Currently down at Freeplay at the State Library in Melbourne. So far it’s been pretty good, with the highlight definitely going to Petri Purho (Kloonigames) out of Finland with the Keynote Presentation on ‘Making Shit Games and Making Shit in Games’…. A genuinely funny and entertaining keynote encouraging the prototyping process, all the while dropping lots of links to great talks, articles and games online.
The rest of the festival has been a bit of hit and miss, although kudos have to go to Conor O’Kane for his presentation on how to make games for free, which also gave a great insight into his method of prototyping, and a look at some of his own games – available freely at http://cokane.com
Whilst some aspects of the festival felt a little loose or irrelevant (such as a session on how to mass produce trees), it is exciting to see the Freeplay festival up and running again, and I really look forward to seeing where the festival heads in the future. It’s also been great to be a part of the organisation of the festival in some regard, myself contributing to the Advisory Board for 2009. One thing I came away with was thinking how great it would be to see an Australian Experimental Games Workshop!
For me the whole experience is a re-affirmation and motivator for getting stuck into a few games projects. I’m inspired to maybe start up a more games and interactive media focused website, or perhaps even a mattleaf.com/blog.v.2.0
I’ve been playing more with Processing over the recent months, and I’m aiming to get a few small games made with the language this month. The core concepts of programming are finally beginning to soak into my brain, and I’m able to jam a little bit with code nowadays, so hopefully I’ll be uploading more experiments soon!
Till then - check out Enviro Bear 2000 !! 