PLAY18

The Creative Gaming Festival presents its program highlights

Hamburg, October 24th, 2018. In a few days it will be time: the PLAY18 – Creative Gaming Festival opens its doors and invites you to exchange ideas with your peers, to discuss games within a cultural and media pedagogical context, and above all to celebrate and play together! From November 1st until November 4th in Hamburg it offers international guest speakers and a broad program focused on the motto “Ready Game Change – Create a New Tomorrow”. Just before the start we want to announce additional key points and protagonists; these are program items the visitors will not want to miss.

How can games true to the Festival motto change the world? This will be discussed on November 2nd on the PLAY Couch under the expert direction of the journalist and radio moderator Christian Schiffer. Discussion participants will be product designer and entrepreneur Amelie Künzler, games journalist Daniel Ziegener, artist and activist Kathia von Roth and Matthias Löwe, member of Demokratielabore. In the roundtable “Play with Feelings” on November 3rd Schiffer will interview game and narrative designer Valentina Tamer, Martin Ganteföhr, the author recently responsible for the story of the game “State of Mind”, and one of the curators of Rainbow Arcade on the topic of how games can encourage empathy. In other Artist Talks guests like blogger OddNina, games developer Wolf Lang or media artist Sabine Harrer for example, provide insights into various subjects such as role models, lessons learned in games or the development of indie games.

In an impulse presentation the Danish author and lecturer Miguel Sicart wants to think aloud about what games we should play in our current era – and what games worlds we can create if our current world should end. Maurice Hagelstein provides an example and material for discussion immediately afterwards with the adventure “Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry”. In his presentation and the following discussion, he explains how, in 2018, a development team creates a game about a sexist protagonist.

“Again, this year we have managed to bring exciting personalities from many different areas to Hamburg for the PLAY – Creative Gaming Festival,” so Andreas Hedrich, member of the Festival direction team. “Together we want to try to lay the foundation for a new tomorrow! And we are looking forward to many stimuli and program items that will give us new food for thought and to celebrating the future of games culture together with our guests!”

The complete PLAY18 program is rounded out this year with many additional event formats and workshops, prominent events such as the “Studio Zukunft”, the “Speakers’ Corner” and last but not least the PLAY Exhibition in which innovative games are introduced and can be tried out and the Creative Gaming Award. For detailed information on the complete program and the exact schedule please visit the official website at https://playfestival.de/play18/zeitplan/.

Tickets for the Festival are available under ticket@playfestival.de or directly on site in the Festival Center at the Hühnerposten (November 2nd and 3rd) or at Barlach Halle K (November 2nd through 4th).

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