Whaaat!? A Festival for Games and Experimental Interactions

October 5, 2019
Boulder, CO

Schedule

9AM - 10PM
ATLAS Lobby
Check-in and Coffee Hour
Conference ticket-holders can come early to check-in, meet with the other attendees over coffee and a cereal buffet in the lobby of ATLAS, and get a peek at some of our featured games.
9AM - 4PM
ATLAS Lobby
Whaaat!? Tabletop
All day long we'll have a rotating selection of tabletop and experimental games in the ATLAS lobby for you to explore and play with your friends.
10AM - 10:15AM
ATLAS 100
Opening Remarks
10:15AM - 11AM
ATLAS 100
Opening Keynote with Jason Rohrer
Observations from the Edge of Design: With an 18-game career behind him and five years into his 19th game, what is Jason Rohrer thinking about right now? This talk will cover the history of video game design, how we got to where we are right now, and where he thinks we should be going. What are the major problems that we still need to solve? How should the next generation of creators approach their careers in this medium? This talk will use a dynamic, non-linear talk format, using custom-coded software for the slide presentation.
11:15AM - 12PM
ATLAS 1B31
Session 1: Tired of Fun?
Quick question: do you think games are too normal (read: boring)? Then you should definitely come hear James and Joe Cox, Co-founders of Seemingly Pointless, as they lead you through their weird and wonderful mind.
11AM - 3PM
ATLAS BBX
Whaaat!? Arcade
Last year's Black Box Arcade was so good that the building wept literal rivers of joy. Out of commission for full year, it's back and even better, featuring some of the weirdest, most fun, and terribly exciting games that we have found. Check the full games listing for more details!
11AM - 3PM
ATLAS L101
MAL presents That Kid in Your Neighborhood's Basement
The CU Media Archeology Lab is back with a special vintage videogame exhibition for Whaaat!? Featuring some vintage consoles and favorite classics from years ago, this is a rare occasion to play some amazing games including Q*bert, Zork, Contra, GoldenEye and the infamous ET on an original Commodore 64, Apple //c, Atari 2600, NES, N64, Sega Genesis, and Vextrex!
11AM - 3PM
ATLAS 104
Hyperdimensional Computer Lab
It's the computer lab of your dreams, if your dreams are to replace copies of Reader Rabbit and the Oregon Trail with games featuring fantastical operating systems, genre-defying gameplay, and seriously good vibes.
11:15AM - 12PM
ATLAS 100
Game Design/Development Local Industry Panel
Nicky Britt, Executive Producer at Dusk Games; Emmanuel Lagumbay, Audio Designer at Lagumbay Audio; Justin Larrabee, Co-Founder Second Wind Interactive; and Meredith Wilson, Game Designer at Backflip Studios sit down to talk about the game industry and the local community.
12PM - 1PM
ATLAS Lobby / Boulder Area
Lunch Break / Game Lunch
Conference Attendees can grab a box lunch and a game to play while you eat with your new besties! Or if you'd prefer, head down to Pearl Street or wander over to the Hill and try some of Boulder's best!
1PM - 2PM
ATLAS 100
BATSU!: Live!
Giant Fox Studios is hosting a special live gameshow-style version of their Japanese improv punishment party game, BATSU!. Come see what bananas things will be done to players all in the name of a magical gong.
1PM - 2PM
BTU Lab
Nintendo LABO Workshop
Join ATLAS Professor Daniel Leithinger for a workshop using the Nintendo Labo. Build cardboard contraptions to amaze and astonish your friends!
1:15PM - 2PM
ATLAS 1B31
Session 2: Nil Nisi Bonum - The Postmortem of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine.
A few months after the release of the award-winning narrative game Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, the lead developer published a look back on development. This seemingly innocuous event turned into a much, much bigger deal than anyone had anticipated. In this talk Johnnemann Nordhagen will discuss the post-mortem of the game, the fallout from it, and whether it's possible (or a good idea) to talk honestly about the process and the failures in game development.
2PM - 3PM
BTU Lab
Ideation Jam
Join Whaaat!? Co-Founder Danny Rankin for a fast-paced, brain-exploding, collaborative ideation session. Invent a game idea! Merge it with your neighbor's! Make that game and tag us at #whaaat!?
2:15PM - 3PM
ATLAS 100
Panel: Storytelling in Games
Chris Floyd, Game Director at Deck Nine Games; Ben Wander, Founder & Designer at The Wandering Band; and Zhenghua 'Z' Yang, Executive Producer at Serenity Forge discuss how narrative can be used in successful game experiences.
2:15PM - 3PM
ATLAS 1B31
Session 3: Perfect Portfolio Projects
Join Casey Holtz, Senior Designer at Ember Lab, as he helps young gamemakers create amazing portfolio projects while in college. Learn how to leverage your fellow classmates' skills to make a larger project: focusing on ideation, team building, cooperation and work flows, maintaining project vision and motivation as well as rapid prototyping and art style/direction tips.
3PM - 3:45PM
ATLAS 100
Closing Keynote with Colleen Macklin
Tiny Utopias: Games are great at dystopias. Zombie Apocalypse? Check. Nuclear aftermath? Check. A total surveillance state? Check. But what about utopias? They’re harder to find - not only because utopia roughly translated means “nowhere", but because we’re just not quite as good at making them - real ones or game ones. But it’s worth trying! Games can model new forms of play! And in game-based utopias, you can pet the dog.
3:45PM - 4PM
ATLAS 100
Closing Remarks

Conference Speakers

Colleen Macklin

Whether she’s delighting people with her clever, intriguing games, or using games to take on the world’s most fiendish problems, there’s a lot of reasons we love Colleen Macklin. One of them is the Metagame, a must-have in any tabletop game library, and our top choice to play with any group of people (and required play on the first day of our Game Design class at CU.) Colleen is also a professor at Parsons School of Design, where she founded and co-directs the Prototyping Education & Technology Lab. PETLab develops games that help people engage with diverse topics like disaster preparedness, the US Budget deficit, climate change, women’s health, and urban activism. Colleen’s work has been shown with Come Out & Play, Creative Time and The Whitney Museum, and she’s co-authored two incredible books: Games, Design and Play and Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure. Her new literary word puzzle game Losswords (with the company Local No. 12) comes out later this year, and we can’t wait.

