On December 1st, 2018 myself and another member of the CATS Lab, Kathryn Brewster, hosted an event that we organized which we called the Games @ Play Arcade. We conceived of it as an arcade to introduce the UCI campus to experimental independent games, a domain that often goes overlooked on a campus so focused on esports and partnerships with AAA studios.

We put out a small call online inviting submissions. We received over 60 submissions which we narrowed down to 10 to showcase in the arcade. Thanks to funding from a UCI Illuminations grant we were able to pay an honorarium to every developer whose game was selected! Each developer (7 digital, 3 analog) sent demos of their games and we set them up for play in a one-night only arcade!

We had nearly 80 attendees- pretty good for Saturday night on a college campus- and we look forward to organizing a similar event next year.

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Above is a few choice photos from the arcade and below is a link to a thread on my Twitter where you can read descriptions of all the games featured in the arcade.