We're no Philadelphia
experts here at GamesRadar (or at least, not for the purposes or
duration of this article), but the city's newly-announced Grassroots Game Conference has us wanting to extend our knowledge beyond
“cheesesteaks, Rocky and that Denzel movie.” A spinoff of AT&T's
Philly Tech Week, Grassroots will fill the last week of April with a
stream of events exploring games' relationship to music, cinema, art
and society. And it looks smoother than a pot of cream cheese
(another Philly thing)!
While your year steadily
fills with opportunities to ogle booth babes or watch men in suits
perform hyperactive PowerPoint presentations, Grassroots' roster
contains a day-long excursion into that gaming question in the
form of a games-as-art panel with representatives from the
Smithsonian and National Endowment for the Arts, followed by
presentations on games' role in the artistic space and process. Other
presentations include a panel on music in gameplay and a day-long
conference on gamification for non-profits.
The event also includes a
screening of Indie Game: The Movie, which the filmmakers have added
to their release tour specially for the conference; the conference's
final day, appropriately enough, will feature a panel on starting
your own indie studio, to put all the week's thinking to practical
use. Surely Benjamin Franklin (also a Philly thing!) would approve.