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Robin Hunicke to Keynote Boston FIG

oston FIG announces Robin Hunicke, executive producer of the award-winning downloadable game Journey on Sony’s PlayStation Network, as the keynote speaker.

Cambridge, MA -- The Boston Festival of Indie Games, presented by MIT Game Lab and Boston Indies, announced game designer and producer Robin Hunicke as their keynote speaker scheduled to appear at this year’s festival, scheduled for Saturday, September 14 at the MIT campus. BostonFIG is currently in the last two weeks of their Kickstarter fundraising campaign.

Hunicke is well known as the executive producer of the award-winning downloadable game Journey on Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN). Her presentation for Boston Festival of Indie Games, titled “Finding Meaning in Gameplay”, will focus on how developers can create games that inspire new feelings, by looking inward and examining the everyday experiences of their own lives.

As the executive producer of Journey, Hunicke ran a small indie team of roughly a dozen game developers. The game takes players from desert to mountaintop, through a breathtaking series of landscapes. Along the way, they cross paths with other players and can choose to adventure on together or alone. The experience struck the game world with its uniquely emotional qualities, while illustrating the high level of polish that a relatively small game development team can deliver.  Journey achieved worldwide critical acclaim and marketplace success, as well as securing countless awards and nominations for game design, online innovation and artistic execution from numerous respected organizations such as BAFTA and the Grammys.

An artist and computer scientist by training, Hunicke recently co-founded the independent game studio, Funomena. There, alongside fellow Journey developer Martin Middleton, she is building a team to work on experimental gameplay projects and games for social good. Robin’s interest in the unique power of games to bring people together began with her early work on family-friendly franchises MySims and Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox for Nintendo Wii.

Hunicke offers, “Speaking at national and international events such as Boston Festival of Indie Games gives me the opportunity to broaden our understanding of what games can be.  It’s also a fantastic opportunity to talk with the Indie developers of tomorrow, as their ideas and ideals take shape. Our biggest strength as a community is our willingness to share ideas and dialog about what the future of the medium will be. I’m interested in being part of that incredibly inspiring and important conversation about how we can build a diverse, sustainable and creative community.”

Rik Eberhardt, BostonFIG co-producer and programming co-chair, says, “In part, we’ve developed Boston Festival of Indie Games on the foundation that game development is both highly collaborative and intensely creative, and that for indies in particular, you can successfully have the best of these two worlds, effective teamwork and focused creative inspiration.  Robin’s experience as a game designer and producer provides a model for this, encouraging indie game developers to reach for the highest heights when producing their games. We are incredibly thrilled that she is coming to Boston to talk with indie games enthusiasts in our community.”

The 2nd annual Boston Festival of Indie Games will be held on Saturday, September 14, 2013 at the Stratton Student Center and the Johnson Athletic Center on the MIT campus. A celebration of independent game development in a variety of media and genres, Boston Festival of Indie Games is free and open to the public. Festival attendees play video games, tabletop games and live action roleplaying (LARP) games in a casual, inclusive environment, plus attend film screenings and keynote talks. To register to attend and to receive regular festival updates, visit www.BostonFIG.com.

Source: Boston Festival of Indie Games

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.

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