ATTENTION: GamezAndRulez Conference 2020 - November 2020 - Online > www.gamezandrulez.ch >
POST-MORTEM GAMEZFESTIVAL 2013-2018
As in the years before, the GameZfestival with its sixth edition was a great success. The three days in november were packed with talks and events. The festival attracted numerous visitors and offered the game developer scene in Switzerland excellent opportunities to exchange ideas. And we think the community enjoyed all three days.
It is always good to stop an event on a high. That is what we do. This was the last GameZfestival. We enjoyed organizing the festival and setting up all its demanding parts. But times have changed, the game consumers fairs are now everywhere and absorb most of the attention and efforts. And the community has grown and should be able to organize similar events as well. The younger members of our team have been very active in the community and relentlessly work on their own projects, they don't have the time that is needed to continue this festival. And the Swiss indie games community now has plenty of meet-ups, testing nights and small (local) gatherings. This especially helps the young game designers finding an inspiring environment for their creative work.
There also is a festival that started doing similar things after us with ten or fifteen times more money. The festival Ludicious proudly tries to bring international players to Zurich and advertises two awards for games. Despite being financed by the city of Zurich and the federal organization Pro Helvetia and supported by big companies, it still has to find a clear profile and its role in the Swiss game design community.
Generally, the focus of the Swiss game developers community has broadened so much, that many protagonists take part in all of the game consumers fairs in Switzerland and are part of more and more international game festivals abroad. It is no wonder, they don't find much time to actively support their own festival. This of course is a positive development since it is more important for game designers to have a good international profile. After all, we are well aware, that the prophet is nothing worth in his own country.
Over the last six years, GameZfestival brought Game Talks, curated game exhibitions, informal presentations for the community and the GameZ & RuleZ symposium to you. That is four different formats of events. You find albums with pictures from the festivals on our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/gamezfestival/
This was our output:
Topics
Exhibitions
2013 'Arcade closed, reopen everywhere'
2014 '1st vs Multiplayer'
2015 'ruleZ for the magic circle'
2016 'Motivate Play'
2017 'Game Over'
2018 'Forgotten Gamemechanics'
You find documentations on our website for all festivals: gameZfestival.ch
Swiss Games Trailers
We also created the Swiss Games Trailer for each year. The video shows all the Swiss games published in one year. We started with the games from 2013 and 14. And we continued all the way to 2018. In retrospect, this is a useful history of Swiss games. You find all 5 videos on:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxgklfQ0fJ6UdPyVtCNAcQ
Awards
We hosted the SGDA Junior Award every year. Luca Cannellotto proudly presented the young game designers and introduced them to the Swiss scene at our festival. Furthermore we presented an Award for the game with the most innovative game mechanics, chosen by our game designers. The award 2015 went to Robin Baumgarten with "Line Wobbler". 2016 the award went to SUPER HOT Team for "SUPERHOT". And the award for 2017 went to Nathalie Lawhead (Alienmelon) with "Everything is going to be okay". In 2017 the extra award for worst gamification went to the team Exidy with the game "Chiller" (1986).
GameZ & Rulez
In 2015 we started a conference on game mechanics that intended to bring game studies experts and game designers together. This worked out very well and as a conclusion of the first three conferences we published the book "Games and Rules" that shows our comprehension of game mechanics. The book comes with 322 pages and features 13 authors. It is certainly an interesting read and an elaborate way of transpiring a theory that started with a game mechanics manifesto in 2013. You find our book on: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4304-6/games-and-rules/
The conference is the part of the GameZfestival that will be continued as an own independent event. in 2018 we started with a theory on narrative mechanics, this is what we will discuss further in the next edition of GameZ & Rulez in 2019.
