Press report: Let’s get physical: PLAY16 – Creative Gaming Festival

Creative Gaming

Let’s get physical: PLAY16 – Creative Gaming Festival
2nd to 6th November in Hamburg

In November, the city of Hamburg will be a digital playground. For the ninth time, the PLAY festival offers creative and unusual perspectives on digital games for its visitors.

This year’s topic is “Let’s get physical – Game and Body”. Aspects like gender, sexuality and boundaries between game and body will be highlighted and discussed in workshops, impulses and the exhibition. The technical development of virtual reality, as for instance cyberglasses like Oculus Rift, amplifies the experience of games and redefines the role of corperality in games.

At the moment, the program is being planned. During more than 100 various events, the visitors can touch, participate and experience games in different ways in the city center of Hamburg. For example, there will be a curated exhibition about Hamburg’s games culture in cooperation with the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, workshops in the Zentralbibliothek, the PLAY exhibition at the Kunsthaus Hamburg, performances in Gängeviertel and the awarding of the Creative Gaming award in Hamburg’s townhall, to name only a few highlights.

“The Creative Gaming festival is a consistent and important institution concerning  the constructive occupation and critical contention with digital games. The festival is an enrichment for political education, that takes importance of the medium seriously”, says Thomas Krüger, president of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, which is going to be a cooperation partner in 2016 again.
Matthias Kempke, game designer at Daedalic Entertainment, summarizes his impressions from last year’s PLAY: “I think it is incredibly exciting that the whole city is involved at PLAY und that artists, pedagogues, developers, critics, theorists, teacher, students and young people get together in the city and celebrate the culture of digital games.”

Creative Gaming Award

For the second time, the initiative Creative Gaming awards the Creative Gaming award. Developers and artists from Europe are invited to submit their creative and innovative games. Thereby, they attain a chance to not only win the award, but also obtain the possibility to present their work at the PLAY exhibition to a large audience. The fact that the awarding ceremony takes place at the townhall is a naturalness for Carola Veit, President of Hamburg Parliament: “Policy is made in a townhall: a creative process that demands readiness, decision-making abilities, and active interventions. Hence, there are indeed parallels to Creative Gaming – however, politics is no game. So it is obvious to invite gamers into the townhall in order to exchange similarities and differences – and to honor the best ideas.”

 

Playing with games!
That is the motto of the initiative Creative Gaming, that hosts the festival. Since 2007, the initiative Creative Gaming works in the fields of art and education and established itself as a pioneer regarding the employment of media pedagogy and creative employment of computer games.  “PLAY convenes adolescents, students, teacher, scientists, people from the game industry and those who are interested in culture. Together the visitors of every age experience a new perspective on gaming culture and the diverse possibilities that games offer”, explains Festival Director Andreas Hedrich.

Further information:

For further questions and foto inquiries please contact Tina Ziegler:
Tel.: 0174-4440454 or 04521-84899-45
tina.ziegler@creative-gaming.eu / www.PLAY16.net

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