Game event organizers, curators, and developers share a common interest in generating or crafting experiences. That's why they share, preserve or create what they identify as important, directing it towards an audience that is associated with an specific area, division or group, located through the world or within a country. This is the tradional concept associated with a Region. The task of delimiting the regional scope of a Game event can be complemented by considering the following terms of reference:

A well-defined purpose for your event and being clear on how you plan on adding value to others, can be useful in identifying the regional context on which your audience involves in or feels identified with. An example of this can be exhibitons that aim to create awareness, visibility, representation or knowledge of a certain topic, group, issue or sociocultural aspect that is only common within a certain Region and perhaps not as present or significant in others.

People perceive and give value in what they experience depending on their own cultural identity system their regions provide or have a high influence in. Hence the experience of your event will naturally have a subjective interpretation in its value by the audience depending on their Regions. This is mainly influenced by their sense of belonging and relationship with their Region’s local, national, international, sociocultural, demographic and temporal spheres. From there, it is that the purpose and the attributed value manage to condition or influence the Region of your event.

After figuring out how your event will run, consider how its context influences audiences in a dynamic and flexible way. As event organizers, empathizing with the audience can help to establish the regional spheres these people interact with, beyond their geographical, demographic or sociocultural characteristics.

Regions don't have fixed boundaries and are not strictly territorial, they can also be cultural or social. This is especially driven in the Regions by the presence of phenomena such as globalization, transculturation and migration. Is there any significant experience change in your event for people located in the capital, in downtown areas, in the margins or in different countries your audience may be in? Is there any tradition, linguistic or accessibility change? Is the technology you plan to use available for all the members in the audience? You may want to identify any regional considerations that could change the experience you intend to generate.

Technology makes it possible to expand the impact and reach your event will have through Regions. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) especially allow to widen territorial boundaries and create new ways of human interaction. There are many ways of using Technology in your favor as event organizers, as connecting physically distant audiences, reducing logistics, enhancing the event's experience through a mix of physical and digital installments, designing Digital Marketing, Press or Social Media strategies to reach new audiences and much more. Evaluate any opportunity in Technology that can help fulfill the purpose of the event through its considered Regions and that may also enrich the experience.

Just as the perceived value and significance from an event experience can vary according to the Region to which an audience belongs, the regional context has a great influence on the construction of individual identity. So it is assumed naturally and unconsciously that people represent their own Region to the rest of world, from what they do and say, especially in artistic or creative contexts.

Another way to enrich the experience of your event is meeting, sharing or inviting people from different Regions, who may have a common purpose and who under a scheme of mutual benefit can get involved as exhibitors, collaborators, strategic allies, organizers, guests, associates or even sponsors. This will give a great and distinctive socio-cultural value to your event, thanks to the socio-cultural exchange.

Game arts communities allow the exchange between audiences that share the same purpose, as well as collectively nourishing the transfer and generation of specialized knowledge or experiences within the same Region. The Communities tend to operate locally or on a reduced scale, and even so, they are able to create links or affiliations with other Communities that belong to Regions set in different frontiers.

Links between Communities are what motivates the figure of “Networks” to emerge. These allow the expanse of territorial borders and can define a shared framework of action over a specific purpose that Communities or Organizations could assume, support or identify with. An example of this, is the Game Arts International Network (GAIN) (gameartsinternational.network), whose purpose is “the interconnection of Game Arts organizations, nurturing new structures in emerging regions and allowing the exchange and generation of specialized knowledge about art and games around the world”¹⁾. Other example is the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) (igda.org), that “supports and empowers game developers around the world in achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers.”²⁾.

The interaction between Communities from different Regions of the world, under a shared framework promoted by an International Network that represents and integrates them, can be interpreted as a model to understand how global thoughts and common knowledge within the Network itself can generate a bidirectional and multidimensional exchange of value inclined towards mutual growth, with its member Communities that operate locally in select Regions. This is often known as “acting locally and thinking globally“ or what is associated under the concept of Glocality.

Another practical example of this is the Lara Game Jam (https://instagram.com/laragamejam) community located in Barquisimeto, Lara, Venezuela, that organizes local game jams, talks, workshops and meetups to promote the culture of video Game Development in the Central-Western Region of the country to support the local and national game development scene. This Community was founded in 2019 as a result of the organization of a local and annual site for the international event by the name of Global Game Jam (https://globalgamejam.org/). This is a Game Development hackathon that sets common parameters shared by all the local event sites in the world, while motivating the global exchange of knowledge and experiences between people from different Regions. Its meeting point and core shared greater purpose is the the creation of games under experimental, collaborative and innovative scenes, as a case of acting in locally while thinking in a global proportion.

Therefore, if you want to go further with the Regions of your exhibition or event, you could consider generating or affiliating with a Community around its theme and purpose that you have defined for it. This will not only allow you to meet and interact with more people in your Region with the same purpose, but will let you reach and cooperate with other Regions of the world through the consolidation and participation in related Networks.

Jose Luis Pacheco Boscan

Mer Grazzini