A MAZE. / Berlin 2019

Schedule:

• 11:00-11:05 Björn Bartholdy, Csongor Baranyai, Gundolf S. Freyermuth: opening words
• 11:05-11:45 Eric Zimmerman: 100 Versions of Losswords
• 11:45-12:15 Hartmut Koenitz: Learning From Biology – Game (System) Design as “gardening”
• 12:15-12:45 Sabine Harrer: Plantations of Play – Colonial Botany in Videogames
• 13:00-13:30 Robert Yang: We Must Cultivate Our Garden
• 13.30-14:30 Game Development as Gardening: panel with Adriaan de Jongh (Hidden Folks), Gabe Cuzzillo (Ape Out), Thomas van den Berg (Kingdom) – moderated by Csongor Baranyai

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Games develop in a way that I can only describe as organic,
in that they tend to start as a core and then grow outward. 
(David OReilly)

A game as playful media and complex system can’t be drafted as a whole beforehand, but has to be grown into its (final?) form through iterations, morphing from version to version, finding its own shape step by step or just evolving forever.

Dissecting and examining the development process of games is key for understanding and mastering not just game design and development, but the increasingly digital world we are in per se. Game Design as Gardening is the academic extension of Devolution, exploring similar topics as the exhibition from a different point of view. Experts from academy, science and research and game development will discuss the growing process of digital games and what that means for digital media.

Game Design as Gardening will be moderated by Su-Jin Song.

Game Design as Gardening is a cooperation between Devolution and Clash of Realities and a part of Devolution #5.

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Keynote: Eric Zimmerman: 100 Versions of Losswords

Many game developers talk about iteration during the “gardening” of development, but in the heat and pressure of releasing a game, we often don’t get to practice it as much as we would like. This session takes a painfully detailed look at the iteration of a single game: the mobile title Losswords. Through dozens of screenshots, mock-ups, and wireframe schematics, this session will trace the development of the game from fundamental changes through the minutiae of detailed refinement. From the core play mechanic to the narrative world to the interface details, developing Losswords meant wandering through a desert of possibilities, not always knowing how to proceed or whether we would make it out of the “garden” alive. Join us for hard lessons learned, both good and bad.

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Hartmut Koenitz: Learning From Biology – Game (System) Design as “gardening”

Games are (digital) systems, in which the elements influence each other and there is a feedback loop between game and player. There are clear parallels to biology as the origins of system theory and an overall systemic understanding of nature. Gardening means to create an ecosystem, in which plants influence each other and where we need to take the environment into account - the climate, seasons, soil, available space etc. Game design as gardening means to learn from this biological counterpart: planning for growth, patient and steady attention, weeding out of unintended effects.

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Sabine Harrer: Plantations of Play – Colonial Botany in Videogames

Plantations of Play looks at game development through the lens of colonial botany. Where does our obsession with open colonizable worlds and the fear of a wild and untamed "Indiepocalypse" come from? One possibility: Our tools of game gardening have deep roots in Europe's bigoted history. Time to unpack some trends and decolonise game gardening.

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Robert Yang: We Must Cultivate Our Garden

Let’s assume we’re all very important, and fifty years from now, scholars will want to study our work and process. Let’s also assume we will still be alive in fifty years too... what materials will we give them, what would help them study our process and this era of game development? In this short lecture, I will talk a little bit about games and research, research as creation, archiving your development process, and why we must begin cultivating this “garden” for future generations to enjoy.

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Game Development as Gardening – panel with Adriaan de Jongh (Hidden Folks), Gabe Cuzzillo (Ape Out), Thomas van den Berg (Kingdom). Hosted by Csongor Baranyai.

An in-depth interview with Adriaan de Jongh, Gabe Cuzzillo and Thomas van den Berg about the development processes of their games. How to grow a game?
How did the game change during its development? Why? Which features were added? Which were taken away? When? What were the interesting design challenges? What was the original vision of the game? How did the idea emerge? How did certain features evolved into their final version?
Hosted by Csongor Baranyai.
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Jelena Viskovic is an artist who works with simulation and explores how games can be used as experimental tools to engage with complex issues our world faces today. She will talk about ways in which worlds we know from videogames merge with our own, and open up strange new paths for us to engage with the reality we live in today.

