London Games Festival

The London Games Festival is an annual video gaming festival for both consumers and trade specialists. Many changes to the structure and management of the Festival have taken place since last year, making it easier to get involved and offering more PR and consumer-focused opportunities to participants.

Key targets for the Festival are to create positive engaging events across the capital, to encourage mainstream media attention, stimulate consumer discussion and aid businesses.

The Festival programme will include a series of diverse events from the world of interactive entertainment. Video games publishers, developers, partners, personalities, trade organisations, media organisations and individuals will all be involved in the week-long celebrations. The LGF will provide the industry with the opportunity to showcase creativity and artistry, from script-writers to animators, musicians to programmers. To put games industry careers at the top of wish-lists and to celebrate players in an inclusive way that embraces all demographics.

The Festival also aims to enhance perception of interactive entertainment and the industry by engaging with existing institutional advocates (BAFTA, ELSPA, DfES, DCMS, BBFC, DTI, LDA) and illustrating compelling and positive research while promoting future vision and horizons of the games industry.

Alongside the week of media and/or consumer-facing events will be a number of B2B events organised by the industry’s trade bodies and other organisations.

The festival is also complimented by a Fringe, an offshoot of the more mainstream and commercially focused Festival, with an abundance of interesting and diverse events for games and non-gamers alike. Highlights in 2007 included:

The Soho Project, that offered players a chance to take part in a mass ‘reality game’ on the streets of Soho, via the website [cite web|url = http://www.fictionalmedia.co.uk |title = Fictional Media : The Soho Project |accessdate = 2008-06-27]

Games AV - a live concert, screening and club night features musicians, DJs, VJs, film-makers, animators and digital artists whose work has been shaped by video games culture.

Sense of Play 07 was a one-day symposium which looked at the future of game design featuring some of the most inspiring voices working in the industry today. Produced by Toby Barnes and Jon Weinbren the event in 2008 will look at how other creative disciplines are working with and around the games industry. [cite web|url = http://www.senseofplay.com |title = senseofplay.com |accessdate = 2008-06-27]

Skills Week. A week long series of seminars aimed at new entrants to the industry, students and people who are keen to break into the games industry

A drop-in Lounge at 01zero-one in Soho was open to all festival attendees, where you could hang out with the people behind the games, absorb the buzz of the festival, and enjoy the the ZeroGamer exhibition which featured “…games that play themselves, video documents of in-game performance, game engine experiments and challenging documentaries on gameplay.”

Full details of these and other events can be found at [http://www.londongamesfringe.com London Games Fringe] and [http://www.londongamesfestival.co.uk London Games Festival 2008] .

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