I went to Playful at the ever-lovely Conway Hall last week. It was an event all about play and games in their various incarnations. This year’s Playful was titled ‘The Shape of Things to Come’, so there was a lots of talk about the future; both the near, more mundane future and the faraway fantasy dream-future. Several speakers touched on past visions of the future we now find ourselves in (disappointment in the lack of flying cars was a recurring statement), and there was lots of talk about how we got here and how the ideas of play, interaction and creative stories can propel us into tomorrow.

Science fiction writer Al Robertson talked about play with regards to imagination and the creation of the future. The bit that sticks in my mind from his talk was about inventions first dreamed up by sci-fi writers (including, amongst other things, mobile phones and water beds). To me what’s interesting about this—and, again, a recurring theme of the day—is the idea of where the future comes from and how it is born. Al argued the case for imagination and frivolous play; how sometimes seemingly fanciful and directionless ideas can result in practical, meaningful applications. This can be the case not only for technological innovations, but for cultural norms. His example was that the first interracial kiss on Western television was between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura.

In a closely linked talk, Marcus Brown spoke about his idea of a “Middle Aged Future”.  He suggests that too many new inventions we’re living with are products of an outdated canon of science fiction; that the future we now live in was created by middle aged men who were disappointed they didn’t end up with the vision they were promised in the 70s and are now trying to recreate that vision instead of making things that are relevant to the future as seen from the present.

He urged people to “try and think beyond the canon of the future. Try and think like children.”

Louise Downe gave a nice talk about toilets and design. Her point was about the interaction between humans and machines. She said that “intimacy with machines requires trust. Trust that they think the same way we do.” If that trust isn’t there, we start to make up the rules of how a machine would think. She elaborated on this point by mentioning LA Noire, the detective-style video game where you have to try and guess which characters are lying. But when you play, you can’t approach it as you would a human. You end up trying to guess what the computer would think lying looks like. When that happens, you’re jarred out of the world of the game which is distracting and creates a hiccup in the experience.

I thought Georgina Voss gave one of the more engaging talks of the day about negotiation and consent in play with regards to sadomasochism and kink. She asks, “what if people don’t want to play?” Safe, sane and consensual are the principles by which those in the SM community operate; with a specific emphasis on the idea of informed consent, and Georgina argued that those who design playful experiences and games should follow the same principles. She ended with a strong, “If I can’t make a choice, I don’t want to be a part of your future revolution.”

Other nice speakers included Matt Sheret who talked about playing with cities, with regards to giving cities a little bit of character, whether it’s man-eating buildings in a fictional Warhammer city or enabling Tower Bridge to tweet. He said, “imagine a city filled with buildings that talk to us.”

Richard Lemarchand, game designer at Naughty Dog, worked on the Uncharted series of video games. He said some interesting things about video games being a meeting of technology and the arts. He referenced loads of amazing indie games like Graveyard, Passage, Dear Esther and one of my favourites, Today I Die. He talked about the development of Uncharted and the importance of building a space in games for slowness and reflection. Places where curiosity is rewarded.

Brendan Dawes talked about the importance of physicality and objects; interacting with things. One of the most lovely things I saw all day was a little memory box. Whenever his wife opened the box a light sensor would activate and a little screen would show a random text they had sent to each other.

Matt Ward talked about Green=Boom, experiments with imaginary bombs. He learned that suspending people’s disbelief is remarkably easy with lo-fi bomb simulations, and that when you put people in a situation they naturally play and make stories around that imaginary situation and react in very real ways.

It was great to hear different thoughts on play in the broadest sense, outside of the buzzword/gamification context, and a great look at the future and how it can be made.