Angle Jungle was a great project and on completion we wanted to expose our work to the wider community for more feedback and potentially even to explore possibilities of formal assessment of the game actually being effective in its transformational objectives. Therefore we wrote up a paper and submitted it to CHI Play. Fortunately it was accepted and we were invited to present the game. My intention at the conference was then to connect with people who were able to help formally assess Angle Jungle as well as keep an eye out for good connections.

Top Presentations

My top two presentations were definitely:

Diegetic Connectivity – Paper here

Why I loved this was that by the end of the work they had a playable deliverable that made engaging with language an essential part of the experience, not at all like the typical chocolate broccoli that tends to happen. I definitely connected with the speaker and will remain in touch with them.

Bibles and Bioshock – Paper here

Religion is a hot button issue (as usual) and I loved this talk because it opened my mind to the actual academic consideration of religious discussions in video games. Particularly interesting was how it attempted to categorize people into behavior categories.

Other interesting papers I found interesting:

• Those are not the Stories you are Looking For: Using Text Prototypes to Evaluate Game Narratives Early
• Curiously Motivated: Profiling Curiosity with Self-Reports and Behaviour Metrics in the Game “Destiny”
• Beyond Addiction: Positive and Negative Parent Perceptions of Minecraft Play

All papers accepted at conferences main program can be found at the following link:

https://chiplay.acm.org/2017/program/

Day 1

I made my way to conference center which was Pakhuis De Zwijger where I attended the keynote talk.

Ian Bogost opening keynote was regarding how fun arises from the object of interaction rather than the player. It was quite controversial, still a great conversation point.

Day 2

The next day I sat through several talks including one of categorizing behavior in Destiny which I found interesting. I later had a discussion with the speaker about the categorizations in comparison with Bartle’s taxonomy of players.

I later attended the Minecraft talk which was interesting in its presentations of wider concerns around games from parents. One point I found interesting was that if parents are indeed concerned, a valid strategy would be to take part in playing games with their kids, and through active involvement steer them to ‘better’ content and usage habits.

Later in the day I presented Angle Jungle in a 1 minute demo format. Thankfully with Jessica Hammers coaching, and assistance with the presentation slides it went well!

Next I spent the rest of the day conducting a demo, presented the game whilst handing out ETC swag!

Thankfully the reception to Angle Jungle was good, with conference attendees enjoying the experience, and even one judge saying he really liked the game.

Day 3

The talk on mixed method approach of puzzle was interesting but the study require intensive academic study of video footage so as a developer I doubted its usefulness over informal analysis of playtest footage.

One lecture I very much liked was the talk on incorporating language into serious games. The speaker was great and mechanics even more interesting.

Another talk I found interesting was the text prototype talk. Since I am taking Chris Klugs RPG Workshop considering inexpensive methods to test story was quite appealing.

Day 4

On Wednesday we had been told that Angle Jungle was an award winner. So I woke up early prepared to demo the game again, and attended the award ceremony in the morning.

The rest of the day was demoing Angle Jungle again. I met a bunch of super cool people. John Habgood the creator of Zombie Division. Such a really cool guy, he liked Angle Jungle and wanted to stay in touch to hear about the game. Additionally I had a nearly two hour long chat with a bunch of PHD’s and Josh Tanenbaum – so cool! He had such interesting views on AR and 3D printing.

Finally I attended the closing talk. Quite interesting given the context of my conversation with Josh, as it was about what game makers have right about crafting experiences.

Conclusion

Overall an awesome conference, I very much enjoyed both my time inside and outside the conference, particularly meeting some really cool people. Attending some great talks and finally winning an award which has opened up new possibilities for Angle Jungle! Additionally the conference was insightful into what life would look like if I pursued an academic path in the line of games.