Seats still open for GET LAMP documentary showing this Saturday!

Quick note: FAMilab has reached their laser-cutter goal, thanks to all who contributed! Project is still open for a little while if you wanna push ’em beyond 101%.

Fans of text adventures, newbies and addicts, it’s time! In conjunction with HacDC, we’ll be showing GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary this Saturday. Doors at 2:30, movie at 3. Afterward, we’ll have a video chat with producer Jason Scott, and then a workshop on creating your own interactive fiction, hosted by Matt Arnold. Seats are still available, reserve yours now!

Background: Text adventure games (aka interactive fiction) are like a “choose your own adventure” book on steroids. They’re some of the oldest computer games, and they’re a great way for fledgling game designers to write a story without spending forever on graphics and physics. This means YOU! If you’re participating in the workshop, please bring a laptop.

What makes this movie extra-special is that it’s Creative Commons licensed. Like open-source software, this means that anyone can change it, use parts of it, remix it, et cetera. There are some basic conditions, such as your changed version must be similarly licensed. This model allows producers (working in any copyrightable medium) to deliberately encourage creative reuse of their content, rather than locking it up forever in traditional copyright. Obviously, it’s something hackerspaces are interested in!