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CES took place in Las Vegas again this year, although in a diminished form due to recurring pandemic conditions. The trade show was broadcasted online in a parallel streaming event. Daily b-roll videos documented the activities on the trade floor. But everything taking place at the trade event pointed to somewhere else. For a number of reasons, CES became a reference hub directing to different levels of hybridity. Of

This year’s SIGGRAPH Asia took place in Tokyo and online, adding a new program track for games to the scientific and cultural agenda. While the American mother event traditionally focuses heavily on CGI in film and screen productions, the Asian offspring now levels up CGI developments in interactive entertainment and installations. The Games track started with a historical journey through programming frameworks

After the fully virtual conference in 2020, VR Days Europe wanted to get a foot back into reality by organizing the 2021 edition as a hybrid experience on site in Amsterdam, online and in 20 international locations with satellite events. Right on the first day of the conference, the Netherlands needed to go into lockdown with curfew again. The convention went into revirtualization: in-person events could only take pl

The period of time between Halloween and Thanksgiving is a particularly busy one with media conferences: GamesBeat Summit Next, PocketGamersConnect, BeyondGames and WhiteNights Seattle followed each other in close succession. They all played tricks and treats with the season’s buzzwords ‘Metaverse’ and ‘NFT’, trying to nail jelly to trees while losing sight of the woods. The more stabs t

The presentation framework of the two days streaming event on virtual beings and societies was quite original, despite being an obvious choice for this topic: the entire convention was presented on virtual multiplayer platforms. Fable Studio‘s Edward Saatchi was hopping from one social event platform to another one for individual meeting slots of about 20 minutes with everybody who is anybody in the visionary w

Forced to continue an online presence for another year, Gamescom 2021 once again became a streaming event for trailer promotion. The business part was skipped entirely and moved to Devcom. The show nevertheless presented some interesting shifts in perception for a possible development of game promotion, as well as for the relevance of games in our present society. Gamescom Now keeps holding the middle spot of the ann

This year’s digital edition of Devcom moved from the habitual by-programming spot for Gamescom to the center stage, at least for game industry relevance. Not only lasted the convention longer than the more popular trade show, it also pictured a more accurate state of play, and it cared about VR as a development path for industry progression. For five days, the conference presented workshops, panels and product

SIGGRAPH, the premier conference on computer graphics, went virtual again this year. The online hub was organized like last year‘s virtual conference with a large part of on-demand lectures and papers, centered around a full week of live presentations and panel discussions. The online event focused on the established thematic frameworks and discussion groups. Meetings and session chats could be continued long a

After the totally digital experience of A Maze 2020, the festival for playful media and interactive art partly got back on the real stage this year. The main program with lectures, workshops and panels continued to be streamed online. But some events were broadcasted live from the festival’s traditional venue in Berlin, and they set up a co-working space for public online viewing on site. Unfortunately, the mai