Speakers From Playful ‘08
Slides from most of the talks can be viewed on Slideshare.
Kars Alfrink
Leapfrog
Website: leapfrog.nl, Blog
In his freelance practice, Kars Alfrink straddles the line between interaction- and game design. He thinks play is a crucial characteristic of any meaningful user experience and pursues projects that help him test this belief. Kars has designed social web applications, casual mobile games and multi-touch systems.
Besides designing, Kars enjoys teaching at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Currently, he is coaching a group of graduate students who are developing innovative social games for a leading mobile phone manufacturer.
In his spare time, Kars practices a traditional Japanese martial art, and tries to keep up with geek culture.
Tom Armitage
Headshift
Website: Headshift, Infovore
Tom describes the majority of what he does as “making interesting things on the web”. That “making” takes several forms: from high-level product design, through information design and architecture to the code itself. He doesn’t just write code, though. He’s also an occasional writer, a keen photographer, a reasonable cook, and has more than a passing interest in videogames – which he not only plays, but has written, spoken, and run events about.
Matt Biddulph
Dopplr
Website: Dopplr, Hack Diary
Matt Biddulph is the nomadic CTO of Dopplr, the social network for intelligent travellers. He started out in 1994 building search engines on CD-ROM, and now specialises in digital media, social software and putting data on the web. In past lives he was a creative technologist for hire, working with companies like Nature, Joost and the BBC to bring cutting-edge technologies into the mainstream.
Matthew Irvine Brown
Last.fm
Website: irvinebrown.com
Matthew currently work as an Interaction Designer for a music website called Last.fm. He completed an MA in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art in 2006, and was then part of a User Experience team at Nokia, working for a feisty Welshman called Matt Jones.
He tries to have a few personal projects going in his spare time – work in progress includes a visual identity for a Sheffield-based band/studio project, Middlewood Sessions, and an occasional DJ set restricted to recently-deceased artists, titled This Is Dead Good.
Eric Clough
212box Architecture PC
Website: 212box
Eric Clough thinks outside the box. His New York City-based multidisciplinary design firm, 212box Architecture PC, approaches architecture, public projects, graphic design, film, advertising, and product design with a singular mix of detail-oriented commitment and a rigorously developed sense of play. Eric will be talking at Playful about how he created the Mystery On Fifth Avenue.
Chris Delay
Introversion Software
The creative force behind Introversion, Chris is the lead designer and developer of all their games and also runs the websites. Their latest game, Multiwinia, will be on show at Pixel Lab’s Indie Games Arcade.
Alex Fleetwood
Sandpit/Hide & Seek
Website: Hide and Seek
Alex Fleetwood founded Hide and Seek, the UK’s first festival of social games and playful experiences, in 2007. This year the festival played to over 3000 people at the Southbank Centre and featured an international line-up of artists including Blast Theory, Jane McGonigal and Momus. As well as Hide and Seek, Alex has produced projects including The Eternity Man, a film opera for Channel 4, and The Soho Project, an ARG for the London Games Festival. He is currently producing Last Will, the prototype of a hybrid real world / online experience with Punchdrunk, seeper and HP Labs.
Kieron Gillen
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Website: RockPaperShotgun & KieronGillen.com
Having no real measurable talents and fearing his family trade of lifting of heavy brick-filled hods, he decided that he should turn his hand to word-whoring. He soon found gainful employ in Britain’s leading PC videogame magazine, PC Gamer. Eventually he went freelance, a situation where he finds himself today. Let’s just say his writings have appeared in every respectable videogame magazine in the land and most of the disrespectable ones too.
Adrian & Dan Hon
Co-founders of Six To Start
Website: Adrian’s Blog, Dan’s Blog
Adrian is one of the world’s leading alternate reality game designers, having been influential in the genre since its birth. Previously, Adrian was Director of Play at Mind Candy, where he designed and produced Perplex City, the world’s first commercially successful ARG. Some of the venues at which Adrian has spoken include TED, Google, GDC, Nordic Game and the Montreal Games Summit.
Dan has been at the forefront of alternate reality gaming since its inception in 2001, when he co-moderated the groundbreaking online community Cloudmakers, formed to play The Beast, Microsoft’s production for AI. Before co-founding Six to Start with his brother, Adrian, Dan was COO at Mind Candy, where he worked on award winning alternate reality game Perplex City.
Professor Tanya Kryzwinsca
Brunel University, Convener MA Digital Games Theory and Design
Website: Brunel University
Tanya Krzywinska is a Professor in Screen Studies. She has a BA (hons) in European Literature and Film and Drama (Reading), an MA in Modern Drama ( University of North London ), and a PhD ‘Economics of Fantasy and Desire in Explicit Sex films’ ( University of North London ). She is President of the Digital Games Research Association (www.digra.org) and has published widely on different aspects of videogames.
Roo Reynolds
Website: Blog
Television has always acted as a talking point for people, but the conversation doesn’t usually get as much attention as the content. Roo’s job at the BBC is to develop and execute BBC Vision’s strategy in relation to social media (including blogs, tagging, games, user generated content and third-party social media sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc) as well as working with teams across the BBC to help shape various social media projects and initiatives.
Iain Tait
Poke
Website: Poke, Crackunit
Iain is one of the founders of Poke. His job title varies by day, or even time of day. For a while he was a Creative Director, and sometimes he still is called that. Other times he’s Head of Planning. He’s not convinced that either of those titles is right. So he tends to avoid giving his title wherever possible. Or resorts to something nebulous like partner.
James Wallis
Director of Spaaace, The Games Consultancy
Website: www.spaaace.com
James is the former founder and director of Hogshead Publishing, where among other things he set up the journal of game design and criticism Interactive Fantasy, and won an Origins Award for his work on Nobilis. He’s been a TV presenter, managing editor of Bizarre magazine, a Sunday Times journalist, a movie publicist, and has written thirteen books. His card-game Once Upon a Time (Atlas/Trident, 1995) has sold a quarter of a million copies, and his rather silly RPG The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen has been published by MIT Press. Yes, that MIT Press.
Jolyon Webb
Blitz Games Studios
Website: Blitz Games Studios
Jolyon Webb is currently Art Manager for TruSim, Blitz Games ‘Serious Games’ division. Over a decade in games development, he has worked as an Art Director and Lead Technical Artist on a range of titles delivered on formats from PlayStation 1 to the Xbox360.
Eric Zimmerman
gameLab
Website: gameLab, Blog
Eric is a game designer and academic exploring the theory and practice of game design. Eric’s diverse activities has made him one of the New York Observers’s “Power Punks,” one of Interview Magazine’s “30 To Watch” and also one of International Design Magazine’s ID 40 (40 influential designers). He has been working in the game industry since 1994.
Eric is the co-founder and CEO of gameLab (www.gamelab.com), a game development company based in New York City that was recently named one of 5 “Rising Star” design firms by HOW Magazine. gameLab’s games, which include Diner Dash, Subway Scramble, BLiX, LOOP, LEGO Junkbot, FLUID, and Arcadia, have won awards from the Independent Games Festival, ID Magazine, Art Directors Club, ARS Electronica, and others, as well as finalist nominations in the Webby Awards and the IGDA Developers Choice Awards.
PLUS:
The Electroplankton Orchestra (the artists formerly known as The Electroplankton Quartet)
Fijou madness