Glyphspache is a new language for writing poetry that anyone can help create! Invent your own glyphs and assemble them to beautiful poems and stories. Bleeptrack (Sabine Wieluch) will give a short insight into the development process, how the language works and else what you can do with it.

Glyphsprache is a project commissioned by Now Play This Festival (happening in London on April 6–14th, 2019) and A MAZE. / Berlin. The glyph dictionary and poems will be added to and shared by visitors to both festivals.

Monobanda makes performative works that incorporate the human body and performative elements in their interactive work.

Co-founder of monobanda, Niki will talk about creating situations that invite performance & their new work: Kinesics: A exploration of body language in VR.
Kinesics is made in collaboration with Improvive, and playable at A MAZE. / Berlin 2019.

This talk will feature 18+ (censored) content as well as medical imagery some people may find disturbing.

Dress up games are probably the least known genre in the entire games industry. Traditionally associated with girls games, it’s easy to imagine these games to be cheap, flashy browser games. But is that all there is to it? What if I told you that Skyrim, Mass Effect or Dark Souls are also dress up games? Even Rocket League and WWE wrestling games! So let’s examine how dress up games have found their place among all types of audience, from your regular AAA title to the not so known indie dress up makers, without forgetting of course… sex games. And hopefully at the end of this talk, you’ll understand why we developers should give these games just a tiny bit more of attention!

Can Games Make a better Future? We are convinced they can! And that is what the project Enter Africa is all about. It encourages us to use game thinking as a tool to address everyday challenges in Subsaharan Africa.

Interdisciplinary teams including architects, urban planners, IT experts and artists in 15 African cities create location-based games – playable on mobile phones. The games anticipate our cities’ transformation processes and envision future scenarios: Which challenges for infrastructure, culture and the environment emerge? How can they be experienced and solved in a playful way?

Out of these 15 visions, the teams identify joint topics for Sub-Saharan Africa - and create one analogue African game with a focus on borderlessness and the promotion of African cultures. This process has generated a network of creative, innovative, young professionals across the African continent – the Enter Africa Community. Together, we use games and game thinking to realize our visions for Africa’s future.

Enter Africa is a project by the Goethe-Institut. It involves many partners – game design and gamification experts from Ethiopia and Germany as well as organizations from different African countries.

During the process of Enter Africa a lot of stories were created and born: personal ones and the stories of the locations based games and the megagame. We would like to tell these stories during our stage presentation, answer your questions, get in touch with you and get your feedback!

Mélodie Mousset, contemporary artist and creator of HanaHana (nominated at Amaze 2019) will share the surreal story that led her to VR and to the creation of pieces exhibited at the festival.  Back in 2012, the artist used medical imagery to obtain digital and physical copies of her internal organs which she carried in her suitcase, across the Atlantic, on board a cargo container. In Mexico, after several shamanic reimbodiement  attempts, she finally decided to engulf in the cave system of Masateca s’ magic mountain. This, also leaded to her first VR introspective piece called « We were looking for ourselves in each others (Organ Island). « Meeting my heart, brain and liver  in a desert island and stepping into them for real was a powerful experience »….

The storytelling-performance will develop perspective on how art and technology can fabricate or transform individual or collective fiction.

What is the role of publishers for indie game companies? When is a right time to contact them? What do they expect? What are they looking for? Come to this session to find out!

Hyper Talks are short and fun 5 minute knowledge-injections. Ten speakers will talk about projects, experiences, failures and sources of inspiration in their work. The Hyper Talks are a platform for both established artists as well as upcoming talents: some of the past hyper speakers ended up being winners of the A MAZE. Awards. The session is hosted by Mascha Camino.

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Delphine Fourneau: Work Art & Hobbies
Welp, my work and hobbies are the same.

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Jessica Palmer: Observing Humanity thru the Lens of The Sims™
Contemplating the game mechanics of the worlds most popular life simulation franchise, The Sims, and thinking about real life for a second.

