IndieCade 09

IndieCade 2009 will be taking place on October 1-4, 2009 in Culver City, California. Along with game demos, artist talks and workshops there are also conference sessions. IndieCade has announced the first day conference schedule which features great speakers like Brenda Brathwaite, Keita Takahasi and Jenova Chen.

Saturday and Sunday’s schedule will be announced shortly. The Hands-on exhibit is open daily from 10am-7pm. Go to www.indiecade.com to find out all the information.

Here is the first day schedule:

Friday’s Conference Schedule

8am – 9:15am “Creative Conversations” with Greg Wohlwend and Mike Boxleiter at the Grand Casino

Wohlwend and Boxleiter are behind Intuition Games, an Iowa-based independent game collective best known for creating games that are fresh, experimental, meaningful and compelling such as Gray, which is a finalist in IndieCade 2009. In addition the Gray, the company recently released Fig. 8, which allows players to control a bike through a suburban landscape and will soon be launching Liferaft.

9:30am – 10:45am “Emotion and Games” with Daniel Benmergui at Ivy Substation

Benmergui is an experimental game maker from Buenos Aires, Argentina whose Moon Stories is a finalist in IndieCade 2009.

11am – 12:15pm “Challenging Topics” hosted by Hollywood Hill from at Ivy Substation

This panel will feature Brenda Brathwaite, whose game Train is in competition for IndieCade 2009, as well as the Global Conflicts team who will be attending from Denmark for their in-competition game Global Conflicts: Latin America.

11:00am – 12:15pm “Emotional Depth in Game Design” hosted by game designers with games in competition including Akrasia, Dear Esther, Spectre and Aether at Culver Hotel

2:30pm – 3:45pm “Game Creation” hosted by Geoff Zatkin, President and COO of EEDAR (Electronic Entertainment Design and Research) at Ivy Substation

2:30pm – 3:45pm “A Conversation about Expression and Game Literacy” with speakers Henry Jenkins and Janet Murray at Rush Street

Jenkins was the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program who now serves as a Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalist and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Murray is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she is the director of graduate studies in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture. Murray is also well known as an early developer of humanities computing applications.

4:00pm – 5:30pm A keynote “A Conversation about Expression in Games” with Keita Takahashi and Jenova Chen moderated by Robin Hunicke

Takahashi is best known for his notable work on Katamari Damacy and its sequel We Love Katamari, which were lauded for their quirkiness, simplicity and charm. Chen is the designer of the award-winning games Cloud, Flow and Flower, and is also the co-founder and Creative Director of thatgamecompany.

5:30pm – 6:30pm The festival will be presenting Copenhagen Game Collective’s Collectible Business Card Game for Happy Hour at the Culver Hotel

7:00pm – 10:00pm The evening will end with the Awards Ceremony at Sony Pictures Entertainment Plaza where awards will be bestowed on games for Aesthetics, Gameplay Innovation, Fun/Compelling, Sublime Experience, Technical Innovation, World/Story, Jury Award/Best in Show, Finalist Choice and Audience Choice