: Jan-Jaap Severs (Grendel Games) CategoriesBlog, Guest Lectures
Grendel Games (Netherlands) have been making serious games since 1999!
Jan-Jaap Severs is visiting us again next week for a guest lecture on serious games and the challenges inherent to the production and design of these types of games. Jan-Jaap is one of the co-founders of Grendel Games, a studio that’s been producing validated and commercially successful serious games for twenty years now! That is a lot of experience to be listening in on.
Time: 10:00-12:00, Thu 14th March Place: E22, Campus Gotland
“Dealing with stakeholders, requirements and evidence in serious games development”
During this lecture we will discuss several aspects that make serious game design and development a challenging endeavor.
We will look at managing stakeholders and domain experts with different backgrounds, who speak totally different languages. We will investigate methods of gathering requirements from these stakeholders and the common obstacles we face during that process. Finally, we will discuss the gathering and dissemination of scientific evidence of the effect of a serious game and how we can prepare for this during the design phase.
The lecture will be structured around three in-depth examples in the fields of surgery training, behavioral change pertaining to water consumption and mathematics training for children with learning disabilities.
Time: 10:00-12:00, Thu 14th March Place: E22, Campus Gotland
Please note: students taking the Serious Games class must be given priority. There are only ~20 free seats available, so guests have to be prepared to sit in the stairs!
Questions? Contact the course responsible; Ernest Adams.
The Alumni Days are back again! The 14-15th of December we’ll have guest lectures, portfolio reviews, coder job interviews, mentor speed dating and a party!
It’s not cheating if you call it a workflow
A game artist’s thoughts and tips after a year in the indie space and why having the skills to create appealing art is only one of the artistic challenges in shipping an indie title.
Studio Startup Survival Kit
The rosy days of the golden indie age are gone. Do you want to start a new studio but feel lost and think “where do we go from here?”. In this talk Martin will talk about their journey at Eat Create Sleep since they started their company in 2014 and give you some insight in how you could survive as a startup. Mileage may vary.
An indies Survival kit – or – How I learned to double down and love the niche
Ever wondered about the glorious life of a indie developer? Let us talk what it takes to survive out there, with the deluge of games growing by the minute? How do you stand out and what do you need to make it?
What is there to learn from the startup world?
The choice is before you to dare to team up and build your own venture in the gaming industry or spend half your life working for the “man”. We will share three key learnings from those that have tried, make clear the support, funding and connections that actually exist here on Gotland as well make sure we have answered or confirmed any questions or thoughts you have in the space.
