In this Playroom we invite you to explore new approaches to open-world games and storytelling. Through collective play, artist interventions, and conversation, we will explore how these worlds are built and how we behave inside them.

Games often ask us to learn the controls, collect things and get better. Artists working with game engines also invite us to listen, notice, hesitate and make connections. Not knowing exactly what to do can be part of encountering someone else’s way of seeing. Who can you become in someone else’s world? What forms of storytelling emerge when players are free to wander, possess, disturb, observe, or simply spend time? How can a virtual environment carry histories, philosophies, memories, and material traces?  
Explore a personal search for identity, move between different bodies and follow stories that resist being rewritten. Games and interactive works about finding and making room to exist.  

What to expect?
DocLab Playrooms are informal gatherings where you can meet artists from the DocLab program and fellow festival visitors, and explore how art, documentary and technology come together. Watch artists demonstrate their work, join the conversation, try prototypes and interactive artworks, or simply enjoy a drink. No prior knowledge or experience is needed. Simply drop by de Brakke Grond (Rode Zaal) anytime between 15:00-19:00 and join in whenever you like.