Hi, my name’s Gareth and I’m going to give you some of my impressions from this year’s WiG. First of all a bit of background: I’ve been programming PC and console games for seven years, in England, Australia and Austria, am now taking an MA in New Media at the University of the West of England. And, of course, I’m a man.
So why would I want to go to WiG? Well to be honest it wouldn’t have occurred to me if it wasn’t for some colleagues and friends going too. This is word-of-mouth in action, but I think it’s important to address those initial assumptions that made me think it wouldn’t be a conference for me.
I feel there are three broad areas for which WiG is relevant:
- Women. Clearly this conference is a community for women in games who are underrepresented and discriminated against. Initially this would have put me off, but speaking to the delegates during the event they’re actually quite happy to see more men attend as it maintains dialogue and balance.
- Industry. I include game developers, journalists and artists in this area. For a long time the games industry has been suffering from a dearth of creativity. WiG delegates bring with them an inspirational desire to reinvigorate this business which I applaud. Personally I feel like for a long time I’ve been searching for a group of creative people who are as keen as me to shake things up. There was something in the air that reminded me of the limitless potential felt during the ‘gaming golden age’ of the 80s.
- Academics. With large number of doctoral and post-doc scholars presenting papers and discussing games this is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse. Personally I made several great contacts with people who’s work I’d read before and greatly admire. There were also a number of local undergrad students helping out and demonstrating their impressive work.
Overall the main quality I took away from the conference was creativity: new ways of theorising, developing and playing games.
In my coming posts I’ll be give an overview of all of the presentations. Check back here soon for updates!
I know exactly what Gareth means about the ‘limitless potential…of the 80s’. There is a great openess at Women in Games to original ideas. I don’t know exactly what makes it such a re-vitalizing experience, though perhaps it is something to do with a less testosterone enriched environment than is common at many game conferences and also, as Gareth mentioned, the mix of academics and industry.
There were also some fabulously interesting speakers from the UK and around the world which kind of helped to shake up preconceptions and encourage everyone to consider new ways of thinking about games.
I’m not sure I agree with Gareth about the ‘dearth of creativity’ in the games industry. This is a familiar theme, but if you actually look for new and different game experiences they are there to be had – how about the recent growth of social gaming employing novel gesture interfaces with first the EyeToy and then the Wii?
By the way when I gave my short presentation on ambient games on the Saturday, in a fast forward kind of way, I promised to put the slides and the game on the web. You can find them here: http://www.eyles.co.uk/mark/slides.html and here: http://www.ambientquest.com