PLAY17 - Creative Gaming Festival 2017

The 10th edition of the International Creative Gaming Festival will take place from November 1st to 5th in Hamburg

Hamburg, August 03, 2017. “The Time is Now!” Under this motto the Initiative Creative Gaming e.V. in cooperation with the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung and JIZ – Jugendinformationszentrum Hamburg is staging PLAY17 from November 1st to 5th in Hamburg: Five days to look back into the past and forward into the future of Gaming – and incidentally to reflect on its own 10-year anniversary.

Since its inception the PLAY – Creative Gaming Festival has had as its mission bringing the areas of media art, discourse and education together with the digital gaming culture and producing a balanced, informative, creative and entertaining framework for the attendees. Above all PLAY17 invites participants to invent, build, tinker, modify, program, dance and discuss. We anticipate over 8,000 visitors from educational and cultural institutions and the Games sector in Germany and Europe to visit the three established Games venues in the heart of Hamburg.

“The creative debate on computer and video games in the social, political, cultural and educational establishment is more relevant than ever”, so Andreas Hedrich of the PLAY17 Festival management team. “Now is the right time for a festival like PLAY that, far removed from economic considerations, focuses on all facets of gaming.”

This year PLAY17 will offer its public more than 120 program events from over 100 visiting specialists and speakers – and of course, many, many games. Visitors will be able to experiment and test out new and especially creative computer and video games on the spot. In talks and impulse presentations, the key questions concerned with the interaction of Time and Games will be explored: How has gaming culture and its role in society changed over time? How are actual contemporary historical events represented in digital games? How do time and time mechanisms influence game design and story telling? The Festival program and evening events will be announced on http://www.playfestival.de bit by bit over the next weeks up to the start of the Festival. Tickets for PLAY17 will also be available in the coming weeks on the official website.

“The Creative Gaming Festival takes the importance of the medium seriously and requires of the attendees creative treatment and critical discussion of digital games.” So the statement of Thomas Krüger, president of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, once again this year a cooperation partner and supporter of PLAY17.

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