Organised by Games Eden and Creative Front Cambridgeshire, Anglia Ruskin’s creative industries network, Brains Eden 2013 will feature talks from leading figures in the computer games community as well as a Games Jam, which will see students from across Europe race to produce the best new game for a tablet or PC over the course of the weekend.
There will be 150 students competing – including teams from Spain, Sweden, Holland, France, Belgium and UK universities – and the finished games will be displayed in the Ruskin Gallery on Monday, 1 July.
The students will be competing to win some exciting prizes, including Google Nexus tablets and four-week paid internships at the Sony Guerrilla studio in Cambridge, a city that is becoming world famous for its computer games industry.
The four-day event will also feature a Brains Symposium and a BAFTA Question Time Panel, featuring some of the biggest names in the Cambridge games community.
Ian Livingstone CBE, one of the founding fathers of the UK games industry and the man behind Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, will kick-off the festival on Friday, 28 June (5pm) when he delivers the keynote address ‘Life is a Game’.
Livingstone will discuss his struggles as an entrepreneur in the 1970s when he and Steve Jackson set up Games Workshop, launched Dungeons & Dragons in Europe and co-wrote the multi-million selling Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.
Covering the move from analogue to digital, he will discuss the past, present and future of the computer games industry, and highlight the value of intellectual property in a digital age.
The keynote speech will be followed at 6pm by the BAFTA panel debate, which will feature David Braben (Frontier Developments), Mark Gerhard (Jagex), Nizar Romdhane (ARM), Mark Green (Sony Guerrilla Cambridge) and independent developer Terry Cavanagh.
Both events, which are ideal for anyone interested in computer games and their development, will take place at Anglia Ruskin’s Mumford Theatre. Tickets are free and are available via the BAFTA website http://bafta.ticketsolve.com/shows/2013
Harvey Elliott, Chairman of the BAFTA Games Committee, said: “BAFTA is an organisation committed to championing the art and craft of games and so we’re really pleased to have the opportunity to work with Games Eden and Creative Front Cambridgeshire, to help inspire and develop the next generation of games makers.
“Offering a platform for established practitioners to share their experiences is key to BAFTA’s learning ethos, so the symposium at Brains Eden gaming festival is a great way of reaching a new crop of emerging talent.”
Now in its fifth year, the festival has received generous support and sponsorship from Sony Guerrilla Cambridge, PlayStation First, Frontier Developments, Jagex and ARM. For further information, please visit www.creativefront.org/brainseden
About Brains Eden
Brains Eden is made possible by the support of Creative Front Cambridgeshire, Anglia Ruskin University’s initiative to stimulate, incubate, grow and further the creative industries in the region.
Conceived by Games Eden, Cambridge’s games development network, and produced by Creative Front Cambridgeshire, the festival is supported and funded by industry leaders such as Sony Guerrilla Cambridge, PlayStation First, Frontier, Jagex and new premium sponsors ARM.
It is also supported by VIVID (Value Increase by Visual Design) and Anglia Ruskin’s Cultures of the Digital Economy (CoDE) research institute. For further information, please visit www.creativefront.org/brainseden
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For more press information please contact:
Jon Green on t: 0845 196 4717, e: jon.green@anglia.ac.uk
Andrea Hilliard on t: 0845 196 4727, e: andrea.hilliard@anglia.ac.uk
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