A peek behind the curtains on a Saturday; our 1st year students hard at work building their games for the GGC Show Floor. Only 15 days to go!
It might be weekend-work, but it’s not in vain; there are well over 300 people currently signed up to come and playtest! Make sure you have a ticket too. The Visitors Pass is the cheapest option (pay what you want) and is good for the entire conference – play games, listen to lectures, the award show and the party!
See you there!
Posted on - Comments Off on Educators: don’t forget to register for the Summit CategoriesBlog, GGC Updates TagsHEVGA
There is still some room in the Game Educators Summit. Are you too pressed for time to attend the full Summit + GGC? We have a suggestion!
Why not attend just the last two days: Tue 30 – Wed 31. That will get you the final day of the GGC show floor, with awards and mingle (= get to know everyone), and the summit working day on 31/5. You can even make the evening flight or ferry back that same day.
So if you are teaching university level game design- och development and haven’t already done so, please:
Our fifth speaker presented us with not just one idea, but four(!). We wanted all of them, natch, and the arguing about which one to pick was so fierce we just decided to abdicate our responsibility and let someone else choose. You all voted in our Facebook poll and the result was 40% for a critical examination of so called “empathy games”.
So Bonnie Ruberg – founder of the Queerness and Games Conference, academic overachieverper-excellence and a well known fan-favorite of ours – is coming to GGC to talk about games that allow players to experience the lives of the marginalized. These games, designed to be immersive, impactful, and socially meaningful, run the risk of being appropriative. As Robert Yang recently put it; “If you walk in someone else’s shoes, then you’ve taken their shoes.” So Bonnie will help us look at the problems with game empathy, and methods of solving these problems.
So let us just gush about Bonnie for a while, because we have been fan-girling overfollowing Bonnie for quite some time! We had her on the island back in 2010 when she ran a full day workshop with our students, about bravely (yet responsibly!) approaching sex and gender representation in their game designs.
From Bonnie Ruberg’s 2010 workshop “Re-Doing Sex/Gender in Games” on campus Gotland
Then we had her back for the keynote at GGC 2011 where she talked about close reading video games – because there is no such as thing as taking your entertainment media too seriously! More recently her work with the Queerness and Games Conference have contributed greatly in helping us make not only our education, but also this conference as inclusive, welcoming and safe as possible!
In short; we like Bonnie quite a lot, and we think you will too. 🙂 We are extremely happy to have her back, and slightly embarrassed it’s been so long!
Thank you Bonnie, and thanks to everyone who participated in the poll! We hope you take the opportunity to see Bonnie deliver the presentation live next month!
Posted on - Comments Off on Announcing the jury! CategoriesBlog, GGC Updates
The jury represents the most hard-working participants at the Gotland Game Conference (save for our students, naturally). Jurors travel from near and far to listen to our students’ presentations a day before the conference even starts, and to play all of the student productions on the show floor.
Each members brings their own set of experience and expertise, and share that insight directly with the students during the presentations. This is followed by two days of hard labor where each jury member needs to play enough to provide meaningful written feedback (as well as numeric scores) on each game. These scores does not affect student grades, of course, but are an integral part of the GGC Awards and for our students’ learning outcomes!
The jury is absolutely massive, as they need to cover all three years of our education!
Without further ado, here is the complete 2017 Jury!
Anton Albiin, Association of Swedish Game Developers
Bonnie Ruberg, UC Irvine
Chris Franklin, Errant Signal
Doris Rusch, DePaul University
Maria Guadalupe Alvarez, Högskolan i Skövde
Joakim Sjöberg, Odd Raven Studios
Joshua Juvrud, Uppsala University
Martine Pedersen, IndSpark
Mattias “Ditto” Dittrich, Art in Heart
Mike Sellers, Indiana University
Richard Bartle, University of Essex
Sabine Harrer, University of Vienna
Samson Wiklund, Diversi
Patrick Seibert, Founder: indiecouch.org
Travis C. Parrott, Westlaw Legal Solutions
Fred Ström, Pixel Ferrets
Jens Berglind, Might and Delight
Joakim Andreasson, Paradox Development Studio
Jona Marklund, KJ Interactive
Martin Greip, Eat Create Sleep
Max Tiilikainen, iGotcha Studios
Olof Wallentin, Starbreeze Studios
Pernilla Sparrhult, Paradox Development Studio
Peter Stråhle, Might and Delight
Sigrid Svederoth, Cortopia AB
Teddy Sjöström, Pixel Ferrets
Thommy Siverman, Electronic Arts
Tobias Wahlberg, TOB-E GAMES
Vilya Svensson, Pixel Ferrets
Ylva Ljungqvist, Paradox Development Studio
Bold is GAME alumni – welcome back! 🙂
And thanks in advance to all the jurors for taking the time – and putting up the effort – to help improve our students, our education, and our medium!
