Role playing games are a unique combination of improvised theater, storytelling, guided imagining and a fun social game. With the collaboration of the Israeli Association for the Promotion of Roleplaying Games, Icon is holding a games convention, training workshops, events for kids, and every day we will have demonstrative games and gate activities…
This year the treatment of content worlds concerning role-playing games had been broadened. Alongside a rich and diverse core of role-playing games and game workshops, the RPG content joins with the world of theatre and drama, and the world of computer games and gaming.
Come and hear more about this fascinating realm, and take part in a short experience.
Game Convention
This year's Icon, for the eighth year, will hold a role-playing game convention which will provide enthusiasts of the subject with many activities. The convention is especially accessible to all who are interested to try it and is full of activities which require no prior knowledge, just show up and play. The convention will take place Mon-Wed, and will have plenty of games divided into different realms of story and imagination.
The convention will take place on three days, October 5th-7th, Mon-Wed, all day long
at the Eshkol-Pais buildings and Ironi H' school, adjacent to Tel Aviv cinematheque
The convention is operated in different game sessions – the best directors in Israel had created games, each directed by a team drafted for its running. The game worlds are diverse, much like the games' ambience – play "Fables" in New York, be heroes in the world of "A Song of Ice and Fire", join a diplomatic delegation leaving for the lost continent of Atlantis in an attempt to save the world, or become illegal immigrants in today's Tel Aviv; play a dramatic game, or another: humoristic, or action-filled.
Game sessions will begin at 12:00, 16:00 and 20:00, and unless otherwise noted, will take three hours each
And the cube keeps on rolling… on Wednesday afternoon (7.10, 16:00) there will be a special Dungeons and Dragons game session in memory of the creators and initiators of the hobby and method: Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, both passed away these past two years. In their honor we will brush the dust off of old-time adventures and play "Zanton's Curse", "Castle Amber" and of course, the unforgettable "Horror on the Hill" one more time. We shall explore the depth of the worlds of "Greyhawk" or "Blackmore", and rejoice in the sound of the rolling cubes.
The Venetian Carnival… on Wednesday evening (7.10, 19:30) the main event of the role-playing convention will take place, the game session to close the convention's events, Pubcon: the Venetian Carnival, where, to the backdrop of the masked festival, the players will participate in bloody political struggles. The best directors will partake in this not-to-be-missed event.
Seminar and Professional Workshops Day
The first day of the festival, 4.10, will be mostly dedicated to professional workshops covering all festival themes – including role playing games.
Training, story-building and storytelling workshops from experts in the field (Eran Zvulun, Mishael Gorodin, Ziv Kitaro, respectively) will allow the interested in gaining knowledge and skill and to become more professional, to come to an organized seminary day, before the games convention begins.
More lectures and workshops will take place during the games convention, to deepen and enrich the participants' game experience – including a lecture about the use of drama and acting in teaching (Ran Peleg, PhD at Department of Education in Technology and Science and the Technion), game-method development workshop (Eyov Karn, former chairman of the Society for the Promotion of RPGs), an alternative training workshop for the Dungeons and Dragons system (Michael Gorodin, former secretary of the Society for the Promotion of RPGs) and more…
Drama and Theatre
On Mon-Tue (5-6.10) events connecting role-playing games with drama and theatre will take place, as part of "Project Realism". Theatre actors, pupils and students, and naturally amateurs are welcome to experiment in games of significant theatrical components, focusing on interpersonal relations within groups, human drama and character portrayal.
The event's goal is to be a portal into the world of live action games – for actors, by trade or hobby – and import some of the workings in the field from abroad. The project focuses almost entirely on games in the real world: with no magic, sci-fi or horror.
Most games are set within an enclosed social situation and deal with dramatic and personal experiences – "Mothers" takes place in a support group for new mothers; "Offerings to the Porcelain Temple" occurs the day after a few ivy league college candidates' a wild night out; "Michal's Birthday Party" is set at a preschooler's birthday party at her kindergarten. The games are all translated with the exception of one original Israeli creation – "Memory", whose Israeli plot deals with a family which had lost their soldier son and is coping with the grief.
Gaming Convention
One can look at the world of computer games from several points of view – as the biggest and most lucrative entertainment industry in the world, as an independent content medium that corresponds with cinema, television and comics, and as a cultural and social phenomenon seeping into every nook and cranny and of widespread influences – some not yet fully measured.
Gaming is a field and hobby for a significant portion of festival goers, and for some, has even become their profession. For many years now we have wanted gaming to be a more prominent aspect of the festival, and this year, with the cooperation of the Gameology Program – the design and development of computer games, at Beit-Berl College, we are happy to achieve this goal. Thursday, 8.10.09, will be Icon's Gaming and Gamers Convention.
During the gaming they there will be an academic-professional seminar day (lectures and sessions about virtual worlds, the implications of computer games over Israeli and global society, and also of games and politics); professional workshops (writing game scripts, creating two-dimensional games and modding), a gathering of gaming writers and bloggers form Israel, a meeting of the Israeli Game Developers Association and of course a tournament and free games at the computer and console games area.
Festival guest, Christian Lorenz Scheurer, worked as a designer on the movies "The Matrix" and "The Fifth Element", in addition he is vastly experienced in the field of computer game design and art directing – as he had worked as a designer on "Final Fantasy 9", and later as head art-director for the computer game "Lord of the Rings – Return of the King", "Spore"; he is also the production designer on the next battle game from EA – Japan. Apart from his work he also functions as a design consultant for leaders in the industry such as Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of "Final Fantasy"), David Perry (creator of "The Matrix" games, Shiny, Inc.) Will Wright (creator of "The Sims" and "Spore").
The convention will take place during one day, October 8th, Thursday between 12:00 and 20:00.
Computer games as a characteristic of today's culture
Social and cultural criticism from recent years reveals computer games' ideological base – these games are equivalent to processes of normalization, addiction and rationalization of the western world, and are also a new and wonderful world still basking in a large amount of creative liberty and naiveté, just before it completes a bourgeoisifying process.
The day of gaming at Icon places computer games at the center of the critical debate, and observes through them processes of addiction, censorship, supervision, indulgence, escapism and subjugation to powerful systems of rules. Explorers, creators, journalists and intellectuals gather together in order to talk about video games and the reasons we play them. Every one of the guests offers a different point of view on the subject, but one thing is agreed upon by all – video games outline the next generation's way of thinking, the only question is, what way of thinking is that?
