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Whaaat!?

That's "Whaaat!?," not "what?".

Urban slang dictionaries define the term as one of amazement and disbelief, combined with delight.

It鈥檚 what organizers of ATLAS Institute鈥檚 鈥�,鈥� hoped festival-goers听would feel while attending the Sept. 29 event. The all-day festival was open to everyone, for a fee of $1.

鈥溾�榃haaat!?鈥� is the reaction of someone playing an amazing game,鈥� says Matt Bethancourt, director of the Technology, Arts and Media (TAM) program and the new ATLAS Institute鈥檚 Whaaat!? Lab, where experiments are designed, refined and tested. 鈥淲e are interested in the delight others get from these experiences.鈥�

Bethancourt and Danny Rankin, ATLAS instructor and recent graduate of the institute鈥檚 Creative, Technology and Design (CTD) program, created the festival, where participants sampled experimental tabletop and electronic games, and听learned about the art form of game design through speakers, panels and workshops.听The event was geared towards games that 鈥渄on鈥檛 fit in traditional boxes,鈥� says Rankin. The goal was to leave people 鈥渟urprised, maybe confused听and hopefully delighted.鈥�

Keynote speakers included gamemakers Mattie Brice, an independent video game designer, critic and industry activist, whose games and writings focus on diversity initiatives in the games industry, and Pippin Barr, assistant professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montr茅al, where he directs the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) Research Center. Additional speakers included Jason Tagmire, founder of Button Shy Games, and ATLAS Professor Daniel Leithinger, who led a two-hour workshop using the Nintendo Labo.听

Arcades in the ATLAS Black Box and lobby, including collaborative, multi-player tabletop games, sound-music experiences and a kinetic video game that involves a lot of jumping around, will stay open throughout the day, and attendees will be able to play at their leisure. There will also be a large vintage arcade from the 1970s and 80s, with old Atari, Commodore 64 and Vectrex consoles, courtesy of CU Boulder鈥檚 Media Archeology Lab. 听

鈥淚t will feel like your 鈥渃ool friend鈥檚 basement in the 1980s,鈥� Rankin says.

Festival attendees were able to sample production copies of 鈥淩avine,鈥� a cooperative, tabletop, wilderness survival game that Rankin and Bethancourt created; 鈥淏usy Work,鈥� developed by Bethancourt听and his wife, Lisa, which employs phones, keyboards and a shredder, and won the 2018 IndieCade Media Choice Award; and 鈥淧lease Hold,鈥� a narrative adventure done through a custom-designed phone, also created by the Bethancourts and Rankin.

鈥淲e want to show people that games can be more than what they think, and hopefully leave them really excited and pumped about the future of what鈥檚 happening in games,鈥� Rankin says.

鈥淭he idea is delight,鈥� Bethancourt adds. 鈥淭he best thing about games and interactions are the times when they surprise you, and you have this total Whaat!? experience. That鈥檚 what we are focusing on.鈥�

Whaaat!? was sponsored by the ATLAS Institute and CU Boulder's Engineering Excellence Fund.

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