Geographies of Gaming and VR, 3 July 2019, Birmingham

July 4, 2019 | james

Co-I Ian Gregory introduced Sally and James to an exciting annual symposium of the Digital Geographies Research Group, held at the University of Birmingham - this year focused around VR and public engagement. The event was filled with a diverse range of talks, that covered all manner of applications, including the design of functional realtime city info dashboards, ethongraphies of abaondoned second life-esque worlds, procedural generation and artistic creativity, the 140 years of gamifying Around the World in 80 Days, combining AR, theatre, and escae room-like exeriences... such a variety.

We - of course - took Litcraft, and it was heartening to see quite a few people were already aware of us. Word is spreading!

Sally introduced, for the very first time, our next colloboration - with The Wordsworth Trust, focused around 'Spots of Time'. Hearking back to the original prototype that led to all this, Lakescraft, we cannot wait to unveil more about our plans, alongside two member of the Centre of Ecology and Hyrdology (always wonderful when unexpected collaborations come about) who have made a nicely-scaled and populated map of the Lake District. But more details soon!

In addition to the paper, the organisers kindly allowed us to run a workshop - and for once everyone was familiar with Minecraft (though a few parrots were still accidentally killed instead of tamed). Very encouraging, and some interested names taken for (hopefully) future contact.