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Pervasive games take computer games off the screen and out into the real world.
They include mobile games, street games and Alternate Reality Games such as Botfighters, Can You See Me Now? and Perplexcity.
Leading figures in the worlds of Pervasive Games came to Brighton from across Europe for this evening about the genre. Speakers from Nokia in Finland and Sony in Germany joined scientists and theorists to profile new games and discuss the ethics, practicalities and business models raised by these new forms of play.
New games were demonstrated and available to play.

Speakers were:

Markus Montola is a researcher in Pervasive Games in Gamelab, a multidisciplinary research team at the University of Tampere Hypermedia Laboratory. His areas of interest include live action role playing and the ethics of pervasive games.

Mathieu Verbeeck works in Business Development at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. SCEE, based in London, is responsible for the distribution, marketing and sales of PlayStation and PSP software and hardware in 102 territories across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania.

Jussi Holopainen heads the Game Design Group at Nokia Research Center, Finland. He is a co-author of the book "Patterns in Game Design". He has presented his work in conferences such as the Game Developers Conference and SIGGRAPH. He is currently working on basic game design research, especially focussing on experimental game design. Jussi is one of the founding members of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA).

Professor Steve Benford is one of the leaders of the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham, a dedicated studio facility where computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, engineers, architects and artists collaborate to explore the potential of ubiquitous, mobile and mixed reality technologies to shape everyday life. He is an editor of the CSCW journal and has published over 100 works.

This Pervasive Gaming evening was developed and organised by Blast Theory and was supported by Lighthouse and Wired Sussex.





Digiville is funded by Arts Council England, South East, Brighton & Hove City Council and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.




Digiville is our monthly event for digital and moving image artists. Each event incorporates a diverse cross-section of the digital arts community, from installation artists to animators and VJs, and involves an initial presentation of work, either by individual artists or artist groups, followed by a Q&A/discussion session. The artists invited to present their work or perform are a careful mix of well-known names and less established artists.

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