GameCamp: iVirtua Review (Barcamp for games)

Phew. It's hot here in east London, where we're getting on with the serious business of games at GameCamp.
The basic idea: get a bunch of people who love games into a room andsee what happens. So far, we've had dozens of sessions from people withsome great ideas. I've been running around in a mild panic all day, soI've been flitting from talk to talk.
Upstairs there's a serious amount of Wii Sports and Rock Band actiongoing on, while downstairs there's a lot of earnest chatting andlaughing. I even heard a round of applause somewhere in there.
My grand plan to cover things live has slightly collapsed -there's only so much one man can cope with. But I hope there will beplenty of other people blogging, photographing and talking about theevent online. There's definitely a lot of twittering already.
Let's see where things end up...

We came, we saw, we played.
More than 100 people gathered yesterday in Spitalfields for our freemixer to discuss games of all types. There were designers, makers,programmers, thinkers, writers, hackers, players and many more. Moststreams of gaming were represented.
The photos are starting to stream onto on Flickr - several hundred here already,and they give you a bit of a flavour of what took place. I'd rather letother people say exactly what happened and what ideas were thrownaround - but there's not much on the blogs yet, but given that I'mnursing a hangover I imagine many other people might be in the sameposition. I'll be keeping an eye out and pointing you in theirdirection when the news starts to roll in.
Update: Richard Bartle, one of our more illustrious guests (and a man who likes to speak his mind, has posted some thoughts on his blog:

"The point for me wasn't so much the talks, but theinteraction with the smart people who were at the talks (which didinclude the speakers in most cases, too). This was what made the wholeevent work. I just wish I could have stayed longer. I'll be first inline for a ticket for the next one!".

Praise indeed!
More thoughts from Steve Dempsey: "Today was an excellent day"; Rachel Clarke, Robin Clarke, Ste Curran, Philip Trippenbach, Kieron Gillen and Katy Lindemann.
We played around a little with the traditional BarCamp process -most of all, there wasn't any camping - but from my position asorganiser, GameCamp 08 seemed to be a resounding success. One attendeetold me it was the best day out she'd had in ages, and I only have tohope that says more about us than them.
The celebratory booze has been quaffed - all that's left is for me to thank everyone else who made it happen: Rachel Clarke, The Dave Green (who I think I forgot to thank on stage, sorry Dave!), Dan and Adrian Hon of Six to Startand our own Aleks. And, in supporting roles, Chris Mac Morrison did asterling job with the logo (including distributing Moo stickers for alland sundry), plus Francesca Ropelato from Guardian events who helped mesort out some final bits and bobs like the T-shirts we gave away.
Massive thanks have to go to the kind people at Sony, whoprovided not only the astoundingly cool venue but also a lovely lunchand helped things go so smoothly. Thanks to Harmonix, who provided uswith a copy of Rock Band, which proved hugely entertaining, and shoutsout to Nintendo and Microsoft too, who loaned us some consoles for theday.
But most of all to the people who turned up - they dictated theagenda, and brought along their ideas and enthusiasm. I think we'll bedoing more of this in the future...