Submitted by Ulanda Blair, Special Projects Coordinator, Next Wave Festival
Next Wave's Free Play, the hugely popular national conference for game artists is on again this August at ACMI. Free Play is an independent game developer's conference which caters for independent and DIY game developers, creatively frustrated professionals, game development students, digital artists and new media academics.
This year's conference is on Saturday the 18th of August from 9:30am to 8:30pm at the Australia Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Federation Square, Flinders Street Melbourne. Tickets are available from the ACMI Box Office on 03 8663 2583: $20 Full & $15 Concession and Student.
The international keynote speaker this year will be Jonathan Blow (USA), a programmer and award-winning designer of Braid. Jonathan works primarily on advanced and experimental video games. His game Braid is a meditation on loss and relationships where the player controls time to solve puzzles. Braid won the "Game Design" award at the Independent Games Festival in 2006. For many years he wrote the Inner Product column for Game Developer Magazine. Blow is the primary host of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop each March at the Game Developers Conference, which has become a premier showcase for new ideas in video games. In addition, Blow is a regular participant in the Indie Game Jam.
Other speakers and session topics will be announced shortly.
As with previous years, the conference will incorporate both an all-day lecture program, as well as a more informal workshop and demonstration program. Free Play will take place across ACMI's Cinema 1 and Function Space.
For more information see: http://nextwavefreeplay.blogspot.com/ or email gamers@nextwave.org.au