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Boston Festival of Indie Games Announces Narrative Games Panel
Features Game Industry Vets from Arkane, Ion Storm, Looking Glass and Infocom
August 14, 2013 ---Cambridge, MA—Boston Festival of Indie Games proudly announces the details of its featured
panel at this year’s festival, titled “Boston: The Cradle of Narrative Games.” The all-star session will take place in the
BostonFIG Main Theater, located in Room #10-250 (Maclaurin Buildings) from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm on Saturday, September
14. For more details on the festival schedule and registration, visit www.BostonFIG.com.
Boston, with a long tradition of developing amazing games with gripping stories, was home to two companies that are
an essential reference on creating narrative simulations, Infocom and Looking Glass Studios. Infocom created games such
as the Zork series and Wishbringer, and Looking Glass Studios is well-known as home to series such as Ultima Underworld,
System Shock and Thief. Moderated by narrative game designer and writer Matthew Weise, the panel features key members
of this Boston narrative games tradition: game luminaries Terri Brosius, Austin Grossman, Dave Lebling, and Brian Moriarty.
“We are fortunate that Boston has a rich legacy when it comes to the early development of strong narrative in games
development,” said Rik Eberhardt, offers BostonFIG programming co-chair and studio manager at MIT Game Lab. “We’re
thrilled to bring together some of the leading thinkers in this space for the featured panel at this year’s BostonFIG.”
“Boston: The Cradle of Narrative Games” – Featured Speakers
Terri Brosius worked for Looking Glass, Ion Storm, Electronic Arts, Tiger Style, and Arkane. She is the voice of
Shodan and Delacroix in the System Shock series, and the voice of Viktoria in the Thief series. Terri has writing credits on
the Thief games, Dishonored, Waking Mars, and more.
Austin Grossman is the author of two novels, You and Soon I Will Be Invincible. He is also a game designer whose
credits include System Shock, Deus Ex, Epic Mickey and Dishonored. His writing has appeared in Granta, the Wall Street
Journal, and the New York Times.
Dave Lebling is best known as a co-author of Zork and a founder of Infocom. He co-authored Zork I, Zork II, Zork
III and Enchanter with Marc Blank, and wrote Spellbreaker, Starcross, Suspect, The Lurking Horror and James Clavell's
Shogun. He worked for over ten years at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, where he co-authored Maze (the first
FPS played on the ARPANET) and Trivia.
Brian Moriarty: Brian Moriarty authored three of the original Infocom text adventures, Wishbringer,
Trinity and Beyond Zork. His first graphic adventure Loom was published by Lucasfilm Games. He collaborated with Ron
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Industry Veterans to Speak on Narrative Games Panel at Boston FIG
Cobb on Loadstar for Rocket Science, and is credited with “Additional Additional Story” for Steven Spielberg’s The Dig. He
has designed, engineered and/or produced games and toys for numerous publishers including THQ, Ubisoft and Mattel.
Matthew Weise (Moderator): Weise is an independent game designer and writer, most recently Narrative Designer
at Harmonix for Fantasia: Music Evolved. Weise was Game Design Director for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab for
five years. His writings on narrative game design appear in books, online publications and his blog Outside Your Heaven.
Additional speakers to be featured in the Main Theater at the Boston Festival of Indie Games will include keynote
speakers such as game designer and producer Robin Hunicke (“Finding Meaning in Gameplay”), and industry luminary Chris
Remo (“Specificity: The Indie’s Advantage”). Brian O’Halloran, best known for his recurring role as “Dante” in the CLERKS
films, will be the official master of ceremonies introducing all fest speaker, films and panels.
The 2nd annual Boston Festival of Indie Games will be held on Saturday, September 14, 2013 at the Stratton Student
Center and the Johnson Athletic Center on the MIT campus. A celebration of independent game development in a variety of
media and genres, Boston Festival of Indie Games is free and open to the public. Festival attendees play video games,
tabletop games and live action roleplaying (LARP) games in a casual, inclusive environment, plus attend film screenings and
keynote talks. To register to attend and to receive regular festival updates, visit www.BostonFIG.com.
ABOUT THE BostonFIG PARTNERS:
Title sponsors include Unreal Technology and Unity. Gold sponsors include Adobe, Ad Magic, Guidebook, Harmonix,
IndieGameStand, Microsoft, Muzzy Lane, Pandemonium Books & Games and Scirra. Additional sponsors include Corona
Labs, CritSuccess, GitHub, MocoSpace, Nokia, NYU Steinhardt, Proletariat, HappyGiant, Mindgrub, Darren Shield Esq., and
the The Unallied. Media partners include Comcast Spotlight, Boston Globe, CBS Radio/AMP 103.3 FM, DIGBoston, Polygon
and Yelp!. Organization and community partners include the City of Cambridge, Autodesk Animation User Group Association
of Boston, Board Game Design & Prototype Circle, Boston HTML 5 Game Developers Group, Boston Indies, Boston Post
Mortem, Boston Unity Group, Entertainment Consumers Association, and the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute
(MassDiGI). Service partners include Aqua Vita Creative, BeEpic Productions, Dapper Pixel, Lantana Games, MIT Game
Lab, Snowrunner Productions, ThemePark Studios and WonderCraft.
About Boston Festival of Indie Games (www.bostonfig.com):
The Boston Festival of Indie Games is a celebration of independent game development with emphasis on the New
England and neighboring regions. The Boston Festival of Indie Games seeks to support and showcase the efforts of
independent game developers by providing a free public event that encourages attendees to share and interact with games
in various media, including video games, location-based games and tabletop games. Produced under the non-profit
auspices of BeEpic, a Boston location-based games production group, the Boston Festival of Indie Games is focused on
creating an intersection between community, academic and independent interests in game play.
Press can now register to attend Boston Festival of Indie Games!: http://bostonfig2013press.eventbrite.com. To
schedule an interview or for more festival info, please contact Elicia Basoli, Boston Festival of Indie Games publicist, at
press@bostonfig.com or 617-877-7497. More info is also available at www.bostonfig.com.