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[Note: Due to unforeseen circumstances, the talk with lowpolis is cancelled]

lowpolis: Universal Gifts and what we choose to share
Overview of the user-created content from a game about exchanging gifts in the form of postcards.

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Marina Díez: Selfcare in digital environments
It's possible to design digital environments that help to escape from reality in situations of stress and anxiety? In this talk, we'll speak about tiny self-care games and design for helping people in trouble.

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Naddya Adhiambo Oluoch-Olunya: Randa Randa: Nairobi as a Playground
As Nairobians, we feel every day that our city was designed for our labour, not our leisure. ‘Randa Randa’ is an AR game which seeks to harness the power of play as a healing force for it’s inhabitants. The talk will explore the current concept.

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Nomi: Playtest with Dogs (actually, I only know my dog’s case and he’s the only dog I’ve ever lived with)
I’m gonna talk about figuring out whether the games or toys that you or someone else designed to play with man’s best friend is actually playable and enjoyable for both you and your wet-nosed mateys.

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Pietro Righi Riva: The law of the instrument – A need for game creation tools that can tackle the human condition
Lots of accessible, designer-focused game making tools out there. Some are even made for "narrative" games! And yet, not one tool encourages a creative workflow that starts form the dramaturgy of the places and the characters that inhabit them. It's way too hard to prototype anything that is not a jumping cube with a speech bubble attached to it, or anything more complex than a basic branching text adventure. Here are some ideas for a tool to create games about humans doing human things.

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Rohun Ranjith: Producing masters of none
A short rant about the problems of the game education system in a developing country
(It is not all about the problems but some solutions)

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Troy Duguid: Render Dysphoria
???

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Zuz Buchowska: Fuck Fun: how to be sad and feel good about it
In this poetic rant I will (over)share some of my saddest experiences with games that were much more fun than having fun.

This talk will provide you with information on new funding programs that are especially aimed at independent developers from Germany. We will introduce and walk you through the „Kreativ-Transfer“ program. It partially funds your travel expenses and fees to European and international trade fares and conventions, like gamescom, PAX and any event that helps you gain exposure for your game and company, expands your network to industry partners, publishers, investors, press, influencers and your community. After the talk you should have all the info to apply for the program – the deadline is of the first application round is on April, 26th. To round the session up there will be an update on the German national games fund starting in 2019. The talk is followed by a Q&A session.

A conversation about queer games and their history, moderated by Allan Cudicio, in the context of the exhibition RAINBOW ARCADE – A queer history of video games 1985-2018, running at the Schwules Museum until May 13, 2019. Make sure to visit it while you're in Berlin!

Jörg Friedrich is the cofounder of Paintbucket Games, currently working on Through the Darkest of Times.

Vít Šisler is part of the team behind Attentat 1942 (winner of Most Amazing Game Award 2018) and its upcoming sequel, Svoboda 1945.

Both games deal with delicate historical moments. During the course of this session, the two artists will present their projects, compare approaches, and discuss the role of authenticity in their work.

This is a talk about the "stream of consciousness". I will examine how I used this literary method to design a narrative technique focusing on creativity and prototyping. In doing this, I will also open up about the ups and downs while working on my personal projects.

During her talk “Tactical Embodiment,” artist and activist Angela Washko will present several different strategies for performing, participating in and transforming online environments that are especially hostile toward women. She will introduce her long-term performative intervention “The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft” alongside several interventions, interviews, performances, written works and video games works she has created with the manosphere and online men’s seduction communities. In addition to walking the audience through her research, Washko will screen excerpts from her interview with a seduction coach who has been dubbed “The Web’s Most Infamous Misogynist” and highlight instructional DVDs, books, and hidden-camera videos created by a community of pick-up artists who teach men how to interact with and seduce women. The talk will close with an audience-participation based performative play-through of her most recent project “The Game: The Game,” a dating simulator video game presenting the practices of several infamous pick-up artists.

