We’ve been promising, teasing, tantalising and feeding little bits of information about this to the industry for the last several months, but we are now thrilled, delighted and quietly chuffed to confirm that world-renowned game design expert Jesse Schell is to speak at the Dare ProtoPlay festival in Dundee, as part of Dare Indie Fest…
AND at the Edinburgh International Festival, the first time that video games have ever been featured in the proper, grown-up arts festival.
Both talks, courtesy of a partnership with the Turing Festival, Edinburgh’s International Technology Festival.
At Dare, Jesse will talk about game design, convergence and gamification at 10am on Saturday 10th August, opening the two-day Dare game jam.
Who’s Jesse Schell? Whatever you do in video games, you really should know him.
Jesse is the CEO of Schell Games and Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. Jesse’s previous roles include Creative Director of Walt Disney Imagineering. The man knows fun, people.
If you’ve never heard Jesse speak, then you’re missing out. His design outside the box talk on moving games beyond stand alone, isolated experiences is mandatory viewing. His more recent visions of the gamepocalypse has been known to send non-gamers running, screaming from rooms.
Watch them. Watch them both. Watch them now. Stop reading this. Really. Stop now. Click the links and watch both of these talks. We’ll wait. In fact, here are the links again, for those impatient or reading on mobile…
Done? Good, aren’t they? This is the difference between a designer and a jumped-up lippy, level editor.
Here’s the important information…
You can book tickets on the Dare Protoplay website. Jesse’s talk is open to everyone participating in the game jam AND attendees of the Indie Conference. You can also book a ticket just to see Jesse, for £5, which is the best deal you’ll get this year.
Gregor White, Director of Academic Enterprise at Abertay University, said:
Jesse is an incredibly important figure in game design, and we’re very proud to be welcoming him to Dare ProtoPlay in partnership with the excellent Turing Festival. “Game design is a discipline that’s often overlooked, but designers play a really central role to imagining the experience that the player will ultimately have – and in guiding artists and programmers to work together to realise that vision.
Jesse will also be participating in an event at the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), in partnership with the Turing Festival.
Remember, this is the first time video games has EVER had any representation at the EIF. This is a big deal. It puts games and interactivity into the main programme of the festival – not the fringe – alongside the established and well-respected performing and fine arts.
Jesse will be joined by Chris van der Kuyl from 4J Studios. The chair will be the noted writer and journalist Ben Hammersley.
Interfaces: The Leisure Revolution is at 5pm on Sunday 11th August at the Hub in Edinburgh. More details and tickets are available here:
http://www.eif.co.uk/interfaces/leisurerevolution.
You also need to know more about and go to the Turing Festival. It takes place in Edinburgh on the 23rd and 24th of August. Speakers this year include:
- Jim McKelvey of Square
- DJ Powers of Valve
- Sandra Alzetta of Visa
- Matt Mason of BitTorrent
- Michelle You of Songkick
- Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine
- Brian Doll of Github
- Mike Hearn, Bitcoin developer
The Dare ProtoPlay computer games festival is open to the public from Thursday August 8 to Sunday August 11 in Dundee’s Caird Hall and City Square.
The event is sponsored by Creative Scotland, Dundee City Council and EventScotland.