Sponsors
As an academic event of international interest the GameZ & RuleZ conference was sponsored three times by the Swiss National Science Foundation. One time, there was no sponsoring because of rule changes within the SNF. This meant for us to find other sources. We found out that no one was really eager to support our event with money. The Migros Kulturprozent supported us once with 2000 francs. And Pro Helvetia presented us with 5000 francs each time (one time 10'000 and for the last festival we did not ask for a contribution anymore). Most of the money that we needed to pay and accomodate our international guests and setting up infrastructure was provided by Game Design and GameLab of the Zurich University of the Arts. And some of the money was from private funds of team members of GameZfestival. The ZHdK generously sponsored us with computer equipment and some furniture. And all the labour before, during and after the festival was done for free by the team members and students of Game Design at ZHdK. The Kunstraum Walcheturm as venue turned out to be ideal. We were happy to have Patrick Huber's support for all six festivals.
Association
Despite circulating rumours GameZfestival was not a satellite of the ZHdK but an independent association of game designers that wanted to support the Indie Games community and organize international and local exchange of knowledge and skills. The association still exists but may be dormant for a while. It will observer the further development of the Swiss game community – and maybe it will come up with some different ideas for events in the future. You never know. Anything is possible.
Best regards,
your GameZfestival.
gameZfestival is back for its sixth and last edition with three days of talks, international guests, indie game studios, panel discussions, awards and an OpenMic. This year's topic is 'Postmortem' a logical conclusion after last year's 'Game Over'. The Festival's Highlights are Tarn Adams, developer of the famous Dwarf Fortress (USA), game designer, artist and author Mary Flanagan (USA) and more to come. Our conference track gameZ & ruleZ takes a closer look at storytelling as narrative mechanics. Festival and conference will be accompanied by a playable videogame exhibition and a video trailer of all Swiss games published this year.
Location: Zurich, Kunstraum Walcheturm Kanonengasse 20. Just off from Zurich mainstation (5').
Program: Friday, 9. November
| gameZ & ruleZ conference: Narrative Mechanics (Chair: Dr. Mela Kocher) | |
| 13:30 | Opening of Conference (Conference Commitee Kocher/Suter/Bauer). |
| 13:45 | Keynote #1: Narrative Game Mechanics (René Bauer, Mela Kocher, Beat Suter, ZHdK) |
| 14:30 | Don Schmocker (Ocomotive): "Associative Storytelling in FAR: LONE SAILS" |
| 15:00 | Coffee Break |
| 15:30 | David Krummenacher: "Open end storytelling in pinball machines" |
| 16:00 | Sonja Böckler (ZHdK): "Storytelling in artgames" |
| 16:30 | Panel Discussion & Break |
| 17:15 | Keynote #2: QUIZ - Location-based games for a Situationist society (Günter Hack, AT) |
|
gameZfestival: PostMortem |
|
| 18:00 | Exhibition Opening. Forgotten Game Mechanics. |
| 18:15 |
Post Mortem. gameZfestival invites developers to present a post mortem of a finished project in 15 minutes! 1. David Stark: Airships, 2018 |
| 19:30 | Coffee and Sandwich Break |
| 19:45 | Launch of creative card set StoriesForGames (Anja Fritsch, GameLab ZHdK) |
| 20:00 | Book launch: Games and Rules. Game Mechanics for the "Magic Circle" (Beat Suter, René Bauer, Mela Kocher, GameLab ZHdK) |
| gameZfestival und gameZ & ruleZ (Chair: René Bauer) | |
