11.00 am

Craig Lindley, University of Gotland, S
Ouroboros - A Massively Multiplayer Game Based Upon Emotional Engagement and Dramatic Interaction
The Ouroboros project is an ongoing project to develop new forms of game play aimed at encouraging deeper emotional engagement within games. Game mechanics are being defined that emphasise emotional interaction, using models of the minds of player characters to create emergent narratives as they interact within a persistent game world. Current research includes extending the principles of the Ouroboros architecture into a pervasive gaming environment.

Matthias Brix, Investment Manager, Dr. Neuhaus Techno Nord, D
Venture Capital and Content Providers - a Special Relation
Introduction to VC financing on the basis of Dr. Neuhaus Techno Nord investments focusing on frequent problems in the communication between financiers and developers.

Vincent Scheurer, Osborne Clarke, UK
Licensing Interactive Rights

Frank Boyd, UK
Pitching as Part of the Development Process

Sibylle Kurz, D
How to Pitch Successfully

Sebastian Belcher, Harbottle & Lewis, UK
Legal Framework for the Production of Interactive Entertainment

3.00 pm –

Sibylle Kurz & Frank Boyd
Hands - On Pitching Training

Neil Richards, Katonah Scripts, UK
Writers - Are they Worth the Effort?
Hollywood learned how to house-train writers - now it can't do without them. So how come you don't meet that many in the games world? Or are things beginning to change...?

Martin Freeth, UK
The Big Wash - experiences while contacting potential buyers

Networking and fmx visit

Matt Brunner, FASA Studio, USA, fmx session
The Secret Role of Animation in Games

Peter Plantec, USA fmx session
Virtual Humans with Character

Networking and fmx visit

Peter and Danielle Plantec, fmx session
How to Create a Killer Reel

Michael Bechinie, Digital Mankind, A
Social Games – when evolutionary psychology meets interactive entertainment
According to our evolutionary history, humans are adapted to a living in social groups. More than 70% of human behaviour is non-verbal and often of unconscious character that ensures the decipherment of "meaning". Thus humans extract all relevant information from their social counterparts and use this information in the communication process. So enabling technologies and novel approaches are required that take the exceptional communicative skills of humans into account to evoke an appealing emotional and interactive user experience with virtual characters. To generate "social contexts" within virtual worlds the concept of "Social Games" will be presented – an approach based on empiric research in human behavior.

Stale Stenslie, N
Symbiotic Interactivity – a productive reflection on perceptual breakdown situations in multi-modal, computer enabled environments
The presentation will present, discuss and demonstrate examples of emerging multi-modal man-machine interfaces. This new approach to interactivity is demonstrated in the EROTOGOD project. The project elaborates on the sensual dimension of aesthetics by connecting advanced computer and interactive technologies to the body as a sensual interface. EROTOGOD's dyna-text (dynamical text) has its origin in the written word, but translates the printed into corporal sensations. The emerging environment is synesthetic, expressed through three dimensional, "liquid" text, 16 channel immersive, real-time audio and a two-way tactile bodysuit.

1. 00 pm

Richard Wages, Nomads Lab / Laboratory of Mixed Realities, D
Non-Linear Scriptwriting - A Graph-Based Authoring Tool for Interactive Scenarios
Nobody would ever try to realise a movie without using a script. For the creation of interactive storyworlds one can still observe a lack of approaches and tools that allow the description of an analogue to the movie script. Basic functionalities of the here presented authoring system are storyboarding, event scripting and logical testing. The storyboard function allows the user to define the overall structure of the story and to attach additional information (images, sound, movies, scribbles etc.), which is relevant for the production process. The logical interdependencies between the development of the story and the participating virtual objects are described by event scripts. The integrated internal story player finally allows for a logical traversing of the story.

Machinima Screenings, fmx session
A selection of the winners of the New York Machinima Festival 2003. Starring: “Red vs. Blue”, “Blood Gulch Chronicles”, as well as the New Yorker “Ill Clan” with a documentation of their live performance in “Larry and Lenny on the Campaign Trail".