“To thine own self be true” read the inscription above the stage of the humanist community venue of Conway Hall in Holborn – an appropriate epitaph for an era where user-generated content and the collaborative nature of web 2.0 is pervading computer game technologies, and new forms of playfulness emerge from the fusion of game play with toys, theatre, web and movement – as explored at this one day event as part of London Games Festival games fringe week.

Organised by my fellow conspirators Pixel-Lab from Derby, This is Playful was a very chilled out laid back event full of interesting talking and stuff followed by a few light ales, and generally a good sense of community. A lot of the technicalities went over my bear-like-brain-when-it-comes-to-games, but a few talks stood out:

Chris Delay from Introversion talked about building high production values in graphics from a micro-indie’s budget using procedural generation – that is using patterns of nature in a generative progam to produce patterns – like tree branches spreading outwards, or even city scapes spawning more and more detailed roads. This can be split into everything – even building floors and windows on buildings, producing exterior textures, or internal building scapes to produce desks, computers and objects. This cuts out the handmade time of game artists, and would seem to be the future of much CGI and games generation in the increasingly expensive era when users demand higher-level graphics.

Kars Alfink from Leapfrog in Utrecht – the Netherlands’ epicentre of game design – talked about playing with form using the example of the Z-Boys from the film Lords of Dogtown, who formed what became now skateboarding technique from experimenting with their surroundings of disused swimming-pools. Now skate parks take the form of extreme hollowed-out bowls that were originally just the functional spaces available.

We consume media but we use tools – so game media is about creating tools for functional uses. Habbo Hotel, the virtual world for children, has very ‘underspecified’ tools – like rooms where children play at ‘horses’ – despite the fact that it’s not a stable and there are no horse-specific objects there – rather like kids will play at anything with a few limited props in the ‘sandbox’ of a garden or playroom.

Tom Armitage from Headshift talked about the Obama 08 campaign manager software for iPhone, and how you could rate your performance as a campaigner against others – a multiplayer game (of sorts). Everything is now a multiplayer environment – enabled by web 2.0 thinking and technologies. We all have ‘rings’ between us, our closest allies, friends of friends then everyone else; social media platforms ape this – e.g. email/SMS/IM for close contact, Facebook next, MySpace for the semi-unwashed and open spaces for everyone else.  Yet social networks are not merely spaces, they consist of people who are connected by a shared object or interest – like World of Warcraft for gamers or Flickr for photo lovers.

Armitage believes multi-player can take the form of differing contexts – not just MMO or simultaneous multi-player forms but a “super context” – shared information and shared fun asyncronously, in close but not necessarily simultaneous timespans – like sending links and sharing comments on Facebook or by email.  This also gives you more to talk about AFTER the event.

Eric Zimmerman from GameLab spoke about games being about rules and maths.  The play is the free movement within rigid structures – be that skateboarders in swimming pools or playing within the mathematical rules of the game. Gamestar Mechanic is his new venture allowing users to create their own user-generated online game to share and play with others, an interesting combination of web 2.0 and game technologies.

Lots of other interesting bits and bobs including a very interesting presentation on realism and expression in high-end games design from Jolyon Webb from Blitz Games using the example of how getting it right with teeth affects how you feel and interactive with the characters, and a very silly Singing Sock Puppet linking up Last.fm with, er, a sock puppet.  A fun end to the week.