| 20:15 | Keynote #2: Digital Humanities: When the games' stories become real (Mary Flanagan, Dartmouth College, USA) |
| 21:00 | Swiss Game Trailers 2018 (Presented by Sebastiaan Cator and Philomena Schwab) |
| 21:15 | Release Party - Swiss Games 2018: DERU by Mr. Whale's Game Service, Have you released a game too? just send us an email to info AT gamezfestival.ch) Joining the Release Party: Modsork by David Canela, PewPew Standalone by Radomir Dopieralski |
Program: Saturday, 10. November
| gameZ & ruleZ conference: Narrative Mechanics in other contexts (Chair: Tabea Iseli) | |
| 13:30 | Creating stories for VR (Michela Rimensberger, Sycoforge CH) |
| 14:00 | Systemic Narratives (Adam Mayes and Ulf Benjaminsson, Speldesign / Uppsala University) |
| 14:45 | Games@museums: When exhibition objects have a secret agenda (Mela Kocher, Sonja Böckler, Stefan Schmidlin, ZHdK) |
| 15:30 | How to not bore with game reviews (Robert Glashüttner) |
|
gameZfestival: PostMortem (Chairs: Philomena Schwab, Stefan Schmidlin) |
|
| 16:15 |
Selected Swiss Indie Productions of 2018 (15 Minutes) |
| 16:45 | Best of Fantoche Game/Animation Workshop 2018. (Goran Saric, ZHdK) |
| 17:00 | Open Mic: Swiss Game Designers introduce their new projects in 5 minutes. |
|
Open Mic [Register via this form or by sending an email to info@gamezfestival.ch - Email-Title: [OpenMic] Content: [ProjectName / Project&Team / URL / opt: Video-URL ] 1. Luca Rossetto, Pixel with Hat |
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| 18:00 | SGDA Junior Game Design Award 2018 (Luca Cannellotto, SGDA) |
| 18:45 |
My favourite game but not my own. Talk with René Bauer. |
| gameZfestival und gameZ & ruleZ (Chair: Dr. Beat Suter) | |
| 20:00 | Keynote #3: A Little Graveyard Humour: Narrative World-Building in Quest for Glory IV and Assassin's Creed Origins (Jana Sloan van Geest, DE) |
| 21:00 | Keynote #4: When ASCII characters make you suffer. Dwarf Fortress (Tarn Adams, USA). |
| 22:00 | Party with DJ KNOR Live! (https://www.facebook.com/knorlive/) |
Program: Sunday, 11. November
| gameZfestival: exhibition, events, open table and awards | |
| 13:00 | "Family Day at the Zurich GameZfestival": Exhibition opens and stays open to 17.00 hours. |
| 13.15 | Guided tour (Exhibition) |
| 13:45 | Open Table [Register by sending an email to info@gamezfestival.c [ Email-Title: [OpenMic] Content: [ProjectName / Project&Team / URL / opt: Video-URL ] |
| Just stop by with your new project and show it to fellow developers and exhibition visitors. | |
| 15.00 | Internal Workshop: Western vs. asian storytelling in culture, Prof. Dr. Kellner ) |
| 18:00 | Finissage |
Exhibition: forgotten gamemechanics [combined with conference]
| Friday, Nov. 09 | Opening + 17:00 - 24.00 |
| Saturday, Nov. 10 | 14:00 - 24.00 |
| Sunday, Nov. 11 | 13:00 - 19.00 |
Concept of the exhibition: "Forgotten Gamemechanics" features games with game mechanics, that are not present in mainstream anymore.
The text of the exhibition and all games with specific descriptions: coming soon
Innovation and creative gameZfestival-Award
The award 2015 went to Robin Baumgarten with "Line Wobbler".
The award 2016 went to SUPER HOT Team for "SUPERHOT".
The award 2017 went to Nathalie Lawhead (Alienmelon) with "Everything is going to be okay".
The award 2017 (worst gamification) goes to the team Exidy with the game "Chiller" (1986)
Outcomes/Findings/Output 2013 - 2018
# GAMES AND RULES (BOOK)
GAMES AND RULES, 2018
Miguel Sicart, Beat Suter, Carlo Fabricatore, Wolfgang Walk, Hiloko Kato, Günter Hack, Mela Kocher, René Bauer, Imre Hofmann, Ulrich Götz, Michelle Westerlaken, Mark L. Barrett and Francine Rotzetter.
