15 November 2016
WordPlay Festival for International Games Day
This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom, you can follow her on twitter @miss_wisdom.
The 2016 International Games Day at Your Library takes place on Saturday 19th November and this year the British Library is working with the Hand Eye Society and Press Fire to Win to host WordPlay; a free one-day festival at the British Library in London about writerly games, digital narrative and interactive fiction. The event includes talks, workshops, board games, a juried IF games showcase and we'd love you to come along! Our facebook event page is here, there is a full schedule here and I've also included the times of talks and workshops further down in this blog post if you scroll down.
The WordPlay interactive fiction games showcase will be located in the main library building on floor one outside the Rare Books & Music Reading Room and the Humanities One Reading Room. Please drop by between 10:00 and 16:00 to read and play these digital games.
Board games will be located in Eliot room in the Knowledge Centre, again drop by between 11:00 and 16:00. We've picked a selection of games that we hope will appeal to adults and children over three:
- Animal Upon Animal
- Bananagrams
- Biblios
- Bucket King
- Carcassonne
- Dobble
- Ice Cool
- Pandemic
- Qwirkle
- Rhino Hero
- Scrabble
- Ticket To Ride Europe
- Zombie Dice
For more information on these games check out our GeekList at BoardGameGeek.
WordPlay Talks will be held in the Bronte room in the Knowledge Centre, you don't need to book in advance - just turn up to the sessions you are interested in, below is the schedule:
11:15 - 11:30: Welcome
11:30 - 12:15: The City is your Playground: Games Played in Public with Holly Gramazio, Tom Williams, Hannah Nicklin, Mink Ette
As a designer, pervasive games allow you to use the greatest set of all — the real world — already pre-populated by unpaid extras! A variety of public game creators discuss the particular affordances and considerations they have to keep in mind when designing outside-of-the box narrative experiences.
12:45 - 13:10: Not Losing the Point with A Normal Lost Phone by Rafael Martinez-Jausoro
One of the people behind A Normal Lost Phone explains how they found a balance between a social impact message and engaging gameplay by using narrative and an original point of view.
13:10 - 13:35: Standard Structures in Choice-Based Games by Hannah Powell-Smith
While choice-based games are simpler in form to systems-based games, there is a considerable variety of structure that impacts player experience. Learn and be inspired by examples of the Branch-and-Bottleneck, the Time Cave, and the Gauntlet!
14:00 - 14:45: Crafting Interactive Fiction Tools with Richard Bartle, Jon Ingold, Juhana Leinonen, Emily Short
What motivates people to make interactive fiction tools, and what encourages people to use them?
15:15 - 16:00: Practical Considerations of Writerly Games with Olivia Wood, Haley Uyrus, Adrian Hon, Rob Sherman
Because creating interactive fiction is challenging, with no straightforward path, we’ve assembled a panel of seasoned writerly games types to discuss some nitty gritty issues: funding possibilities, useful production tools and methods, and how to connect with an audience.
16:15 - 17:15: Worldbuilding with Words with Hannah Powell-Smith, Nate Crowley, Helen Carmichael, Jon Green
Creators of interactive fiction, prose-forward games, Twitter microfictions and gamebooks discuss the challenges and joys of using words to evoke historical eras and weird universes.
WordPlay Workshops will be held in the Dickens room in the Knowledge Centre, please do book a place for these.
11:30 - 12:30, Texture workshop, Jim Munroe
13:00 - 15:00, Twine Workshop, Rob Sherman.
15:00 - 17:00, Inform 7 Workshop, Emily Short
PRE-REGISTER HERE for the workshops on Twine, Texture, and Inform. Please note that you must bring your own laptop for the workshops.