Event: Playful 2009

One of last year’s best conferences I went to was Playful 2008 (see my blog post about it); it was an interesting day with a fun collection of speakers from different fields, all talking about game design (without necessarily being game designers or working within games). It was great to hear that this year they would hold another event, and the lineup of speakers is again pretty amazing.

Here is Playful’s description of what their event is all about:

Playful is a one-day event all about games and play – in all their manifestations, throughout the contemporary media landscape. It’s a conference for architects, artists, designers, developers, geeks, gurus, gamers, tinkerers, thinkerers, bloggers, joggers, and philosophers. We look at what PLAY means both creatively and culturally, and put speakers on the stage who offer different perspectives on where we are currently, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. We want people walking away talking about the nature of games…what they mean to different people inside, on the periphery, outside or miles away from the industry.

Check out their programme to see the full list of speakers that will be there. I know all the talks will most probably be great, but in particular I myself am looking forward to a couple of the speakers: Robin Burkinshaw, who is behind the blog Alice and Kev (an experiment in The Sims 3 with two homeless sims), Simon Oliver, the founder of indie games studio HandCircus, creators of the Rolando series for the iPhone, and Roo Reynolds, because his talk from last year was awesome!

There are still a couple of tickets available on the Playful evenbrite page for only £40. That’s a bargain compared to most conferences! But be quick: tickets are limited, and I have no doubt that these will be snapped up before you know it.

So, see you all at Playful?