Join the best minds in game design this summer, June 21-23, 2018 for three days of talks, discussion, and play. PRACTICE: Game Design in Detail is the NYU Game Center’s annual professional game design conference that brings together videogame designers, board and card game designers, designers of sports and LARPs, and more to discuss the details of our shared game design practice.

PRACTICE takes a close look at the concrete challenges of game design, bridging dialogue across industries. Where else can a console developer discuss level design with a tabletop RPG writer? Or an iPhone puzzle creator debate economy balancing with a collectible card game designer? Or a professional sports official share secrets with an experimental indie game artist? No other conference brings together such a diverse group of game designers for high-level dialogue.

We explore the day-to-day, nuts and bolts of game design – where the rubber of design ideas and methods meets the road of meaningful, playable games. Join us for three days of lectures and panels, debates and discussions, mixed with plenty of game-playing and socializing.

Thursday June 21

6:00pm: Registration and Badge Pick-up

7:00pm: NYU Game Center Welcome & Opening talk from Daniel Ames: “Perfect Slice”

8:00pm: Opening Reception featuring a curation of games by Kickstarter

Friday, June 22

9:30am: Registration & Breakfast

10:00am: Adriel Wallick: "Prototypes & Pitfalls: Lessons from a year of jamming"

11:00am: Coffee Break

11:30am: Avery Alder: “Dream Askew: Designing in Dialogue With Other Games” & Closed Problems

1:00pm: Lunch

2:30pm: Open Problems & Xavier Woods: "Design and Storytelling through personalities, video games, and WWE"

4:00pm: Coffee Break

4:30pm: Zak McClendon: “Welcome to the Yard Sale: A Practical Framework for Holistic Design Iteration”

5:30pm: Open Problems

6:30pm: Happy Hour at the Game Center

Saturday, June 23

9:30am: Registration & Breakfast

10:00am: Joseph White: “PICO-8 and the Search for Cosy Design Spaces”

11:00am: Coffee Break

11:30am: Allison Parrish: “Word Breakers: Rewordable and The Raw Material of Word Games” & Friedemann Friese: “Creating Structures”

1:00pm: Lunch

3:00pm: Richard Korzekawa: “The Game Theory of Bicycle Racing”

4:00pm: Coffee Break

4:30pm: Liz England: “How To Make An Impossible Game: Designing Scribblenauts”

5:30pm: Closing Remarks from the NYU Game Center