EuroLAN parties: A network of European cross cultural digital game events

1. EuroLAN parties: A network of European cross cultural digital game events A preliminary draft for a FP6 IST proposal Eduardo J C Beira Departamento de Sistemas de Informação Universidade do Minho www.dsi.uminho.pt/~ebeira ebeira@dsi.uminho.pt

2. Principles • Putting together European gamers, academics and industry • Putting together gamers teams from all the Europe (UE) • UE Cross countries cultural exchange and mobility • Specially between “old UE15” and new UE countries • To promote an European digital gaming culture as an important paradigm of the European young cultural modernity • Digital games not an evil, but a powerful tool for sociability, personal development, education and training • Digital games are an important source of digital literacy • Culturally flavoured European digital games • Towards a leading role for theEuropean digital game industry and community

3. What? • The basic idea: • A set of digital gaming events • Based on the LAN parties model • With people from all the European countries • 10 to 30 people from each UE country (15+10) • Country team selection criteria to be discussed, but managed locally according to general policies defined at the project level • 250 to 750 gamers per event • 2, events per year • One in the eastern side (new UE countries), another on the western side (EU15) • Parallel and simultaneous meetings for the the European research and development community involved in the FP6 IST digital games initiatives • Part of the event dedicated to new developments; part for pure gaming competition • Different events can have a different structure for different types of games • Arcade games vs simulation games • MRPPQ games • Mobile games • ...

4. For what? • A set of events • Promoting the European cross cultural exchange on the gamers community • Creating game competition between national teams • Each event score contributing to a final European score • Cross cultural Game Labs where new ideas for games, prototypes, ... developed in the several actions of an integrated digital research FP6 IST program can be tested and experimented with direct feedback from users • Cross cultural Game Lab specially useful for inter cultural digital games studies and to observe and study collective social behaviour in the gamers communities • “social augmented reality: real and virtual interaction between real people playing games in virtual spaces and worlds”

5. The LAN party model • High speed LAN infrastructure available for each event • Gamers take their own equipment with them • LAN equipment and support resources supported from large computer, telecom and software companies • Cisco, HP, Sun, Microsoft, ... • A role for the local companies support also • A specialized team for network management • A specialized team for game and competition management • Game servers and software platforms needed for the several games • Knowledge transfer for the national local organization teams • A event intranet platform integrated with the game platform software • Check in, event management, broadcasting • 24 hr (36hr?) non stop event • Typically large spaces in university campus • Gizmo / multiuse pavilions • Local support from university people

6. What funding? • Travel and living • Joint financing by IST and mobility programs • IST FP6: event logistics • General management of the project • Specialized network and gaming teams • Open source game and competition platform