1. Never again will we schedule mass recorder playing first thing.
2. To always make sure venues have *some* form of heating in future.

There are a few photos from the day below, with many more to come soon. First though, I’d like to thank our sponsors: IndieCity, Skillsearch, Introversion and Sheridans.

I’d also like to thank all of the tireless volunteers: Jo Summers, Ross Fowkes, Andrew Thorpe, Siri Hommelsgård, Minkette, Emma Peddie, Craig Brennan, Cathleen Guiney, and Matthew Parks. They welcomed you in, made you tea, taught you games, kept things running when I couldn’t be in two places at once, and generally stopped everything from ploughing off a cliff.

Photography was by the excellent Natalie Seery; here are a few higlights, and more will go up soon:

Car parking in the local area is by permit, so I’d advise using public transport to get there. In terms of that, the nearest railway station is Clapham Junction, and from there BAC is either a ten minute walk up Lavender Hill, or you can catch a bus (87 or 156) from Stop D, just outside the St. John’s Hill exit of Clapham Junction. If you’re coming from oop North, there are regular trains from Waterloo to Clapham Junction. There’s also some cycle parking on Lavender Hill either side of BAC. Here’s a picture of the inside of the hall:

Not only is the venue itself gorgeous, and not only are BAC lovely to deal with, but they also support all kinds of things going on in the arts. Cynical as I am of what I once witnessed working in fine art, art itself it tremendously important to me, and I’m glad Bit of Alright is contributing to a place that supports it so well.

* Made using the excellent hereit.is, which in turn was made by Brighton based developer Jamie Matthews. The reasons we like it are: It makes maps very legible, allows you to drag and drop the arrow, can generate a custom short URL for you, and also links through to that location on Google Maps.

Guerilla Dance Project, led by Laura Kriefman, will be presenting their new installation The Rolling Stones at Bit of Alright. At first, they look like spheres of marble, but as you play with them, other characteristics will become apparent.

Kerry and Simon both work for LittleLoud, and one of their recent games was Sweatshop. Sweatshop made me feel horrifically guilty, because running my factory at optimum efficiency and profitability meant employing little slave kids to put on the end of my production line. It’s brilliant because it feels like gaming you know, but is making you do dreadful things to succeed.

This session will explore that idea and some related ones. It reminds me a little of Jenova Chen talking about time attack modes in early prototypes of Flower, which they removed because play-testers were screaming “fuck yeah!” at new records, and that wasn’t quite what the designers were going for. This isn’t about some stupid question like “Can games make you cry?”, it’s not a Countdown To Tears™. It’s about nuanced game design. How do games make you feel angry, or guilty, or dirty?

What makes games addictive, even when they’re not very interesting or fun? Some games have an alarming ability to make us spend time or money on them, and game designer Minkette will be exploring what tricks push the buttons of our psyches. She’ll be looking at common tricks in game design, as well as psychological experiments in impulse control.

Minkette is a freelance game designer, with credits ranging from Punchdrunk, Coney and Six to Start through to large multinationals such as Hasbro. I know her personally. I’d like to clarify that she’s actually not evil, is in fact a lovely person, and will be discussing these evil game design tricks from a perspective of curious distaste.

Audio is an oft neglected part of games, yet hugely influential in the overall experience of playing something. Composer and sound designer Alistair Lindsay is passionate about audio, and believes it has untapped yet hugely powerful psychological effect.

I agree with him. Good audio makes a massive difference to how absorbed I become with a game, yet even in a 250+ person studio with dedicated audio facilities, it’s rare to have more than a handful of audio guys doing all the work. While sound is sadly underexploited by mainstream game development studios, independent studios may be in a unique place to do amazing things with audio. In this talk, Alistair will outline why he thinks that, what he’s found out so far, and what he’d like to do next.

The picture above is one of the reasons I carry a pencil case full of sharpies around with me. It was a miserable day on Brighton Beach. We’d been hoping to play Ninja with a bunch of people in the sunshine, but instead were greeted with drizzle and wind. Basically, it sucked until we made our own fun. Being sat down, messing around with an artist underlined an important thing to me: Aesthetics really matter.

Nat is a co-founder of Honeyslug, and is also an artist and animator. She hasn’t told me exactly what’s happening during this session, but I know it’ll be a game design workshop involving stones.

Willow Tryrer is an artist and game designer, and one half of AW&SOME. She also has an absolutely killer portfolio. At Bit of Alright, she’ll be demonstrating her game Wake Up Grandpa!, which will involve a healthy dose of the audience all screaming at her computer.

Proteus is an extremely beautiful game, which will be there to play for a while at Bit of Alright. It’s filled with naturalistic interactions and stripped down forms. I’ve played through several different builds of Proteus, and each time found them slightly more mesmerising, both through the procedurally generated terrain and the intentionally scripted events. Cause and effect aren’t always apparent, with the effect of making me feel a little superstitious about my actions within the game. Some action I assumed caused something can quickly becomes a habit, even if it was unrelated. It’s a beautiful, abstract, and supremely relaxing thing. Fuck realism, this is the closest I’ve come to the feeling of a walk in the countryside whilst sat at my computer.

Developer Ed Key will be there with it, and he’ll also be answering questions during Ricky Haggett’s session.