Events
April 2, I’m on a session at the London Games Festival interactive narrative summit about whether AI can tell stories. (Preview: the answer is “it depends what you mean by that.” But we can definitely get more into it.)
April 4, the Spring Thing interactive fiction festival opens and games become available to play.
April 4-6, the Playful By Design Spring Symposium at the University of Urbana-Champaign features Chris Klimas speaking about Twine, alongside Allen Turner and Stuart Moulthrop.
April 6, the Oxford/London IF Meetup hears from Tom Kail (inkle) and Xalavier Nelson Jr (freelance) about game design considerations in IF and narrative games.
Also on April 6, the SF/Bay Area IF Meetup will be playing through games from the 2019 Spring Thing competition.
April 13, I’m speaking at the British Library in the Off the Page Chapter 2 event; I’ll be talking about Endure, Blood and Laurels, and Galatea, as work drawing on classical poetry, myth, and literature.
April 15 is the late deadline for designers to submit their work to Indiecade Festival. The event itself is in October in Santa Monica, CA.
April 16 is the release date for Heaven’s Vault, the massive new game from inkle. The archaeological science fiction game has been in development for four years. A video preview is online, as is a review from Eurogamer (as well as several others).
April 27 is the next Baltimore/DC Area IF meetup, discussing Castle, Forest, Island, Sea, as well as Cragne Manor.
The 2nd International Summer School on AI and Games will be held in New York City, May 27-31. The event is organized by Georgios N. Yannakakis and Julian Togelius, who wrote the Artificial Intelligence and Games book. More info can be found at the site.
The Oxford/London IF Meetup has an excellent program in process for the weekend of June 8, interactive audio experiences for phones, smart speakers, and similar devices. Saturday, we’re going to be hearing about craft, tools, and commercial considerations, with a couple of speakers coming from out of town. Then Sunday we have a workshop on using Spirit AI’s Character Engine for natural language interactions.
Narrascope is set for June 14-16 in Boston, MA. This is a new games conference that will support interactive narrative, adventure games, and interactive fiction by bringing together writers, developers, and players. More information can be found on NarraScope’s home site.
ICCC 2019 takes place on June 17-21 in Charlotte, NC. The event is in its tenth year and is organized by the Association for Computational Creativity.
Announcements and Crowdfunding
Hugor is an interpreter that allows you to play Hugo games, and there is now a new release available.
Cyan is Kickstarting a new game called Firmament, and Andrew Plotkin has some thoughts about the project.
Articles, Links, & Podcasts
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 