As previously noted, the ninth GameCamp event took place earlier this month at LSBU in South London.
I was invited onto the GameCamp committee this year, so for the first time got to see the whole process of how the event is organised. I’m massively grateful to all the organisers for the time and effort they volunteer to make the event go smoothly.
Around 200 people attended, and there was a good variety of talks / discussions and playtests going on throughout the day.
Every year attendees are given a ‘free gift’, usually accompanied by rules for a suggested game. For the first time this year, the freebie was an original game designed for the show – ‘Coaster Clash’, a set of five unique beermats depicting five characters that could face off in rock-paper-scissors-Spock-lizard fashion. (There are quite a few of these left over, so look out for them turning up in the Loading Bar and similar venues in the coming weeks.)
Here’s a rundown of the talks I attended – I was rushing around a bit more than usual this year and managed to drop in on a few others as well.
1010ish – Traditional opening address by James Wallis, explaining just what the hell is going on.
1030 – A discussion on adventure game conversation mechanics – I didn’t catch who ran this, but it was a great way to start the event, and encouraged lots of people to participate.
1100 – How you’d go about build Westworld in real life / How games can approach comedy (two separate discussions)
1130 – Pyrodactyl indie developer company post mortem
1200 – Telling stories in card games / There was also a discussion of working with different platforms to get a game published in this timeslot which I’m told was also very good.
1230 – Lunch. LSBU still require the event to use their in-house catering, to the dissatisfaction of everybody involved. And such large portions.
1330 – “Starting a game company” – I don’t know who was running this, but the bit I sat in on was more “how to pitch to investors”. Seemed to go well though.
1400 – A highly informative, quite technical talk on tools (Lua, React Native, Elm, Swift, etc.) that let you develop and deploy games very quickly by James Porter
1430 – Dr. David King led a discussion on dexterity in board (and card games), which it turns out is quite a tricky thing to implement, with various skill and accessibility considerations.
1500 – A joint Q&A / interview between Alan Hazelden (Cosmic Express et al) and Claire “Minkette” Bateman (Oubliette Room Escape et al)
1530 – I gave a rambling ‘travelogue’-ish talk about No Man’s Sky, on the basis that a lot of people who dropped out after the initial launch last year (or were put off by the negative press) were unaware of all the cool stuff that Hello Games have added to the game in the subsequent Foundation and Path Finder updates. I think I managed to persuade some people to have another look, and in turn I learned that the way the deformable terrain works means that the game is unlikely to ever support realtime multiplayer.
1600 – A beta version of Ste Curran‘s latest talk, given this year at Nordic Game. The contents are top secret.
As ever the day concluded in The Ship pub down the road, which we found has some uniquely terrible charity shop board games.
Thanks to everyone who came – until next year!
Tags: #gamecamp9, coaster clash, event, gamecamp, london, LSBU, No Man's Sky, talks, unconference
