The international edition of “Write the Game V4” – The Visegrad Academy of Computer Games Scripting in Villa Decius took place from 4th to 14th August. Twenty-five participants from five countries: Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova participated in workshops, lectures, mentoring sessions, visited game studios – and created their own quests under the guidance of renowned experts.
We would like to thank the participants, experts, mentors, partners and the WTG V4 team!
It was a very inspiring time, full of impressions and intense, as we can see by reading a report prepared by our intern and last year’s graduate of the Academy – Karolina Ślusarczyk.
My eyes once again saw the beautiful Renaissance building – Villa Decius. I took a deep breath. This time it will be my job. Yes, definitely the best job in the world in the most beautiful place. What am I actually aiming at?
For Write the Game, the Summer School of Computer Games Scripts. It took place for the third time, but this time in an international version as Write the Game V4. Twenty-five participants came to Krakow this year, not sixteen as before. The young artists came from the Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. And this time I was a co-organiser, not a participant. It was as big a challenge for me as it was a year ago! Initially I had a series of meetings with the main organizers. We tried to plan everything as best we could. My task was to contact the participants. Since then I have been answering all their questions. I made sure that they were not late for important events and that they did not get lost on the hotel – Villa Decius route. I just took them under my wing.
“[…] The first day was a special dose of excitement. We were officially greeted by the organizers, and then we got to know the other participants. I quickly realized that I was dealing with an extraordinary company. A few writers, a set designer, a musician or a larp maker. To my surprise, the theme of games, although very important, is not exactly what unites us all. Our common denominator is that to a greater or lesser extent, each of us has a spark of artistry. Despite the age difference, we quickly became a great team.
This is how I described my first impressions from the project last year. What happened this year? The level of my stress definitely didn’t change, but this time it was about whether everything was at the last button? Fortunately, I quickly realized that the extraordinary company would forgive me for all my possible organizational failures – and so it was. For example, when the participants showed up at the hotel, it turned out that their rooms were not ready yet! Fortunately, there are no situations that couldn’t be solved. However, I will keep secret the organizing tricks that I learned in this work 😉
The participants surprised me with their interdisciplinarity. They were people from different worlds, not only writers, but also programmers. Among them there was even a doctor and biotechnologist, who will certainly find a cure for cancer one day. As in previous years, the participants were divided into workshop groups, where they worked together on a fragment of the new game.
“(…) The following days do not flow, but rush – like days before the session. (…) Ten days of workshops is a lot. But ten days and nights is much more! And we were very determined to finish what we started…. It’s great to work in a group that wants to create something. Ideas float in the air as densely as Cracovian smog. And when we finally thought we had invented something interesting, we went to the mentors… And it turned out that at night our idea seemed really much better than in the daytime!
This year time slowed down a little bit, but from what I saw, it slowed down only for me. The participants worked really hard and the crunch was written on their tired faces. Their intensive effort paid off, however, because they surprised us with an amazing grow show on the last day of the workshop. Interestingly, the meals together again turned out to be very inspiring. Elements stolen straight from our plates became an integral part of the presented games – last year fish became a part of the story, this year it was broccoli 🙂 The production of each group was incredibly creative, with the action taking place on the ship. The first game we saw was a game set in the future, with robots and humanity in the lead roles. But don’t think that it was a typical idea – quite the contrary! The second game gave us a lot of laughter. The action takes place on a ship, but on an airplane and it was here that broccoli survived its virtual life. The third group offered us to play the role of a doctor, and the emotions were provided by the lost cure for a disease suffered by the ship’s captain.
Intrigued? Unfortunately, what happened on Write the Game also stays on Write the Game… The mystery has been broken, but let me stop there. I’m sure that each participant, although extremely tired, was proud of the final result. To make a game in two weeks is in the end quite a challenge! Well, I can only warmly congratulate all the participants – they did a great job!