“The Game: The Game” is a video game presenting the practices of several prominent seduction coaches (aka pick-up artists) through the format of a dating simulator. In the game these pick-up gurus attempt to seduce the player using their signature techniques taken verbatim from their instructional books and video materials. The game sets up the opportunity for players to explore the complexity of the construction of social behaviors around dating as well as the experience of being a femme-presenting individual navigating this complicated terrain.

Since Dec. 2016, a tiny developer group Project.99 in South Korea is making weird games every month. In this talk I’ll introduce the short history of the project and share some experiences like why we started this, why we're doing it, and what has changed as time went on.

A session about getting to know South Africa and games in South Africa in a fun and chaotic way. *Spoiler: relevant words will be put into a bowl, randomly drawn and explained.

The A MAZE. masterclass is a 1 hour long in-depth conversations focusing on the work of a veteran of the game scene.

Peter Lee cofounded with Eric Zimmerman gameLab, a game development studio known for one of the most popular casual games of its time, "Diner Dash". He co­founded a big game festival "Come Out & Play" in 2006 with Greg Trefry and three other game designers. He also helped start Institute of Play, a non-­profit organization that designed a game like school Quest To Learn. After twenty years in NYC, he moved back to Seoul in 2011, started the big game design studio Nolgong. Korea and Germany as a main hub, he is working all around world. One of his big game project based on Classic literature “Being Faust - Enter Mephisto” (in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Korea) was launched in fall 2014 and has been traveling around the world since then. In 2019 WALLPECKERS- from the DMZ to the Berlin Wall has launched in Seoul and Berlin, a game experience connecting 70 years history of division and unification on two cities.

Elise Terranova is a designer and artist who creates work that unites site, purpose and vision.  Her work has spanned many disciplines including public art, live art, set design, interior architecture, interactive design, game design and site specific installation. Elise also has a Master of Science – Game Design from IT University Copenhagen and during the works as a game designer at Wooga. She also interviews people working in the games industry for the podcast Life and Dev.

For a lot of people, shaders seem like this impossible to understand thing that makes games pretty. In this talk I want to tell you how I got into shaders, what shaders can do and maybe take away a bit of your fear of writing your own shaders.

South African performance artist, researcher, runner and bad singer will talk about her artistic practice in line with ideas surrounding play, reimagining failure and learning. She asks if playing the game in sport is not only about winning, what new role can sport play in the world today and how can the performing arts be used as a tool to investigate this?

If future humans (or post-humans) ever live in completely virtual worlds, what would their lives look like? The VR project False Mirror attempts to answer this by simply beginning to construct those worlds. False Mirror is a new and ongoing research project expanding floor after floor to create an infinite virtual city.

The result is a unique experience that uses speculative design to imagine possible futures. False Mirror is a vibrant and boundless virtual city that’s continually growing and reshaping itself. This is no faithful representation of an existing place, but it’s also not completely disconnected from our reality. It’s an extension of our own world, in which the virtual sometimes turns out to be material after all.

This city is built to be used as a foundation for the practice-led research to imagine possible future lives through virtuality.

During this Live Lecture from VR, Ali logs in through his Virtual Identity and Body to False Mirror. Further on, goes deeper to few of the innerspaces inside the city to play and perform with various speculations and aspects of this alternate virtual life. The audience will get a glimpse of the extents in which speculative futures can be imagined and practiced through VR. trying to overpass VR's the 'need to experience', and rather share concepts and questions that emerges from virtual world-building.

What were the benefits of working with a band? Whats the point in jamming compared to composing? Whats the point??!!
In this talk composer and sound designer Niilo Takalainen will try and answer these questions as he goes through different phases of music production for Noita.

This talk will be about macdows 95's development story, how it started and how it will end.

Aleksandra Jarosz and Florencia Rumpel Rodriguez are two artists who, during the course of the past year, have used games to comment on the restrictive abortion laws of their countries – Poland and Argentina.

In this session, they will present their projects, before engaging in a conversation to compare their experiences, approaches and outcomes.

About the projects:

• Fantastic Fetus is a pregnancy simulator inspired by the Black Protest movement in Poland. The game is nominated for the 2019 A MAZE. / Awards and will be available to play during the course of the festival.
  
