Where: Nikolaj Kunsthal, Nikolaj Plads 10, 1067 København K
When:  Thursday, January 26th, 17-19
Why: Because games are for real

Everybody plays games – from physical games like Solitaire, Bridge and Chess to digital ones like Wordfeud, Angry Birds, Skyrim and Farmville.

When playing the experience and emotions are real – even if the game is not. And now game designers and artists all over the world are challenging the space around the game with physical games like Johan Sebastian Joust, B.U.T.T.O.N., Fingle and the game experiences at the Space Invaders exhibition at Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen.

But what happens in the meeting between game and life? Why does the game feel real and how?

We have asked a bunch of artists and game developers from The Netherlands and Denmark to share their perfect gaming moment – either one they have already experienced or one they imagine to experience in the future.
The style is ‘Pecha Kucha’ or microtalk where each speaker gets 20 x 20 seconds (and 20 slides) to present.

Join us for Spilbar 8.0 hosted at Nikolaj Kunsthal in the middle of the interactive exhibition Space Invaders.

Program:
17: Welcome
17.05: My favorite gaming moment. Talks by Bojan Endrovski (Game Oven Studios, Fingle), Søren Lundgaard (DADIU), Christian Fonnesbech (Transmedia expert), and Rami Ismail and Jan Willen Nijman (Vlambeer).
18.00: Break
18.30: Debate – chaired by Thomas Vigild, Games editor at Politiken
19.00 Mingling with beer – sponsored by the Dutch Embassy

About Bojan Endrovski
Bojan Endrovski is a game developer with an expertise in low-level engineering, rendering, physics and other math-heavy stuff. He has worked on military and training simulators and has helped ship multiplatform games. Keen on diversifying, he shifted focus towards indie games and made few of those.
Not long ago Bojan co-founded Game Oven Studios. The studio will release its first title, Fingle, in January 2012. Fingle has just been nominated to the Nuovo Award at Independent Games Festival.

About Marieke Verbiesen
Marieke Verbiesen (MFA, Interactive Media, Netherlands) has worked with different projects in electronic arts and interactive design since 2003. Her most recent installation is “Pole Position” based on the iconic vintage racegame that meet the physical, tactile world. “PoLe Position” is part of the exhibition “Space Invaders” currently exhibited at the Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen.

About Nils Deneken 
Nils is the CEO of Die Gute Fabrik, a Copenhagen-based game developer, who take classic play forms from the past and breathe new life into them with 21st century technology and their own sense of style and storytelling. Behind award-winning games such as ‘B.U.T.T.O.N.’ and ‘Johann Sebastian Joust’, and recently released the original puzzle-adventure ‘Where is my Heart’ for PlayStation Network.

About Søren Lundgaard
Søren Lundgaard joined Deadline Games in May 2000 as a Programmer and later Lead Programmer on Globetrotter 2 and Total Overdose. He advanced to Game Director in 2006 spearheading the Faith and a .45 concept. In 2008 Søren joined Deadline Games’ internal pitch team to create pitches and pitch them to publishers and Hollywood producers. In January 2009 Søren became part of the DADIU organization as a game consultant and caretaker of the content of the DADIU education.

About Christian Fonnesbech
Christian is Creative Director at Windelov Lassen Interactive and one of Europe’s leading Trans Media directors and producers. Through more than 30 professional online projects, he has explored engagement on the Internet and across media. He is currently directing Cloud Chamber – an online mystery about youth, electronic music and space.

About Rami Ismail and Jan Willen Nijman, Vlambeer
Vlambeer is an Utrecht based game-design studio founded in September 2010. With games like the award-winning Super Crate Box, Radical Fishing and Serious Sam: the Random Encounter, Rami and Jan Willem strive to bring back the old school arcade feeling to various platforms.

