A day devoted to cult 1980s video game Elite will be one of the highlights of this year's GameCity festival in Nottingham. The fourth annual games event takes place in the city centre from October 27 to 31.
Organisers will unveil a huge pavilion covering much of Old Market Square to host a series of public gaming events. And one of the days will see a complete origami universe mocked up in honour of Elite, the influential space trading game. Creator Ian Bell will speak at the festival as well as writer Robert Holstock, whose novella The Dark Wheel featured in the original 1984 packaging.
Other highlights of the festival announced at a launch event yesterday include an appearance by Masaya Matsuura, creator of "rhythm video game" PaRappa the Rapper. There will also be a live event featuring science fiction first-person shooter game Crysis and a conference on interactive technology.
The last three years of GameCity have featured record attempts and appearances by leading industry names.
And festival director Iain Simons said organisers wanted to learn from what had gone well in the past.
He said: "The things are the defining part of the festival are open, inclusive and social. Last year we tried to separate gaming events from public events – that was not a very good idea and we have learned from it."
"People from the gaming industry wanted to come and meet people who weren't gamers.
"We are not trying to separate it at all this year, there are going to be a lot of public events."
The GameCity Squared launch event took place at the Council House yesterday.
Hundreds of people took to Old Market Square as part of the event to try and play the biggest ever game of musical statues. But the attempt failed to beat the current world record of 758 set by a London school.
Later a series of gaming events were held at venues including Walkabout and Tonic.
For more information about the festival visit
www.gamecity.org
Source:
thisisnottingham