BAF day one

The first day of the Bradford animation festival was quite interesting. The talks were varied and provided a professional viewpoint into the game industry. I was particularly interested in Adrian Hon's talk where he pointed the need for better narratives in gaming and bringing them into different platforms.
One example he suggested was the game 'Zombies, Run!' being developed for the iPhone. 'Zombies, run!' is a game that works around running and jogging in real life.

As you run, you are led through the game's narrative while collecting items to advance in the game. The further you run, the more items you collect. Adrian Hon said
“We want to tap into a fantasy that we think a lot of people have when they’re running or deciding to get fit — that you can be the hero of your own action movie. After all, why does anyone want to run? Probably so we know that if things get bad, we can rely on our bodies to get us out of trouble.”

The game provides motivation for tasks that people tend to shy away from. Maybe this could be applied to mundane tasks such as washing up or cooking, real life 'Cooking Mama', anyone?

BAF felt unprofessional at times due to technology failures. These failures led to a lack of demonstrations and periods of waiting. The first talk was about a piece of software called Faceware. Due to technology failures, half of the time was spent fixing the problem.