Jesse Schell to speak at Dare ProtoPlay

Game design expert Jesse Schell is to speak at the Dare ProtoPlay festival in Dundee next month, as part of the showcase for the University of Abertay Dundee’s Dare to be Digital competition.

Schell will talk about the discipline of game design, convergence and gamification at 10am on Saturday, August 10th and open a two-day game jam.

Schell is CEO of Schell Games and Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. His previous roles include creative director of Walt Disney Imagineering.

He will also mentor some of the teams taking part in the weekend-long game jam, which this year takes the theme of ‘flying, stargazing and rainbow chasing’ from Dundee Contemporary Arts’ Blue Skies festival.

“Jesse is an incredibly important figure in game design, and we’re very proud to be welcoming him to Dare ProtoPlay in partnership with the excellent Turing Festival,” said Gregor White, director of Academic Enterprise at Abertay University.

“Game design is a discipline that’s often overlooked, but designers play a really central role to imagining the experience that the player will ultimately have – and in guiding artists and programmers to work together to realise that vision.”

Dare ProtoPlay marks the end of Dare to be Digital, the international game design contest for students run in Dundee each summer by Abertay University.

The Dare ProtoPlay computer games festival is open to the public from Thursday, August 8th to Sunday, August 11th in Dundee’s Caird Hall and City Square.

The event is sponsored by Creative Scotland, Dundee City Council and EventScotland. Schell’s talk at Dare ProtoPlay is in partnership with the Turing Festival.

To find out more and sign up for tickets, visit www.dareprotoplay.com. Entry is free for students.