This year, the button: Festival of Gaming Culture took place from May 19 – 20, 2017 at Seifenfabrik Graz. For two days, this event provided the perfect opportunity to discover all aspects of digital and analog gaming culture – visitors could not only try out retro games, board games as well as the newest video and console games but also participate in cosplay competitions and e-sports tournaments and attend expert talks about game development.

As part of this year’s Button Festival,  the first Styrian Game Awards  (SAGA) sponsored by UBIT/WKO and Game Dev Graz were awarded. An international jury has chosen “Drone Swarm” from stillalive studios to be awarded with the grand prize of 1000 €. Moreover, all visitors of the button festival had the chance to play and vote from five selected finalists, out of which Goliath VR by Wolfgang Tschauko won the Audience Choice Award.

Additionally, Game Dev Graz was proud to host the “Talking Dev” series at the button festival, with invited talks from international experts in game development. On Saturday evening, Tadej Kupcic and Danilo Kapel from Cowardly Creations (AT/SLO) started off with their talk “Uncanny Valley – How not to make a game”, followed by Thomas Reisenegger from ICO Partners (UK) who talked about “Games PR for Small Studios: Little Money, Maximum Impact”.  This was concluded by an open discussion panel about “The Future of „Us“ ” with members from Game Development Graz.

All in all, the button festival 2017 once again was a huge success – it offered a lot of valuable experiences in gameplay, insights into game development and definitely showcased the broad variety and engagement of the local community.

We hope to see you next year at button festival 2018!

Header photo by Matthias Rauch, www.mrfoto.at