# Game mechanics Manifesto Version 1.o
The world has turned into a game and behind its stage the small and large game mechanics rattle. The social world provides opportunities for action that we can use and adapt. For our actions we get this and that or we are punished (Never ask what the mechanics are about). Foucault once called these socially shaped spaces discourses. Discourses as game mechanics draw and steer the rewarding or punishing and are motivating at the same time. We can only act or participate where policy options are allowed. Anything else is cheating in the electronic world and amounts to revolution, crime or even terrorism in our social world. Game mechanics as control circuits organize the (own) game world with their (joint) players and establish motivations. Thereby a game mechanic may gather all kinds of rules to generate motivation. The game mechanic may even make other minor game mechanics work for itself. In "society of the spectacle" Debord shows how a bunch of spectacle games are used as distraction to help people continue to play the 'great social game'. Be it on talk shows, in art or in politics, we are always distracted from the concrete mechanism with spectacle games and shows. In electronic games, analog media and their game mechanics are nothing more than slaves of the great mechanics: text, image or movie, they are all just media that are in the mechanics' payroll. The simplest game mechanic is a simple game loop (cybernetic control circuit) of challenges, options for action and resulting rewards and punishments. Narration here becomes a special form of game mechanics. This special game mechanics has long ruled the world, but its reign is coming to an end. Today, we are thrown and strapped into little game mechanics. There we fizzle out with our self-motivation, rather than we place ourselves in the great mechanics of history by asking questions about it and redefining it. Today in a world that has become meaningless, electronic game mechanics generate sense (or spectacle) for us on a specific, local and worldwide level. Game mechanics are the last great utopias of our society: Here, we find clear rules. She or he, who obeys them will make it. Game mechanics are thus the ultimate social hope in an unjust and unfair world. We are the mechanics of these senseless new meaning systems. The game mechanics with their rules (and rule cycles) own the past, the present and the future! And we are their engineers.
The Game Mechanics
# LUDIC SOCIETY magazine 'gamezfestival'
Ludic Society Magazine GameZFestival
with Margerete Jahrmann, Günther Hack, Stephan Schwingeler, P.M.Ong, Invisible Playground, Beat Suter, and-or, Max Moswitzer
Video: "GameOver - NPCs Nightmare"
The video is a collage of different games through game history, showing how they handle the death of npcs, avatars.
# Swiss Game Trailers / Swiss Game Designers in Action 2013-2018
> Sideboard
# Exhibtion topics
2013 'Arcade closed, reopen everywhere'
2014 '1st vs Multiplayer'
2015 'ruleZ for the magic circle'
2016 'Motivate Play'
2017 'Game Over'
2018 'Forgotten Gamemechanics'
# Important topics
Swiss Crack/Demo/Game Design 1987+
