Grassroots Game Conference bringing gamification, gaming art and music to Philly

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.