Johann Sebastian Joust by Die Gute Fabrik (photo by Marie Foulston)

Hokra by Ramiro Corbetta (photo by Elliot Trinidad)

Fingle by Game Oven

Room Racers by Lieven van Velthoven

Sloopvogel & Arcrane by Team Dynamo, FourceLabs and the Utrecht School of the Arts (a new addition)

There are also many interesting theatre and dance performances on offer. In short, go.

Update: I totally forgot to mention we’re also putting on another This happened, with several talks about these works. All seats have been snatched up, but you could try the waiting list.

• Fingle by Game Oven; like Twister for your fingers with a Barry White feel.
• Hokra by Ramiro Corbetta; two-versus-two player minimalist digital sports game with more depth than you’d think.
• Johann Sebastian Joust by Die Gute Fabrik; a deceptively simple physical game set to music by Bach that makes inventive use of PlayStation Move controllers.
• Room Racers by Lieven van Velthoven; racing game played on a course made with physical object placed on the ground.

You’ll notice all of these are multiplayer games, and many have an openness to them that allows for inventiveness and creativity from players. That’s a sort of theme that emerged while working on the selection with the folks at Tweetakt. It’s very different from last year, which involved many installations.¹

These will all be playable from March 23 to April 1 on the Neude square in Utrecht, the Netherlands. If you manage to visit Tweetakt, I hope you’ll enjoy playing.

1. That’s not a value judgement, just a shift of interest on our side.

I have a number of talks both short and long lined up for the first few months of this year. Let me run them down for you:

• I’ll present a talk titled ‘The Game Has Changed’ – about the role of play in society and its meaning for creative disciplines – at Eurosonic Noorderslag.
• At Interaction12 I’ll do a short case report together with Irene van Peer on Pig Chase.
• I’ll do another case report, this one on Koppelkiek, at Social Cities of Tomorrow.
• And finally, I’m honored to be speaking at LIFT12 as part of the session on ‘The New Face of Gaming’ alongside Hide & Seek‘s Tom Armitage.

Somewhere in between all this, myself and a remarkable group of individuals I am lucky enough to collaborate with on a regular basis will head to Berlin to participate in the Global Game Jam.

Not a bad start of the year, right?

• I’ll be participating in a panel on gamification at NPOX, the annual conference for creatives of the Dutch public broadcasting services. I’ll talk about PLAY Pilots, and offer my perspective on a case submitted by the audience.
• At PICNIC, I’ll contribute to a session that reflects on – amongst other things – the work done by participants of the VURB workshop Builders at Play.
• And finally, at Playgrounds, we’ll run a pop-up edition of This happened, as well as some other stuff that we’ll announce as soon as we’ve finished preparations.

Perhaps I’ll catch you at one of these?

We couldn’t resist submitting a practice paper on Code 4, the game we made for the Dutch Tax Administration.¹ It got accepted, so I’m speaking.

The program is packed with interesting people, such as Eric Zimmerman, Bernie DeKoven and Reiner Knizia. The opening party features the likes of Kid Koala and Copenhagen Game Collective. So this looks like it will be a winner. Our abstract is below. Hope to see you there:

Promoting organizational change within large government bodies remains an elusive goal. The game Code 4 is developed to create a coherent fully mixed media approach to eliciting organizational change effects by employing employees as the primary actors (players) in a game. The Code 4 game is set in an analogous world with a clear cause to action during a dystopian financial crisis and with rules that mirror but also counteract existing bureaucratic processes. The gameplay rewards successful collaboration regardless of the existing organizational framework. In-game player behavior and results from surveys indicate that most players become wholly engaged with both the core game and with the supporting encounters and that the transfer of game effects is successful.

1. With the help from Alper Çugun, Herman Koster and Marinka Copier.

And I will be speaking.

So, Thursday June 30 in TrouwAmsterdam’s Verdieping: Cognitive Cities Salon Amsterdam with James Burke, Katalin Galayas, Edwin Gardner, Juha van ‘t Zelfde and myself. Doors open 19:00, entrance fee 10 Euros.

