Everything IF-related going on at PAX East 2011!
Some of these are official PAX events, on the PAX schedule. Some will be hosted in our capacious Interactive Fiction Event Room, which will be the Alcott room in the Westin Waterfront hotel. (Right next to the PAX convention center.) And yet more will be in the People's Republic of Interactive Fiction Hospitality Suite (the Westin, upstairs, room number 846).
The IF Event Room and the IF Hospitality Suite are open to the public; you will not need a PAX badge to attend our events. So if you're in Boston at all, feel free to drop by.
The Hospitality Suite will be open noon-midnight Friday, noon-midnight Saturday, and noon-3pm Sunday. We'll have books, conversation, IF to play, and snacks to snack through the whole PAX weekend.
The IF Event Room (Alcott room in the Westin) will be open noon-midnight Saturday only. We'll be running IF events all day; see the "Saturday" events listed below. You'll also be able to marvel at the Automatypewriter.
How to fund your game development project with Kickstarter
(Friday, March 11th, 12:30pm-1:30pm, Cat Theatre -- PAX badge required)
Not IF-specific, but includes someone who raised a pile of money for an IF project. (Panel discussion: Cindy Au, Andrew Plotkin, Joshua A. C. Newman, Evan Balster, Max Temkin)
Interactive Drama: Dialogue as Gameplay
(Friday, March 11th, 2:00pm-3:00pm, Cat Theatre -- PAX badge required)
Not IF-specific, but includes Emily Short, whose dialogue-based IF games are widely known. (Panel discussion: Jonathon Myers, Stephen Dinehart, Evan Skolnick, Emily Short, John Gonzalez)
Parsely Games
(Friday, March 11th, 3:30pm-4:30pm, Merman Theatre -- PAX badge required)
Live-action IF-style roleplaying, from the creator of Action Castle! (Hosted by Jared Sorensen)
Non-gamers gaming
(Friday, March 11th, 4:30pm-5:30pm, IF Suite)
How do you design challenges for gamers who haven't played the last thirty famous entries in the genre? What about readers and writers who do not identify as gamers? (Panel discussion: Caleb Garner, Tim Crosby, Heather Albano, Sarah Morayati, Andrew Plotkin)
Meet the IF community!
(Friday, March 11th, 7:30pm-9:00pm, IF Suite)
If you want to drop by and chat with us, but you don't know when to try it, this is when. People will be in and out of the suite all weekend, of course, but this is when we'll all be in.
PAX Speed-IF
(Saturday, March 12th, 1:00pm-1:45pm, Alcott room in the Westin)
Write a short IF game in two hours! Actually, we'll give you until 10:30pm, so you can attend the rest of the convention too. Work alone or in groups. The game theme will be a surprise. (Hosted by David Cornelson.)
Setting as character in narrative games
(Saturday, March 12th, 2:00pm-3:00pm, Alcott room in the Westin)
In adventures and other explorational games, the setting is often the most eloquent and memorable character: an island, a castle, a starship. How do these locales tell stories, and how does the player character fit into those stories? (Panel discussion: Andrew Plotkin, Rob Wheeler, Stephen Granade, Dean Tate)
Collaborative IF: Everybody Dies
(Saturday, March 12th, 4:00pm-6:00pm, Alcott room in the Westin)
(That's the title, not the outcome!) We play Jim Munroe's Everybody Dies as a group. The game will be projected up on the big screen; people take turns reading and typing; anybody can shout command suggestions from the audience.
A lightning introduction to Inform 7
(Saturday, March 12th, 7:00pm-7:45pm, Alcott room in the Westin)
Inform 7 is an unusual IF design language; it doesn't look like any programming language you've used before. We'll give a super-speedy first lesson for IF newcomers (and even for people who have never programmed before). (Jason McIntosh, Andrew Plotkin)
IF Demo Fair
(Saturday, March 12th, 8:00pm-10:00pm, Alcott room in the Westin)
A showcase of new and interesting demonstrations in the IF world. (New types of NPC interaction, new user interfaces, and so on.) We'll set up the projects around the room and let viewers explore the exhibits they want to see. (Hosted by Emily Short; see announcement.)
PAX Speed-IF
(Saturday, March 12th, 10:30pm-11:30pm, Alcott room in the Westin)
Show off what you wrote today.
Curveship
(Sunday, March 13th, 1:30pm-2:30pm, IF Suite)
Nick Montfort presents his experimental narration-centric IF development system.
