Over 8,500 visitors on site and one million online took part in the 16th Play - Creative Gaming Festival, which was partly organised by a youth festival management team. Rincs Art took home the Most Creative Gaming Award for "Different Strokes", while Studio Playces won the Audience Award for "Together Fluss".

The theme of this year's 16th Play - Creative Gaming Festival was "Soap Opera". It ended last Sunday - and attracted a total of 8,500 participants on site at the Jupiter in Hamburg, as well as over a million viewers and participants via Twitch and online location. The festival had a strong hybrid focus - in addition to the talks streamed on Twitch, people were able to network from home via the digital festival location PlayValley in their browser.

For the first time, young people aged between 14 and 21 from all over Germany were involved in organising the festival. The Young Play youth team helped prepare parts of the programme and curated their own exhibition.

The Creative Gaming Awards were also presented at the festival. The winner in the Most Creative Gaming Award category was Different Strokes by Rincs Art. An expert jury consisting of Alistair Aitcheson, game developer, Amanda Förtsch, project manager at Gamecity Hamburg, Anke Günther, co-founder of Beardshaker Games and professor of game design at HAW, Janusz from the youth team Young Play, and Tobis Fox, software developer, were enthusiastic about the game, which, according to their statement, "lets us live the dream of exhibiting in a gallery, regardless of whether we consider ourselves talented or not. Leaving a painting to be completed, or completing someone else's, feels like a gift to an unknown stranger on the other side of the world". The Creative Gaming Award in the Audience Award category went to Studio Playces for the game Together River. Visitors were able to explore virtual underwater worlds on site using controllers disguised as aquatic animals.

The Play Festival is organised by Initiative Creative Gaming e. V. and jaf - Verein für medienpädagogische Praxis Hamburg e. V.. The festival is supported by the Hamburg Media and Education Project Fund, the BürgerStiftung Hamburg, gamecity Hamburg, the Future Package of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and the JIZ - Youth Information Centre Hamburg of the BSB.

Share this post

Written by

Pascal Wagner
Pascal Wagner
Pascal Wagner is Chief of Relations of GamesMarket and Senior Editor specialised in indie studios, politics, funding and academic coverage.