IUI’s MARLA museum continues to preserve games and game media. Join us to learn how the preservation process has been developing and discuss the challenge of preserving games in the current climate.
Description:
MARLA is IU’s only game preservation lab with IU Museum status. We have spent the last several years attempting to become the preeminent space where faculty, staff, and students preserve games of all types for future examination and scholarly study. This “third space” is fun, and quirky where multiple serious techniques of preservation are studied/practiced to ensure a long life for the artifacts themselves and future game design students.
The MARLA Council of faculty, staff, and students strive to pioneer new preservation techniques, while adhering to known best practices as we enter our third year. We also have a full-time TA to maintain MARLA’s many needs. These needs include navigating necessary funding, software/hardware repair, collection space, discerning donations, and safest ways to catalogue and preserve the artifacts within the constraints of the space and budget available.
We will be playing Making History and discussing its use as a classroom tool.
The game itself is: "A game of truth, perspective, and the stories we choose to believe."
Description:
Making History Box Description:
A game of truth, perspective, and the stories we choose to believe.
When Briar and Skye’s breakup rocks the school, everyone has a theory — but which version is true? As players gather and trade “facts,” they uncover how perspective, rumor, and bias shape the way we interpret the past. Each round of Making History builds competing narratives, revealing that history is rarely neat…and never complete.
Making Room at the Table: Fostering Inclusive Play
Summary:
Do you invite everyone to join in open play or, without realizing it, are there people you are excluding? Learn about implicit bias, how it affects what you do, and simple ways to foster inclusivity.
Description:
Implicit bias affects our understanding, actions and decisions without conscious awareness. Everyone exhibits it to a greater or lesser extent, and it is an inherent part of being human.
Recognizing that, what can you do to make your open play area, your facility, or just about anything you are involved with more inclusive and inviting?
The first steps are to learn – what is your perspective, who are you excluding, and what is their viewpoint (and their own biases). While this takes a lifetime of practice, you can start in an hour, learning about implicit biases and ways to overcome them, exploring how the design of space can be inviting or disinviting, and coming away with some tools to further explore after the con.
Turn your game idea into a finished product. Learn manufacturing basics, costs, timelines, factories, importing, etc.—so your game actually makes it to the table. Q & A time included.
Description:
This seminar pulls back the curtain on how tabletop games are actually made, from first sample to final delivery. We’ll explore factory relationships, material choices, cost scaling, timelines, proofing, shipping, and the small communication errors that can create massive losses. Designed for designers and publishers alike, this would offer practical insight into the decisions, tradeoffs, and safeguards that turn a creative concept into a product that can confidently be put on a table.
** GAME DESIGN ACADEMY ONLY EVENT / NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL TRADE DAY AUDIENCE **
Map Your Player's Journey: A UX Tool for Game Design
Summary:
Learn how journey mapping can help your game design process in this interactive workshop.
Description:
Journey mapping is a visualization tool in User Experience design for understanding how users meet their goals. In this workshop we will make journey maps of popular games to show how visualizing the player's journey can help us design games.
** GAME DESIGN ACADEMY ONLY EVENT / NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL TRADE DAY AUDIENCE **
An event aimed mostly at retailers and event GMs which will look in some depth at our new releases including our Book of Battle Mats range and our card sets of RPG accessories.
Big impact, small budget! Use local event calendars, press releases, unique events, and smart social media strategies to make your marketing budget stretch further.
Description:
In this panel, learn how to craft content that your followers, local influencers, and even the media will want to share. We’ll talk about writing press releases that get noticed, local event calendars, social media, and creating unique events that generate buzz. Finally, we'll discuss when to DIY your marketing, when you should consider spending a little bit of money, and how to get the most bang for your buck.
Learn best practices from seasoned designer Ben Rosset for designing games about real-world topics.
** GAME DESIGN ACADEMY ONLY EVENT / NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL TRADE DAY AUDIENCE **
Description:
Ben Rosset has is the designer of published games about building cities, inventing airplanes, searching for new planets, manufacturing board games, making cheese, running a brewery, and more. In this session, he will share with you best practices for designing games about real-world systems. Topics will include: The difference between systems modeling and world building, how players engage with games about real-world topics, what makes a good system to model, how to research your topic, selecting a zoom level, faithfulness to the theme, playtesting real-world games, and matching mechanics to theme.
** GAME DESIGN ACADEMY ONLY EVENT / NOT INTENDED FOR GENERAL TRADE DAY AUDIENCE **
Not every game fits every lesson plan. Get hands on playing games and making adjustments to them to see how we can sculpt commercially available games to fit our needs as educators.
Description:
Some topics and games fit together extremely naturally. Games with hyper specific theming make it easy to teach content in that area. Games of chance are used to teach probability. But what happens when a topic and game don't match up? Participants in this session will get the chance to play real games and see how making creative adjustments can cater them for use in lessons, even when the original game wouldn't have been a good fit. The host is a mathematics professor with experience teaching using board games from 4th grade to college level.
Navigating Relationships in Creative Collaborations
Summary:
Learn to identity and honor the various roles and goals of your many potential collaborators in this practical workshop applicable to anyone navigating game publishing spaces.