In January we held another playtesting event at CMD Hanze Applied University. Around 60 students playtested 20 games and concepts, ranging from tabletop card games and party games to digital games. Some using hardware like a Hololens and augmented reality glasses. So all in all another great turnup, with students from year 1 ranging to … Continue reading Looking back – Test & Chill January 2018

Thursday 14 December we had another Test & Chill event at our multimedia design study. More than 45 students of our major Game Design and the minor Game On showed up to have their games playtested, nice! In total 15+ games -applied & entertainment- were tested, including: rough early digital prototypes, paper prototypes, a Hololens … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill December 2017

At our major Game Design students learn making games. Besides all the theories, assignments and projects one of my colleagues Sean had the idea to organise additional game jams to support the learning and to let students really feel they are studying Game Design. Game Jams are a great way to get more hands on … Continue reading Looking back: Day Jam November ’17

First week of November we organised another playtesting event. Again the student association Glitch helped out. It was very nice to see how multiple games were tested, being personal projects, as well as study related projects. Despite all the deadlines. There were digital games, naturally, and a good amount of analogue ones. Students from all … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill November 2017

What started with a pilot last study year will now become a regular event: having testing sessions at our study CMD (Communication & Multimedia Design). Especially interesting for game design, but any app, art, code can be brought to showcase, for playtesting / user testing. Participating, also by giving feedback, is a great way to hone … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill October 2017

As a lecturer game design I regularly tip podcast episodes on certain topics. Some students really like them, others roll their eyes when I start talking about podcasts again :-). And I am fine with that, I'll keep recommending them as they are a great resources to industry news, personal stories concerning designing and publication, … Continue reading Design resources, hear hear!

What follows is a report of our trip in 2017 to the annual Game Designer Convention (also known as the ‘Spieleautorentreffen’)  in Göttingen, Germany. We will share our experiences  and offer some tips if you want to go there. As a tabletop game designer going to the Spielautorentreffen is great because you can meet a … Continue reading Going to the Göttingen Game Designer Convention

Last week I joined the International Game Designers Association 'SAZ' (Spiele-Autoren-Zunft). Seems appropriate with 2 game publications coming up... My first impressions are good. A personal welcome, an international oriented website in English (mostly) and the managing director Christian Beiersdorf explained all the topics they tackle on behalf of game authors worldwide. Besides insights there … Continue reading The meta-game: SAZ Game Designers Association

Last week I had an interview with a local newspaper about playing and making games. It is in Dutch, you can read it here. I made the statement that everyone likes playing games. Even people who say they don't. They just haven't played the game they will like yet. Or maybe not yet with the … Continue reading ‘Everyone likes games’

This blogpost is is about 'play'. The concept is getting more attention by psychologists and I became more interested in the topic myself. Not only as a psychologist, but also as a designer of games. Creating games means creating experiences that have a potential for priming playfulness. Now, after 2 years working as a lecturer I … Continue reading Play: serious business