VideoBrains: ChristmasBrains

It’s that time of the year again, so as a present to all our speakers, we’re letting them speak about whatever they want. No theme except ‘joy to the world’ or to all VideoBrains attendees, at any rate. You can share the love with our Patreon, but Christmas is about giving rather than recieving, so I've got some great talks for you.

You’ll have noticed that we’re charging for this event. For your £5, you get a free drink at Meltdown and some Christmasy cake. I'm not saying there's an unofficial bake off, I am saying that if you're the baking type you should totally bring a cake along. I'll be bringing lot of Mince Pies.

THERE WILL BE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS - everyone coming along will get a present in one way shape or form. we can't guarentee anything and it may just be a couple of cool stickers but the important thing is that you get some presents. Your dedication to the christmas spirit may or may not affect how nice a present you get from the bag.

We haven’t suddenly decided to run VideoBrains to make money, we’re just aware that at our first couple of events, we’ve had a lot of people book tickets then not turn up. This is really frustrating for us, because we’ve turned away people who wanted tickets, then had a lot of empty seats.

We’re going to experiment with charging in December and see if that meansmore people who buy tickets are there on the night. We still want VideoBrains to be accessible for everyone, though, so if you can’t afford a ticket, just email Jake@videobrains.co.uk and ask for one. If you do buy a ticket, your first drink is on us, and anything left over can help with Speakers travel!

We’ll use any money we make from the tickets to help pay for our speakers’ travel costs. This means we’ll be able to have people come and speak who live further away.

We're partnered with Five out of Ten and Nineworlds VG. If you have any questions or you want to pitch a 15-minute talk for a future event, please email Jake@videobrains.co.uk.

VideoBrains talks are recorded and published to our website, social media channels and other publications and promotional materials. By purchasing a ticket for this event, you consent to being filmed and/or photographed and for VideoBrains to publish any associated media. If you would like to attend VideoBrains but want to withdraw recording consent, please contact the event organiser.

Twitter hashtag = #VideoBrains

Here’s our December speaker lineup:

A Christmas NIGHTS Carol - Alan Williamson

Alan takes a look at the power of nostalgia and the magic of childhood through the Sega Saturn classic 'Christmas NIGHTS Into Dreams'

"mat jones is here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff"- Mat Jones

Seriously. That's the name of his talk.

Literacy and Competency in Games - Mary Hamilton and Grant Howitt

The Rover: Examining the Strange Status of Fantasy Heroes. - Paul Dean

My Snes And Other Animals - Alex Roberts

Musing on Alex's adventures in retro console development.

A History Of Violence: Rainbow Six - Jake Tucker

From a humble start as a Hostage Rescue Team simulator to the ill-fated Patriots, Rainbow Six has maintained an uneasy relationship with it's own central theme: Violence. How have the changing attitudes to violence affected design choices, and is its focus necessarily a bad thing?

Merry Christos - Christos Reid

Internet Superstar Christos "Failnaut" Reid gathers everyone for a series of heartwarming tales from his time playing and making videogames.