  
• Doom Fetito, or “Little Fetus Doom,” is a Doom mod created during the Anti-Fascist Game Jam in 2018, representing the fight of Argentinian pro-choice women against the anti-abortion rights groups.

Every day we are exposed to advertising posters, political campaigns and logos in urban space. How can we use augmented reality to comment on actions taking place in public space? How can we overwrite messages/statements found at the streets of our cities? What possibilities does AR offer to reveal, subliminally undermine or deconstruct the economic and political mechanisms that transform public space into an exclusive resource for productivity? How can AR make us from mere receivers to senders of messages, from consumers to designers?

We will discuss these and other questions with our guests on the panel. Further we will feature a selection of works of the recently established activistic collective meta tag from Zurich.

The panel is initiated and curated by the Subject Area in Game Design in collaboration with the students of the 4th semester's interdisciplinary bachelor design module of Zurich University of the Arts.

How can we create worlds that we explore but do not fully understand? This talk discusses WORLD4, a multi-view exploration game where players navigate a layered abstract world, and presents ways of thinking about spatial ambiguity to compel curious exploration.

Note: due to unforeseen circumstances the talk is cancelled.

An introduction to the outsourcing history of game development in the Philippines and the struggles of finding our own voice amidst political turmoil.

This panel will provide an overview of different groundbreaking projects and creators using technology to push the boundaries of traditional disciplines such as theatre, opera and ballet.

This is a talk about how the shitty, recognizably robotic speech-to-text “voice” is an important artistic aesthetic that should be preserved, even as speech synthesis technology advances (see GLaDOS, Cortana, etc). When the AI voices in our everyday life sound indistinguishable from human voices, what does it actually mean to be human?

When playing video games we are often looking at first for the challenges, the escape through immersive stories, the role play through avatars, the fun etc… When artists use video games as their medium, they disturb it all. Sickhouse and The Overkill festival are trying to use these specific aspect of gaming and the technologies that enable them, as mediums of reflection. Through critical and playful researches, focusing on relevant themes, we confront contemporary societal issues with games; as much for their topics than the technical processes, the consoles, the gameplays, the vocabulary etc..

Interdisciplinarity is an evidence in the gaming industry, sometimes less of an evidence in art or music. With our work we are trying to push interdisciplinarity to a place of collaboration and confrontation, using each others knowledges and interest to deepen our understanding (or questioning) of the world. Working as a multidisciplinary platform, from art to movies, music to philosophy and science, our research is based on what the games give us and we explore notions as diverse as control, independence, wandering, immortality….

As an intersection between media and technology, video-games are increasingly becoming part of the mainstream. Just as in films and books, LGBT diversity in video-games is turning from a nice conversation to a wider debate. How has game development dealt with queer characters and themes in the past? How are things changing?

Note: due to health reasons, the talk is cancelled.

In this talk, Grace will be discussing the easy parts and the difficult parts of developing of The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game. Specifically, she’ll be talking about the expectations placed on small teams and how periphery work and stresses impacted how the game was made. She’ll also be elaborating on the controversial statement that “games are easy to make, actually” in an attempt to stop people being mad at her.

There's a good chance you're missing out on your game's full potential.

Most people understand the impact that music can have on players, but did you know that there's an excellent way of giving your game world a unique sonic personality?

Let me take you on a fun ride through easily the most playful and fun occupation in audio – Foley, the incredibly fascinating craft of bringing stories to life by manipulating everyday objects.

Join me and my favourite objects for a show and tell, where we set the soundscape for a slice of German Video Game Awards nominee Unforeseen Incidents, performed with only Foley and voice.

Jenny Jiao Hsia is known for making small, personal games about her daily routine like doing yoga, putting on makeup, and thinking about food. Right now, Jenny is working on her most ambitious project yet. She is collaborating with AP Thomson on a game called Consume Me. Consume Me is a competitive game about dieting where the opposing team is yourself. The game draws from Jenny’s personal experience from high school. In this talk, Jenny will overshare her entire process for storyboarding and designing narrative interstitials in Consume Me.