Festival fever

London – The UK could one day have its own international gaming conference to rival E3 in Los Angeles and the Tokyo Game Show.

• The London Games Festival will show the UK as ‘a leading cluster for games and interactive entertainment’, according to Mayor Boris Johnson
• The festival will coincide with this year’s Bafta Games Awards on 7 April at London’s Tobacco Dock

From 1 to 10 April 2016 the capital will be brimming with gamers and technophiles from around the world. The London Games Festival will take place across 15 events and 10 locations, including Somerset House, which will host Now Play This.

The weekend-long exhibition in the New Wing will be designed around the theme of play with classic paper games to the latest in digital distractions, including Maf’j Alvarez’s Rootbeans and Josh Hadley’s Typemine.

Somerset House will also host workshops in which newcomers can get a taste for games development and trial new interfaces, including Yifei Chai’s The Pretender Project.

The festival is also inviting independent UK-based games companies to stage their own events throughout the week as part of Festival Fringe, a series of satellite events to broaden its reach beyond the capital.