VR beyond Play Event

SUBOTRON pro games at VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2018

Please note the special venue:
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Festivalzentrale / ehemaliges Sophienspital, Apollogasse 19, 1070 Wien

What can designers learn from the game scene? Where can we discover transdisciplinary potentials for virtual realities? In their 50-year history, game developers have always been the driving force behind new technological and creative developments with their experimental approaches. Many innovations for virtual (and augmented) reality come from game developers who playfully explore and cross formal and content-related boundaries. The volatile global market forces designers to be more artistically open and economically flexible. This gives rise to collaborations with partners from areas such as culture, health care or education, which make the possibilities of VR playfully tangible and understandable and create the conditions for their further development.
The topics will be outlined in a keynote by former Sony London Studios´ Russ Harding and then discussed together with local game dev icon Jan Wagner (Blizzard, Cliffhanger, Black Cell) and clinical psychologist Dr. Anna Felnhofer.

Moderation: Robert Glashüttner (ORF/FM4)

Keynote: Levelling the playing field

Russel Harding
Co-Founder/ Creative Director at Harbee Studios, London

There was a time when games were seen as the awkward second cousin of entertainment, only brought up at special occasions and always reminded to keep quiet. However, with the event of huge gaming franchises (GTA 5 took $1b in 3 days, fortnite will generate $2b in 2018), games have become one of the biggest forms of entertainment of our modern lives, shooting past Hollywood in billion dollar value. Initially this success was seen much like The Beverly Hillbillies, all money and no class. But the advent of immersive technology, leading the convergence of film, TV, and games has levelled the playing field. The once seen as geeks in games are now key to any major media project, and the ubiquitous use of game engines for pre vis, VR/AR, even TV shows has led to skills bleeding between these very different mediums. This is not without its teething troubles. The workflow of software design & development is very different to that of more traditional linear media. Asking someone to sign up to agile prototyping, without a definitive list of deliverables is confusing at best and seems crazy at worst. But as we start to see the fruits of early ambitions, and collaboration from all sides, we can begin to see clarity of the future. This talk discusses the learnings from a veteran game and immersive developer from collaborating on music, TV and film projects; what works, what doesn’t: and most of all, what we can learn from each other.

Biographies

Russ Harding has over 25 years of designing and creating innovative interactive experiences across a variety of genres & audiences. A vision holder & developer of the creative process, specialising in the use of emerging technologies such as AR, VR & MR. Formerly a Creative Director at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s London Studios, developing unique gameplay experiences showcasing and introducing PlayStation VR to the world. Presently Co Founder/Creative Director at HARBEE GAMES STUDIO creating innovative immersive narrative driven games.

Dr. Anna Felnhofer is a clinical psychologist who has been studying human experiences in virtual reality for almost a decade. Together with Oswald D. Kothgassner, she founded the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the University of Vienna in 2011. The main focus of her first research lay especially on human social interactions with virtual others as well as on stressful cue exposure in VR. Currently, she is testing VR based interventions in children and adolescents with different mental and somatic disorders (e.g., ADHD, anxiety, obesity) at the Virtual Reality Intervention Lab (VRIL) of the Medical University of Vienna.

Jan Wagner has been in the games industry for 30 years, working on over 60 titles in various roles from Design and Producing to Brand and Product Management. He has worked on major games such as “Diablo 2” and “Half Life 2” and worked for major Publishers from Sierra to Blizzard. Co-Founding his own development studio with Cliffhanger Productions in 2006 he also joined Black Cell as one of the first VR studios in Austria which has produced titles for ImaxVR as well as self-publishing their own games on Vive and Oculus. Jan has been a speaker at several international VR Conferences and a contributor to VR online magazines.