I’ll do a reprise of New Games for New Cities, which I first presented at FutureEverything. I am very glad to get another chance to share these ideas at what I am sure will be a great meeting of minds.

(Sorry about the many speaking announcements around here lately. I promise we’ll get back with some proper content soon.)

When you think of a city, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Most likely it is the stuff that it is made up of: its streets and buildings, its parks and squares. But what sets a city apart, aside from its architecture, is how all that stuff is put to use. A city’s nightlife, a city’s cuisine, a city’s culture. In other words, what people make of the space they live in when they are at play.

Play isn’t limited to the “soft side” of urbanism. In fact, it turns out a building isn’t some prefixed structure capable of doing one thing only. Adaptation and reuse continuously transform what a city’s architecture is for, often from the bottom up. In this way, a city’s people shape their homes as well, quite literally.

What is at work in this process of city transformation, is nothing less than play. In cities, just as in games, people and the space they inhabit shape each other. Thus, in our Western cities, where reuse is overtaking construction of new space, we are all becoming architects.

In this session Kars looks at how game culture and play shape the urban fabric, how we might design systems that improve people’s capacity to do so, and how you yourself, through play, can transform the city you call home.

Chi Sparks is a conference that focusses on “the very important contributions that good HCI research makes in realizing successful, innovative, new products or services that have a genuine impact on people’s lives.”

I think with Code 4 we managed to have a real impact on the organization and its employees. So I am pleased we can share our work with peers in the HCI community.

Below is the abstract. There’s a few more interesting sessions on games and play that we are part of. Get your tickets fast, early bird registration ends June 6.

Promoting organizational change within large government bodies remains an elusive goal. The game Code 4 was developed to create a coherent fully mixed media approach to eliciting organizational change effects by employing employees as the primary actors (players) in a game. The Code 4 game was set in an analogous world but with a clear cause to action in a dystopic financial crisis and with rules that mirrored but also subverted existing bureaucratical processes. The gameplay rewarded successful collaboration without regard for the organizational framework. Results indicate that many players were wholly engaged with both the core game as with the supporting encounters and that the transferral of game effects was successful. Employing a game for organizational change has proved itself to be a valid approach.

• First up is Mediamatic’s Mob Fest on Wednesday 23 March in Amsterdam (that’s next week). I’ll talk about making pervasive urban games that are more than ‘just’ “conversation pieces”.
• On Wednesday 6 April, also in Amsterdam I’ll be at PechaKucha Night #17. I’ll present on playing with animals and maybe share some work in progress on project Buta…
• And finally, on Thursday 12 May I’ll be in Manchester at FutureEverything. I think I’ll talk about issues of contemporary city life and how to address those using applied pervasive games without going to the ‘gamification’ route.

That’s all for now. Hope to see you at one of these.

From my window I can see guys building the Tweetakt pavilion on the Neude square. They’ve started today. Next week, the festival starts. And I’m a little excited because this year I was asked by Tweetakt to curate the interactive exhibition that will be on display at the pavilion.

Tweetakt is a festival for performing arts for youth. The work I selected are all installations with a playful nature. Tweetakt is determined to bridge the gap between the traditional elements in their program – such as theatre and dance – and emerging games culture. What I also payed attention to was that each work on display would have a performance-like quality to it. That is to say, it should be as much fun watching people play as it is to play yourself.

The projects on display are:

• Hand From Above by Chris O’Shea
• Sound Chaser by Yuri Suzuki
• Love Hate Punch by Stefan Gross and Stella Boess
• Funky Forest by Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson
• Bandjesland by Monobanda

It’ll come as no surprise to you that many of these were featured at previous editions of This happened – Utrecht. In fact the tenth edition of the event coincides with Tweetakt, giving us the chance to present to the local community both Chris O’Shea (who co-founded the original This happened in London, so it’s a joy to have him over) and Yuri Suzuki. Monobanda and Matthias Oostrik complete the lineup. The event is fully booked, but you might have a chance at the door.