Animex 2015 (part 1)

Woohoo! Man, I love Animex, it’s a proper gaming holiday. And it was jammed packed with awesome Game Dev, Animation Talks, Indie Games and social networking (three late nights!).

In celebration of the first Animex Indie and to continue it’s monthly meetup, GameBridge formulated a proper gaming social event filled with some great games and a cheeky beer!

It was really cool to chat to the students and professionals alike (even getting a solid 90 mins discussion about Runescape in there!)

Animal Game started on the Thursday and kicked off with a Super inspiration talk from Ken Wong (Ustwogames) posing the discussion “Rethinking Game Design for the post gamer era”. His talk referenced Monument Valley (which just got 5 BAFTA nominations!) and then he continued to analyse what the current gamer goes for.

He argued that Monument Valley resonated with an unexpected audience (usually the sign of a great game) but then continued to suggest that “video games” is an inappropriate definition for the modern gaming era and that games are now “Digital Interactive Experiences”. “A video game is the players entire experience, not just the mechanics” from which it is derived.

There was so much I agreed with, including several excellent thoughts:

“Question the narrative”
“Don’t be content with junk food”
“Be a band that releases albums, not a company that creates products”
“Create value for the gamer”

There was so much to take from Ken’s talk, it really was an amazing start to the festival

More to follow…