Applied Games

Talk: Games as a Therapeutic Tool

Speaker: Erick Blandin

People have been playing games as a hobby for a long time but they can also be used to help with mental, physical and emotional therapy. Fast moving games are great for ignoring pain, calming games are great for helping with anxiety and games with big repeated motions are good for exercising damaged muscles or just getting the blood flowing.

Hospitals around the world are just starting to think of games as a tool in their practice and are always looking for fun games that also happen to be useful in their therapeutic goals. There are components they look for in games depending on the therapeutic goal, and many games fit these niches without even meaning to.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Using Games Design in Citizen Science

Speaker: Lisa Evans

Most games are designed to be entertaining so they can drive sales or build a big community of players. For the astronomy citizen science project AstroQuest, we care about how much data we get, whether it's usable by our scientists, and whether we meet our goals for astronomy outreach and education. Lisa will talk about the design of the AstroQuest website and the process the team went through in using game design ideas to encourage citizen scientists to produce more and better data, as well as targeting their efforts where the scientists needed them the most.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au

Talk: Realtalk; Politics, games, and the inescapable maw of responsibility.

Speaker: Zhia Zariko

Politics in and around games has always been a contentious and much-debated subject. Whilst this talk may not settle this discussion in its entirety, it is vitally important that designers and consumers of games are aware of what it means to consider ‘politics’ in the context of game design.

Specifically, this talk will attempt to unpack the idea of whether or not it is possible to create an ‘apolitical’ game. It will explore the concept at numerous levels, both in terms of what politics are – and how they are understood by the consumer audience – and how they are represented by games. It borrows heavily from film and literature, which has laid strong foundations in the bedrock of 'politics'.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2019: Lighting The Way

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premier games development conference and a part of Melbourne International Games Week.

Situated in Melbourne, Australia during October, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, collaboration, expression, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au