OpenGameCity

Nottingham, 25/8/10 – GameCity, the World’s best-loved* videogames festival, today launched OpenGameCity, a first step toward the transparency, democratisation and ongoing development of the GameCity festival platform.

OpenGameCity is a set of tools and specifications that allow developers, publishers, students, cake-decorators, dog-handlers and other specialist practitioners and amateur enthusiasts a clearer way to interact with, participate in and importantly build and extend the GameCity festival platform.

GameCity reaches its fifth anniversary this year and has grown substantially in scale since it modestly began in 2006. For the 2010 festival, the festival family are seeking to create new ways in which it can be of value to people who want to get involved.

GameCity is about celebrating and exploring videogame culture, and as such, OpenGameCity invites ideas from anyone with something to contribute, not just game developers.

"We're really excited to be able to release version 0.6b of the Draft festival spec and can't wait to get people's responses to it. This is a real change to how we develop and think about the festival, and we're looking forward to discovering how it will be changed and extended by the people that care about it", said festival Director Iain Simons.

As well as providing a platform for content creators, OpenGameCity also invites the active participation of venues and other locations around the city - extending the footprint of the festival and developing the leisure economy of Nottingham City Centre.

Iain goes on some more, "The 'city' part of our title has always been as important as the 'game' to us. We're hugely excited to be able to explore ways in which videogame culture can really participate in the life of a city, the Takahashi playground project being our first effort towards that."

GameCity5 will run from October 26-30th in a wide number of venues throughout Nottingham. OpenGameCity details are available at www.gamecity.org .

*subject to validation.

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NOTES TO EDITOR

The OpenGameCity submission page will not be live before 27/08/10, so please do not post any announcements before then.

Follow all the latest GameCity news on our website, www.gamecity.org

Get the latest updates on our Twitter page, www.twitter.com/gamecity

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*GameCityNights is a series of after-dark monthly events that brings together developers, students and players in a celebration and exploration of videogame culture - with prizes. Every month a brilliant headline speaker will be making their way to Nottingham to share their thoughts, passions and give a unique insight into their work.

GameCity is what a videogame festival should be.

The Centre for Contemporary Play is a research centre based at Nottingham Trent University which pioneers innovative thinking through new partnerships. Since 2008 it has worked with a variety of leading organisations from the commercial and public sector to deliver major research and inclusion projects. These include the ITAG conference, the GameCity videogame festival and the National Videogame Archive - a unique collaboration with the National Media Museum.

Driven by leading thinking at NTU, the Centre for Contemporary Play continues to create radical and innovative projects in the academic and public engagement space.

Gamecity’s aim is to bring together developers and the public to explore and celebrate videogames and videogames culture, with a particular focus on students. We attract the best speakers in the world, offer up-and-coming artists and developers a platform for their games and create totally unique events.

Some of GameCity’s greatest hits include a world-record breaking zombie gathering, Keita Takahashi designing a children’s playground and Masaya Matsuura, Lorne Lanning, Alexey Pajitnov and Media Molecule having headlined.

We’ve worked alongside some of the most prominent names in gaming, including; Warner Bros, TTGames, Crytek, Activision, Namco Bandai, SCEE, Xbox, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Freestyle Games, David Braben, Media Molecule, Splash Damage, Harmonix, Rare, Denki, Monumental Games, Midway, Zoe Mode, ThatGameCompany, Nana-on-Sha and lots more.

Going way beyond just playing games, GameCity offers other new ways for people to interact with videogame culture. Art exhibitions, director commentaries, playground building, live recreations of videogames, gigs, gong-shows, three World Records, arcade trails, club nights – nothing is off limits for this most radical of videogame festivals.

Don’t just take our word for it, see what others have said after working with us,

GameCity looks poised to become our industry’s ?rst Sundance. A truly unique approach for hosting a game festival that seems long overdue.

Lorne Lanning, Oddworld Inhabitants

GameCity is unique. Any games festival that can reunite industry legends, lead to a Japanese game developer designing a playground, and evoke religious sentiments in a shopping centre is doing something very right for sure.

Edge Magazine

The year’s most inventively programmed new arts festival

The Times