Gamelab makes games and Archives meet in a "100% VR" encounter

Gamelab's organisation has just announced that this year the event will have a first standalone encounter on April 22 in an innovative virtual format. This first date, prior to the annual summer conference, means not just the non-physical attendance and viewing of the panels -something that was introduced with Gamelab Live 2020 due to the pandemic circumstances- but also the creation of a VR space for speakers, viewers, and media.

The fresh offering is backed by the European Digital Treasure programme and will be hosted "inside Microsoft's hybrid reality platform Altspace VR". The collab with the former involves an added emphasis on cultural archive matters, including the introduction of several archive-game transmedia projects. Besides, your typical top names from the industry will have their talks, this time in VR.

The speaker list includes names such as Maxime Durand (creator of Assassin's Creed universe), Ian Livingstone (Tomb Raider producer), Sam Barlow (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Her Story), Andrew Reinhard (video game archaeologist), Kate Edwards (Global Game Jam), and Charles Cecil (Broken Sword creator).

The archive side of things will be well represented by the Spanish government's state archive sub department; representatives of the national archives of Hungary, Norway, Malta, Portugal, Austria, and Ireland; as well as personalities from the HAEU (Historical Archives of the European Union) and from the national archives of Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, and Switzerland. The idea is to find new opportunities for archives in the video games medium and also to help the creators of historical video games (such as Assassin's Creed) with better access to archived documents.