I just came home from Berlin where I gave a talk about Music Games at the AMAZE Festival. The whole event was dedicated to the role of music in games and the list of speakers is pretty impressive. The most notable among them was probably Keiichi Yano, founder and Design Overlord of iNis, inventor of Elite Beat Agents, Lips and Gitaroo Man. Yano-san gave an excellent keynote about the future of music games. If I had to guess I’d say he works on a dancing+singing game for Natal. And if I had to guess further I’d say they license Michael Jackson music for that game.

My own lecture was about Radio Flare REDUX (no surprise here) and the grand history of synaesthesia in games. I was basically drawing a line from Radio Flare to Rez to Kandinsky to Korsakov and further and back again. I think it was a joyful ride for me and the audience.

Other highlights of the festival included Japanese Noise performances, an openFrameworks workshop, a panel with Paulina Bozek from SCEE London Studios (SingStar) and Leonard Paul’s (EA Vancouver) lecture on sound design.