EVENT, GALLERY TALK
IndieCade East 2015 (Day Three)
Ongoing
Throughout the weekend, IndieCade East attendees may visit the Game Showcase, featuring more than 30 playable games, including IndieCade 2014 award-winners; the e-Sports showcase and exhibitor showcases noted below; while also exploring the Museum’s other galleries. ICE also features Show & Tell presentations by emerging game makers (Saturday and Sunday). (Links to purchase passes are at the bottom of this page.)
Conference Schedule (for Sunday, February 15)
Love & Rejection & Brunch
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Redstone Theater)
The curators of “Love & Rejection” and “Horizons” at IndieCade East take a critical look at this year’s games, examining how they leverage the power of the medium to model and create human experiences. Jason Eppink is the Associate Curator of Digital Media at the Museum of the Moving Image. Celia Pearce is co-founder and Festival Chair for IndieCade. Toni Pizza is an independent developer and recent graduate of the NYU Game Center’s MFA program. Jamey C. Shafer is a filmmaker and game designer who works primarily in transmedia.
Workshop: Academic Game Programs Panel
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Fox Amphitheater)
Leaders from the nation’s top academic games programs discuss the impact that games programs are having on the games industry, the necessity of degrees, the benefits and opportunities they provide, and the future for academic degrees in games. With Roger Altizer, Ramiro Corbetta, Sari Gilbert (Savannah College of Art and Design), Nick Fortugno (Parsons The New School of Design), and Stephen Jacobs, moderated by Jeremy Gibson Bond.
Workshop: IndieHack: Making Facebook Work for You
12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. (Fox Amphitheater)
Colin Creitz is a former independent developer and current partner engineer on Facebook’s Games team. He reveals how successful independent developers use Facebook to build communities, amplify their voices, and help their players start conversations.
Beyond the Scrabble Word List: Making More Inclusive Word Games
12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Redstone Theater)
Most word games rely on a model of the English language based on an analysis of the frequency of single letters, a model that is intuitive but ultimately unfun. Allison Parish presents new research and advances ideas about how this knowledge can be incorporated into games and play. Parish is a programmer, poet, game designer, and educator. She is the Digital Creative Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University and an adjunct professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program.
Shut Up! Writing Better Dialogue with Fewer Words
1:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. (Redstone Theater)
In narrative-based games, more dialogue rarely means better dialogue. Dave Gilbert shows how simple changes can make a game’s dialogue shorter, punchier, more efficient, and more fun. Gilbert has been making adventure games with Adventure Game Studio engine since 2001 and in 2006 formed Wadjet Eye Games to pursue his passion full time.
Workshop: Marketing and PR Strategies for Indie Game Devs
1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (Fox Amphitheater)
Matt Frary from Maverick Public Relations explains how to get your games noticed, including best practices for establishing a digital footprint and getting press attention, the importance of conferences and events, and key strategies for audience acquisition.
Students to Independent Game Studios: The NYU Game Center Incubator
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Bartos Screening Room)
Dylan McKenzie is a game developer, academic, community organizer, and Program Coordinator of the NYU Game Center. He presents a case study that assesses the results of NYU Game Center’s industry-backed incubator, shares students’ perspectives on transitioning their game design practice from an art school to a commercial context, and evaluates a curriculum designed to empower independent game development.
Workshop: Telling the Story: Voice Acting in Games
2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. (Fox Amphitheater)
Melanie Ehrlich is an actress and voiceover talent with more than 200 voiceover credits, as well as a casting and voice director. She discusses how the quality of voice acting can enhance or detract from a game, and talks about the video game voiceover production process from the point of view of both voiceover talent and casting director.
Environmental Storytelling and Real-Life Escape the Room Games
3:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. (Redstone Theater)
Real–life escape-the-room games—a unique blend of puzzle-solving, teamwork, and creative play—are popping up across the United States. Artist and writer Laura E. Hall discusses this emerging phenomenon and the recently launched 60 Minutes to Escape: Spark of Resistance which emphasizes immersion, theatricality, embedded narrative, and other storytelling techniques.
In Mixed Company: Organizing for Inclusivity, Resisting Privilege, and Collaborating through Power
3:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. (Bartos Screening Room)
Sarah Schoemann is the founder of Different Games Conference and a doctoral student in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Mariam Asad is a PhD student in the Digital Media program at Georgia Tech who focuses on community engagement, design, and the city. They reflect on the experience of organizing the Different Games conference, an annual event on diversity and inclusivity in games where diversity is viewed not as abstract ideal, but an organizing principle yielding concrete, actionable goals.
‘Alternative Art’ – Or: The Answer to the Question, ‘Well, Just Go Make Your Own’
3:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (Bartos Screening Room)
tj thomas is a black artist from Seattle, focusing on pixel art, game development, music, and activism in games communities. He grapples with how to take a “punk” or “rebel” ideology and build something useful and important out of it that is a genuine alternative to a game industry that excludes marginalized people.
Move! Lessons from 10 Years of Playing in the Street
3:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (Redstone Theater)
Greg Trefry co-founded game design studio Gigantic Mechanic, serves as director of the Come Out & Play Festival, and teaches at New York University. He discusses the ten-year history of Come Out & Play, a festival of street games in New York City, highlighting some of the most interesting games, examining what made them effective, and showing how they have influenced other street games and even video games.
Workshop: GameSlam
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (Fox Amphitheater)
Pitch your game at IndieCade with a microphone, a TV monitor, and just 120 seconds. Sign up early at the registration desk to secure your slot. Open to all registrants.
Workshop: Digital Gaming Prototyping
4:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. (Bartos Screening Room)
Jeremy Gibson Bond takes you through the basics of Unity game prototyping in just an hour, focusing on the nuts and bolts of whipping up a simple game prototype.
Keynote: Diversity in Audience, Diversity in Creators
5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (Redstone Theater)
Mary Flanagan is an artist, educator, and designer, author of Critical Play and Values at Play in Digital Games, and founder of Tiltfactor, a game lab created to invent “humanist” games and take on social problems that can be best addressed by games. Flanagan discusses research that shows how players relate to pro-social causes–addressing what influences players to be more open-minded, care about others, and become better people–so designers can think of the wide range of players and makers as one community.
View the complete schedule here.
eSports Showcase
Play new competitive games or cheer along as commentators narrate the exciting action. Tournaments all weekend long will crown champions of the indie videosports of tomorrow.
Show and Tell Lounge
Be the first to see brand new games in development and share your feedback with their creators as you learn about their processes and inspirations. Or sign up to present your own game and put it in front of hundreds of eager players (Saturday and Sunday only).
Exhibitor Showcase
Play new independent titles made for the Sony PlayStation 4, Vita and the Nintendo Wii U; experiment with some of Facebook’s recent releases; try new games coming out of independent studio JunkLatch, Long Island University, and the NYU Game Center.
Order IndieCade East Passes:
Day Pass (Sunday, Feb. 15): $45 ($35 students/seniors/Museum members at the Film Lover level and above)
Full Festival Pass (Friday–Sunday access): $125 ($100 students/seniors/Museum members at the Film Lover level and above)
IndieCade East scheduled talks and workshops have limited capacity and are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Pass holders are not guaranteed admission to all programs.
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