Poster Transcriptions

Non-profitable, Hobby-, Art-, Personal Games

Why does Pro Helvetia care about profit?
Society doesn't consider games as a cultural good.
If you need money for your work, the people who give you money always influence your work.
Hobby games don't have to be accessible and polished. Success = fun, good result. Not outside world.
Swiss people are really into quality and polish. We want to make complete, professional things.

Simulations work to teach - so games should as well.

Facts
Culture (implicit + explicit)
Problem solving
Skills
Repetitive processes
Strategy
Accuracy
Playing Instinct
Moral values: Monopoly (rents are bad), Snakes and Ladders (you can't control your fate)
Failing in a safe environment
Social skills
What kind of learning are games bad for?
Behaviours that are bad - does the world react?
Games can create associations and emotions for learning.
But not: face-to-face social skills.
If a game cannot deliver an experience properly, it can mislead. e.g a Poverty Simulator where you can't feel hunger.
Ego depletion
Social rejection
Agency

How to decide how much time to invest in commercial/personal projects?
Different government laws (e.g holidays) may result in different work behaviours.
Where is the line between passion and addiction?
Get other opinions, do a reality check from time to time.
Plan with "downtime" to compensate for e.g time miscalculation or sickness.

Students
Children
Artists
Psychologists
Professionals from different fields
Ways to communicate ideas
Reaching non-technical people
Not limited by availability, just time / motivation
How to support people to make games
Tech people are also specialists and can feel untechy too
Meet in the middle skillswise
Barrier of entry gets lower with assess. tech
Being "technical" is not the same as in the past
"unexperienced in games"?
it's about interest
Scratch, Twine, Processing, Struckd, RPG Maker, Unity, Gamemaker, Gameguru, bitsy
ETH game lab visual programming language