About Walter Langelaar
Walter Langelaar is a dutch artist based in Rotterdam, where he also works as programme director for the media studio of WORM, Institute for Avantgardistic Recreation. The projects from this studio (a.k.a. moddr_) aim to critically reflect upon our contemporary medialandscapes via artistic production and theoretical discourse. For a good decade Langelaar has been active in the so called game-art scene, and one of his personal works – ‘nOtbOt’ – can also be seen in the exhibition ‘Space Invaders’, currently exhibited at the Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen.  http://moddr.net     http://lowstandart.net

About SpilBar:
SpilBar is a bimonthly event, where everyone in or close to the computer games industry can meet and mingle. The meetings always start with a talk and end with a drink.
SpilBar is initiated by Kristine Ploug from DADIU and Thomas Vigild from The Danish Game Council (Dansk Spilråd). SpilBar is organized in collaboration with IGDA, Unge Spiludviklere, Spilordningen, and Computerspilzonen.
SpilBar 8 is organized in collaboration with Nikolaj Kunsthal and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Part of Marieke Verbiesen’s travel cost paid by:

Check out the photos and slides from Play All! here: http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/MEDIA-Desk/Play-All!.aspx

Where: Bio Carl, Filmhuset, Copenhagen
When: November 23rd 2011 from 9 to 4.30

It’s not that games are everywhere, or should be everywhere. It’s not that we have more platforms, more games, more successes (and more failures) than in the past. It’s not because we can turn anything into a game, for the good and for the bad. And it’s not because the future belongs to us. Games are, and will be a dominant cultural form because everybody plays. Everywhere.

This seminar will explore the implications of the widening of audiences, technologies and contexts. If everybody plays everywhere, what kinds of games can we create? What can games learn from service and interaction design, and how can games brighten up the future of old media? From gamification to social games, from pervasive to persuasive games, the Play All! Seminar will open the gates for serious, engaging, and thoughtful reflection on the new lands games are discovering.

Join us for an intereting day with Sebastian Deterding, Miguel Sicart, Frank Lantz, Aki järvinen, Michel Reilhac as well as interesting cases.

See the full programme and read more about the speakers here: http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/MEDIA-Desk/Play-All!/Programme.aspx

Participation is free but sign-up is needed. Sign up here: http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/MEDIA-Desk/Play-All!/Sign-Up.aspx

About the organizers:
Play all! is organized by MEDIA Desk,  The Danish Computer Game Zone and DADIU.

This is the 7th annual games seminar – in the past, Ben Cousins, Margaret Wallace, Teut Weidemann, Nick Fortugno, Randy Pagulayan, and others have talked about various game related topics.

Se alle de nominerede her: http://unity3d.com/awards/finalists

Where: Bio Carl, Filmhuset, Copenhagen
When: November 23rd 2011

It’s not that games are everywhere, or should be everywhere. It’s not that we have more platforms, more games, more successes (and more failures) than in the past. It’s not because we can turn anything into a game, for the good and for the bad. And it’s not because the future belongs to us. Games are, and will be a dominant cultural form because everybody plays. Everywhere.

This seminar will explore the implications of the widening of audiences, technologies and contexts. If everybody plays everywhere, what kinds of games can we create? What can games learn from service and interaction design, and how can games brighten up the future of old media? From gamification to social games, from pervasive to persuasive games, the Play All! Seminar will open the gates for serious, engaging, and thoughtful reflection on the new lands games are discovering.

About the organizers:
Play all! is organized by MEDIA Desk,  The Danish Computer Game Zone and DADIU.

This is the 7th annual games seminar – in the past, Ben Cousins, Margaret Wallace, Teut Weidemann, Nick Fortugno, Randy Pagulayan, and others have talked about various game related topics.

Stay tuned for more info …

Where: Auditorium 1 at IT-University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 København S.
When: Thursday, January 27th – 16:30 – 18:30
Why: Because you know you want to. Because all the cool people will be there. Just because.