# Participiants (All?)
M. Heubi (CH), Dario Hardmeier (CH) & Sam Jordan (CH/NL), Reece Millidge - Damp Gnat (UK), Stephan Schwingeler (D), Margarete Jahrmann (AT/CH), Mobiles Kino (CH), Jeremy Spillmann - Feinheit (CH), Tobias Bilgeri - Black Pants (D), Jogi Neufeld - Subotron (AT), AND-OR (CH), Mario von Rickenbach (CH), Filip Kostovic (CH), Tom Felber (Zürich), Ulrich Blum (Köln), Gebrüder Frei (Bern), Ivo Vasella - Outlane (CH), Christer Karlsson - Stockholm (SWE), Mark Butler - Berlin (DE), Livio Lunin (CH), Reto Senn (CH), Dragica Kahlina (CH), Daniel Sciboz (CH), Daniel Lutz - Montreal (CAN), Joost van Dongen - Utrecht (NL), Philomena Schwab (CH), Beat Suter (CH), René Bauer (CH), Max Moswitzer (CH), Reiner Knizia - London (UK), Urs Hostettler (CH), Don Schmocker (CH), Carlo Fabricatore (UK), Staffan Björk (SE), Wolfgang Walk (DE), Renzo Thönen (CH), Mischa Geiser (CH), Don Schmocker (CH), Florian Faller (CH), Adrian Stutz (CH), Annika Waern (SE), Jesper Juul (DK), Flurin Jenal (CH), Philipp Stern (CH), René Krebs (CH), Nicolas Matter (CH), Andreas Halter (CH), Isabel Schacher (CH), Stefan Schmidlin (CH), Michael Müller (CH), David Krummenacher (CH), Patrick Selbert (CH), Filipe Simonette (CH), Julie Bächtold (CH), Anja Fritsch (CH), Tabea Iseli (CH), Luke Whittaker (UK), Katherine Bidwell (UK), Phillip Weber (PL), Dragica Kahlina (CH), Caecilia Charbonnier (CH), Sylvain Chagué (CH), Tobias Baumann (CN), Max Striebel (CH), Martina Hugentobler (CH), Melanie Vetterli (CH), Florian Müller (AUS), Mela Kocher(CH), Anna Martin-Niedecken (CH), Petr Pouchly (CZ), Sarah Celebioglu (D), Pas Schmid (CH), Philomena Schwab (CH), Aleksander Kauch (PL), Robin Baumgarten (UK/ A), Imre Hofmann (CH), Hiloko Kato (D/ CH), Miguel Sicar (DK), Patrick Winkler (DE), Max Rheiner (CH), Rebecca Goodine (CA), David Javet (CH), Sina Els (DE), René Bauer (CH), Andres Bucher (CH), Julia Bohren (CH), Simon Broggi (CH), Annika Rüeggsegger (CH), Yannic Hungerbühler (CH), Sascha Scherrer (CH), Luca Rossetto (CH), Ayane Stämpfli (CH), Patrick Frass (CH), Thorsten Michael Rehbogen (CH), Dennis Reimer (CH), Dennis Bodenmann (CH), Eric Schärrer (CH), Micha Stettler (CH), Luca Cannellotto (CH), Michelle Westerlaken (SWE), Gordan Savicic (AT/CH), Sonja Böckler (CH), Yanick Lukic (CH), Benjamin Andermatt (CH), Max Moswitzer (AT/CH), David Stark (CH), Basil Weber (CH), Ryan Green (USA), Günther Hack (A), Michael Cook (UK), Daniel Bisig (CH), Roman Werner (CH), Guido Berger (CH), Renzo Thönen (CH), Silvan Bauser (CH), Jakub Dvorsky (CZ), Konglomerat M.I.D.I. (CH), Beat Kunz (CH), Arno Justus (CH), Selina Capol (CH), Andres Bucher (CH), Julia Bohren (CH), Marcel Arioli (CH), Sebastiaan Cator (CH), Jeremias Baur (CH), Severin Walker (CH), Teodora Dimova (CH), Michel Ziegler (CH), Anja Fritsch (CH), Mary Flanagan (USA), Michela Rimensberger (CH), Adam Mayes and Ulf Benjaminsson (FN), Stefan Schmidlin (CH), Robert Glashüttner (AT), Goran Saric (CH), Adam Moravanszky (CH), Alice Ruppert (CH), Jana Sloan van Geest (DE), Tarn Adams (US)
# Formats
Exhibitions, Exhibtion Games, Talks, Panels, MyFavoriteButNotMine, Movies, Präsentations, OpenMics, OpenTables ...
Organisation
November 9 - 11, 2018; Zurich, Switzerland. The international gameZfestival is organized by the gameZfestival association, Game Lab and Game Design ZHdK. The Program has been developed by René Bauer, Mela Kocher, Beat Suter, Max Moswitzer, Philomena Schwab, Tabea Iseli, and the GameLab of the University of the Arts Zurich. The exhibition was developed by René Bauer, Beat Suter and the Master students of Game Design ZHdK. Philomena Schwab and Stefan Schmidlin organized the Open Mic and Open Screen. Sebastiaan Cator and Philomena Schwab put together the Swiss Games Trailers 2018. Markus Rosse is the photographer. Tabea Iseli is responsible for the Festival's whole Online Marketing. Students from Game Design ZHdK have collaborated in designing and installing the exhibition and festival spaces.
