by [name redacted]
Whereas last year’s Experimental Gameplay Sessions were crammed into a standing-room-only meeting room, resulting in a nightmare for the fire marshal yet a powerful experience for the audience, this year’s sessions were moved to a huge, dark presentation hall.
Although the audience turnout was larger than ever, and host Jon Blow had more participants to introduce, the meeting somehow felt less intimate and more low-key than last year’s.
As before, the event sprawled over two and a half hours with a short break in the middle. Where last year’s sessions had a general theme of interpreting complex emotions and ideas through familiar game models – evidenced in games like flOw, Cloud, Braid, and Everyday Shooter – this year’s entries tended toward novel uses of sound and perspective. Perhaps half of the event was devoted to various game festivals, while several of the remaining presentations were of high-profile commercial games.