Jason Rohrer

If we were to describe our idea of a great game, it would have interesting mechanics and visuals, be accessible to lots of people, be enjoyable to play and, most importantly, create an overall experience that leads us to a deeper understanding of life and the world we live in. We know, it's a lot to ask of of any game or any designer, but we know it’s possible. The reason we know is because Jason Rohrer does this again and again. Over the course of his career, Jason has made so many fascinating and important games that have reached beyond the boundaries of what we thought games could do. His game Passage is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It's the kind of thing you experience for 5 minutes and then think about for years. In 2016, The Davis Museum at Wellesley College exhibited a large portion of his body of work. It was the first museum retrospective of a single video game designer. His current project One Hour One Life, featured at last year’s Whaaat!? Arcade, is an evolving game world that represents 4,000 years of human history.

Arcade

This year's specially curated selection of games will not disappoint. From vintage classic on the original hardware to installation games that can't be experienced anywhere else. You'll be talking about this for months with games like...

Bluster Blunder - bearwarp

An absurdist racing game using modified Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges that players blow into to advance their character. The visual source material was generated with a circuit bent NES console. Premiering at this year's Whaaat!?

Buy! Sell! - Mouse & the Billionaire

Buy low, sell high as fast as you can, by yelling into analog phones. The Wolf of Wall Street made it seem harder than that; it's not.

Consume Me - Jenny Jiao Hsia and AP Thomson

A hilarious and honest exploration of dieting and disordered eating, featuring the most-accurate yoga simulator ever.

eCheeze Zone - Seemingly Pointless

A crowd punishment party game. Like Windows 95 meets Jackbox meets Dark Souls? Yes, exactly like that.

Extrareality Codebreaker - FLEB

It looks like an analog television, but really it's a dial-spinning, codebreaking puzzle game.

file://maniac - Born Frustrated

A detective game experienced by managing files on your actual operating system.

HOT SWAP: All Hands on Deck - Peter Gyory and Clement Zheng

A cooperative naval survival game where players assemble their controller as they play. 2019 alt.ctrl.GDC winner!

Hypnospace Outlaw - Tendershoot

90s era internet simulator where players act as volunteer moderators and enforcers on this weird and wonderful web.

Pizza Puzzles - Stellar Factory

Newly launched on KickStarter, these puzzles make great puzzles, but terrible-tasting pizza.

Sloppy Forgeries - Jonah Warren

If you've ever looked at a piece of art and thought, "I could do that," well now's your chance.

Snakeybus - Stovetop

Snake + Crazy Taxi where your bus gets longer every time you drop off a passenger. Oh no!

That Kid in Your Neighborhood's Basement - MAL

It's baaaaaack! The CU Media Archeology Lab curates an amazing vintage videogame exhibition for Whaaat!? Featuring some vintage consoles and favorite classics from years ago, this is a rare occasion to play some amazing games including Q*bert, Zork, Contra, GoldenEye and the infamous ET on an original Commodore 64, Apple //c, Atari 2600, NES, N64, Sega Genesis, and Vectrex!

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator - Landfall Games

The name says it all. A totally accurate battle simulator (as long as those battles include wizards, cheerleaders, ice giants, mastadons, dragons, and amazing ragdoll physics)

Wrong Box - Molly Soda and Aquma

Find your old computer and explore a skewed version of the forgotten websites and internet clutter of your youth.

Also including...

The ATLAS Student Game Showcase

Featuring some of the wildest games out of the ATLAS Institute's Game Design and Development community.

...and many many more surprises to come!

Getting to Whaaat!?

All events at Whaaat!? (excluding lunch) will be in the ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder. Paid parking can be found in the nearby Euclid lot (underneath the CASE building), and free parking within walking distance can often be found on the Hill, west of Broadway

We’re…a little different

Whaaat!? is a games festival. But probably not in the way you’re thinking.

Whaaat!? Does NOT

  • ...have a demo of every game releasing in the next 3 years on display for you to line up and try out until somebody kicks you off.
  • ...have hundreds of studios and developers vying for your attention and money with jargon-saturated song & dance routines featuring the #NextBigThing.
  • ...have panels on driving revenue with psychological warfare microtransactions, or how to rewire humans brains to increase “player engagement.”
  • ...have Keanu Reeves in a graphic tee and blazer. (Although we wouldn't be opposed to that...?)

Whaaat!? DOES

  • ...have games. Weird new games. Old dusty games. Games for outsiders. Overlooked gems. Games with bizarre controllers. Games that are in art museums. Games that will start an argument between you and your friends over what a game actually is.
  • ...have keynotes from brilliant people who explode the idea of games into a million tiny pieces and then reassemble those fragments into mind-blowing new things.
  • ...have workshops and panels featuring Professional Humans™ from the games industry (and beyond) who will teach you how to make better and more interesting games.
  • ...have an all-you-can-eat cereal bar. (Keanu Reeves, eat your heart out.)

Whaaat!? does have a place for you, whether you’re an expert gamer, an aspiring developer, or you literally know nothing about games.

It might get weird, but it’ll be fun.