Narrative Design Think Tank in Utrecht September 2019

The area of interactive narrative design research has, in my perception, got an upswing lately, and after spending a week in the Netherlands I think I know why :).

On Sunday the 26th of September I was invited to give a talk at the Interactive Narrative Design Think Tank at the Nederlands Film Festival in Utrecht. The other speakers were Michael Bas (Co-founder of Ranj, pioneer of interactive narrative experiences for commercial clients), Geert-Jan Strengholt (Director Medialab at public broadcaster VPRO), and Roy van der Schilden (Game designer, game studio Wispfire).
   The event was moderated by Hartmut Koenitz, Professor of Interactive Narrative Design at the HKU, and he gave an overview of the field, stressing how important it is for all of us who are in different fields, but all working with narrative design to get together. 
   The event was a great example of that - film people, game people, broadcasting people and artists - we had a very interesting discussions over drinks, and new collaborations were seeded. I hope to return to the Netherlands soon!

A few days later I got to visit HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and meet the students in the brand new education in Narrative design.

I also got the chance to meet up with colleagues from both the University of Delft (Rafa Bidarra), and University of Amsterdam (Frank Nack), and we got the chance to talk about the forthcoming work in the COST Action of Narrative Complexity. (The full name is COST Aktion CA18230 "Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations, INDCOR) We are all getting connected now, all over Europe, thanks to Hartmut Koenitz and his colleagues in the Interactive Narrative Design research group (Christian Roth, Noam Knoller, Teun Dubbelman, Yotam Shibolet, and Mirka Duijn.  
    It is amazing what they have accomplished the past few years: the founding of ARDIN, the COST action, organisation of numerous conferences, workshops, think-tanks and meet-ups connecting industry and research. And on top of that they started a new educational programme, and published many impactful papers. It is mind boggling, humbling - and important. Their work has impacted my own research focus: I am back in the design space of interactive narratives, and I love it.

Here are some photos!

At the Narrative Design Think tank 26/9 2019

 

And then

 

Links:

About the Think Tank

https://www.filmfestival.nl/en/collection/interactive-narrative-design-meetup/

About the research group Interactive Narrative Design

https://www.hku.nl/Home/Research/Professorships/InteractiveNarrativeDesign.htm

Slides from my talk:

AI and Interactive Narrative

DiGRA 2019 Watercolor Notes from Kyoto

It was a treat to get to go to the DiGRA 2019 Conference! I'm so grateful to all the organisers, who did an amazing job. The conference happened in Kyoto, Japan,  6 - 10 August 2019, at the Ritsumeikan University. 

I had the opportunity to present some of my own thoughts at the conference (4 pieces, one co-written with Petri Lankoski, and two with Hartmut Koenitz). I also had the pleasure - it was great fun - to run the workshop on Teaching Games Pedagogical Approaches together with the those of us from the organisation committee who could make it to Kyoto: Mia Consalvo, William Huber, Hartmut Koenitz and Andy Phelps. 

As usual, I took my notes in ink and water color, here they are :).

I made the last one when I had gotten home, I had a blank backside of one of my three papers. Digra2020 returns to Tampere! I recognise the green color and the tower on the call page from the graphics for the conference that was there in 2002 (unless I am mixing things up), though it was not yet called DiGRA back then. I remember that I stayed at hotel Tammer and that it never got dark. ...So I added the tower to the drawing, but I couldn't bring myself to use quite the full murkiness of that green color. 

TGPA: HEVGA workshop on Teaching Games: Pedagogical Approaches at DiGRA 2019

The HEVGA workshop we organised on Teaching Games: Pedagogical Approaches at DiGRA 2019 Conference was a success!

Date: 6 August 2019
Place: Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto

In the morning, we had paper presentations, and the in afternoon we divided into discussion groups. Me, Mia Consalvo of Concordia, Jonathan Elmergreen of HEVGA, Clara Fernandez-Vara of New York University, William Huber of Abertay University, Hartmut Koenitz of HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, Petri Lankoski of Södertörn University, Adam Mayes of Uppsala University, and Andy Phelps of the American University, have put lot of effort into planning it, so it was  gratifying that so many participated and contributed to the discussions.

 In the morning session, we were 32 participants, and 7 papers were presented:

•  Seth Hudson. Phenomenological Research Approaches to Game Pedagogy 
•  Hartmut Koenitz and Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari. Teaching Game System Building as an Artistic Practice 
•  Hartmut Koenitz, Teun Dubbelman and Christian Roth. Ludonarrative in Game Design Education – Cornerstones of a Program 
•  Petri Lankoski and Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari. Constructive Alignment in Teaching Game Research in Game Development Bachelors Programme 
•  Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari. TOG: An Innovation Centric Approach to teaching Computational Expression and Game Design 
•  Christoffer Mitch Cerda. Defining “Filipino” Video Games: Teaching Filipino Identity and Culture for Video Game Development 
•  René Glas, Jasper van Vught and Stefan Werning. ‘Thinking through’ games in the classroom: Using analytical game design to play with and investigate historical datasets 

Clara Fernancez Vara and Jeff Watson also had papers accepted for the workshop, but unfortunately they couldn't make it to the workshop.

 Here are a few pictures from the morning:

 
 In the afternoon, we formed four groups for discussion. Two of the groups formed from topics that had emerged during the morning, and the two other groups used themes we had prepared as prior suggestions. The groups were:

 • Teaching Game Writing and Narrative Design (emergent topic)
 • Games in Societal Context (emergent topic)
 • Teaching Game Research Methods
 • Designing Education Programmes in the area of games

 

Below is a photo of our blackboard as it looked when we had finished forming groups around topics. The topics in the big pink circles became focusses for topics, and the names in the circles were the participants. Those names with a yellow circle around them were the appointed group leaders.



In the ending discussion, much focus was put on local culture: How is local culture represented in games, and how do we approach this as educators?

 We hope to organise more workshops like this in the future :)

Links:

• Slides for the workshop programme are available at SlideShare: Workshop on Teaching Games: Pedagogical Approaches at DIGRA2019
•  The proceedings will be online at the workshop webpage: https://hevga.org/digracfp/
• A few more photos: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGpaw6r

NECS Game Theory Session

A watercolour note made at the game theory session of the NECS conference in Gdansk, Poland, in June 2019. I gave a speech in the same session (but obviously not taking notes then, as I was speaking :) ).

AMAZE in Berlin - Game Gardening

A watercolour note from the the AMAZE Festival in Berlin, a session that revolved around how game development can seen by a lense/metaphor of gardening.

Shonan Seminar 130: AGAIG

Watercolour notes from Shonan Seminar 130: Artificial General Intelligence in Games: Where Play Meets Design and User Experience.



Day 1:


Day 2:
 

Day 3:


 

Day 4:




Link to more information:
http://shonan.nii.ac.jp/shonan/blog/2017/10/20/artificial-general-intelligence-in-games-where-play-meets-design-and-user-experience/