Keynote Speaker Announcement: Leena van Deventer

ATOM and ACMI are excited to announce the following Keynote speaker:

Leena van Deventer is a game developer, writer, and educator from Melbourne, Australia. She has taught interactive storytelling at RMIT and Swinburne Universities, and has worked on games titles such as ‘Run That Town’ by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Leo Burnett Sydney, and “Twists & Turns” for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Run That Town recently won a Gold Lion Award at Cannes, and Leena herself won the “Pioneer” award at the inaugural MCV Pacific Women In Games Awards presented by Xbox for her work “paving the way for women in the Australian and New Zealand games industries.”

Session title: Beyond ShootyBang’s Revenge: The storytelling potential in games.

There is a shift happening in videogames, a shift that some would argue is well overdue. No longer are we confined to the demographic of the pimply teenager in his mother’s basement playing militaristic warfare games or ripping through zombies with chainsaws. A new world is opening up where people are using games to tell personal stories of their lived experience, to encourage empathy, and to examine what it is about games themselves that can help us stand in another’s shoes. Leena van Deventer explores the potential games have for a totally different way to tell stories.