Agenda:
16:30 – 16:50 The LEGO Choices  – Jonathan Smith, TT Games (UK)
16:51 – 17:11 So….what´s your story? – Jamin Brophy-Warren, Kill Screen (US)
17:11 – 17:45 Mingling without beer
17:45 – 18:30 Debate and discussion
18:30 – ?  Networking and mingling with beer
19:00 – ? Afterparty at ScrollBar at IT-University of Copenhagen – Pre Nordic Game Jam-night.

The LEGO Choices – Jonathan Smith

The LEGO idea creates a space of infinite possibilities. What choices have the TT Games team made to chart a path through those possibilities? And what have they learned about the choices made by players?

Jonathan Smith reflects on the way in which the LEGO games are encountered through journalism; there are lots of things to say about how TT Games positioned their LEGO games, and some observations about the surrounding discourse based both on his perspectives as a producer and, formerly, a journalist himself.

About Jonathan Smith (UK)
A former employee of LEGO Company and now Head of Production at TT Games Publishing with games like ‘LEGO’-games like ‘Indiana Jones’, ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Harry Potter’ on his portfolio.
He is also a former game journalist and plays a mean guitar.

So….what´s your story? – Jamin Brophy-Warren
Jamin will first introduce the Kill Screen magazine – how it came to be and why it existed – and then elaborate on the importance of story in games.
How can game designers make better use of narrative to tell stories about their games, rather than just in them?
This is not the story in the games themselves, but rather how developers need to do a better job of explaining the “how” of their games when presenting them to the public and the press.
Rather than describe the “what” of their game does — genre, plot, characters etc – it´s wise to take a step back. Creating an effective origin story for why that game exists can be a powerful tool.

About Jamin Brophy-Warren (US)

President/Editor-in-Chief of Kill Screen. Jamin Brophy-Warren is a writer and speaker as well as the founder of Kill Screen Magazine.  He spent four years at the Wall Street Journal as an arts and entertainment reporter and previously was a music critic for Pitchfork Media.
He’s spoken at MIT, New York University, & Yale and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, Paris Review, Fast Company, Slate and others.
He graduated from Harvard University in 2004 with a focus on cultural theory and lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Sorcha.

About Kill Screen Magazine
Kill Screen is a videogame arts & culture magazine, website, and retail shop that was  born during a conversation that Jamin Brophy-Warren and Chris Dahlen had with others at the Game Developers Conference in 2009. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a columnist for Pitchfork Media and the Onion AV Club, respectively, Jamin and Chris were dismayed by the lack of coverage that videogames received in the mainstream press.

Game creators were woefully invisible and the occasional long format story didn’t capture or reflect the exuberance and color of the videogame interest that they saw every day. Jamin approached Anthony Smyrski, a Philly-based graphic designer whom he had met years earlier in a bookstore in Luxembourg (yes, that happened), to work on the design and the seeds of Kill Screen were planted.Since then Kill Screen has been picked up by publications such as Wired, Ars Technica, New York Observer, New York Times Magazine, & NPR. GQ even called it a “whip-smart summer read.”See www.killscreenmagazine.com or http://www.jaminbrophywarren.com

About SpilBar:
SpilBar is a bimonthly event, where everyone in or close to the computer games industry can meet and mingle. The meetings always start with a talk and end with a drink.
SpilBar is initiated by Kristine Ploug from DADIU and Thomas Vigild from The Danish Game Council (Dansk Spilråd). SpilBar is organized in collaboration with IGDA, Unge Spiludviklere, New Danish Screen and Computerspilzonen.

http://www.dfi.dk/nyheder/filmupdate/2010/oktober/fornuft-foelelse-og-first-person-shooters.aspx

Ramasjangvært Jacob Riising introducerer Børnespiludfordringen.

Esben Toft Jacobsen fra Copenhagen Bombay.

Jakob Hansson og Hans von Knut Skovfoged fra PortaPlay præsentere Hulter til Bulter.

Simon Nielsen fra Copenhagen Game Collective præsenterer Malerally.

Masser af publikum var mødt op.

Gunvor Bjerre overækken prisen til Esben Toft Jacobsen fra Copenhagen Bombay.