Write the Game V4 is an innovative, interdisciplinary and trendsetting project in the field of creative sector development in V4 and the EaP countries, with no equivalent in the region. It builds on untapped creative potential of V4 and EaP countries in the global gaming industry and promotes local entrepreneurship. The project is coordinated by the Villa Decius Association and implemented in close partnership with such institutions as Univerzita Karlova from the Czech Republic, Szépírók Társasága and Nemesys Games from Hungary, Asociația Companiilor de Creație din Moldova from Moldova, the Slovak Game Developers Association and Mladý pes from Slovakia.
About the Project
The project consists of a 12-days lasting Visegrad Computer Game Scriptwriting Academy addressed to 25 emerging creators from Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Moldova selected by recruitment. Within the Academy held in Villa Decius in Krakow, there will be implemented inspirational lectures, scriptwriting workshops, own work on the creation of a Quest, individual meetings with mentors and study visits in the most interesting Krakow game studios. The project will start with a kick-off meeting of project partners and crucial project mentors.
Project Objectives
The main project objective is to develop cultural and creative sectors in V4 and Eastern Partnership countries and stimulate their innovative potential on a global scale. Specific project objectives embrace improving hard and soft skills of young creators in V4 and EaP countries in computer games creation and expanding their resources and competences crucial for effective functioning in the business environment of the gaming industry as well as improving networking, combining potentials and activating cooperation of representatives of the creative sectors in V4 and EaP countries.
Write the Game V4 is part of the Villa De¬cius Association’s project series that aims at developing and promoting literary cre¬ation since 1995. It puts into practice the Association’s mission of creating a meeting place for representatives of various fields of science and culture from all around the world and an exchange of ideas.
Write the Game V4 Experts:
Vít Šisler
Vít Šisler is a lead game designer of Attentat 1942, a narrative video game that tells the story of Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia from the perspective of those who experienced it firsthand. The game was critically acclaimed and received several prestigious awards, including the “Most Amazing Game” at the 2018 A MAZE festival, “Czech Game of the Year 2017,” and a nomination for the 2018 IGF Award for Excellence in Narrative. Vít Šisler is also an Assistant Professor of New Media Studies at Charles University, where he focuses on serious games, educational simulations, and game design. Vít Šisler has published extensively on issues related to video games and digital culture and has on numerous occasions spoken as a guest lecturer at leading US and European universities, including Stanford University, Georgetown University, and University of Pennsylvania.
Chris Bateman
Award-winning game designer Chris Bateman has been writing and designing games since the 16-bit consoles and has now worked on over fifty published games. His first game as lead designer and writer was Discworld Noir, and his most recent titles are the PlayStation VR game The Persistence, Shadows: Awakening, and the hit strategy game Tropico 6.
Chris was the founder of Develop Award Nominee International Hobo Ltd, the first consultancy to combine narrative and game design skills under one roof, and the origin of the job title ‘narrative designer’. He won the IGDA’s MVP Award for his work founding and running the organisation’s highly-successful Game Writers Special Interest Group.
He is a veteran of over 50 speaking engagements across four continents, including keynoting SB Games in Brazil 2015 and NASCOMM in India in 2005, five sessions at GDC, plus GDC Europe, MIGS, Develop:Brighton and many more besides.
Alexis Kennedy
Alexis Kennedy is co-founder of Weather Factory, a studio specialising in narrative experiments with a consciously indie aesthetic. Before that he founded Failbetter Games, where he created Fallen London and Sunless Sea – both critical and commercial successes that have continued to influence the indie end of the industry – but he left Failbetter in 2016 to do more exerimental work, and took a ronin year to do guest-writing gigs for clients like BioWare, Telltale and Paradox. Weather Factory’s current project is a ‘typically unclassifiable’ narrative game, the multiple-award-winning (and double BAFTA-nominated) Cultist Simulator, and their next announced one is BOOK OF HOURS, a combatless RPG set in an occult library.”
Maciej Śliwiński
A video game enthusiast with over 12 years of experience in the electronic entertainment industry, Maciej is one of the pioneers of eSports in Poland, being part of the first team of professional computer game players, PGS Gaming, from 2006 to 2009. He continued his career at GRY-OnLine S.A. acquiring experience in the online marketing of games, as well as in e-commerce. In 2013, Maciej became Community Manager at Razer, and is responsible for the dynamic growth in their social media channels in Poland. He has also worked with the Kool Things agency and ESL Poland in their online marketing for the video game market.
Since 2016, Maciej has been working in Krakow Technology Park, where he is responsible for the organization of Indie Showcase during the Digital Dragons conference, leads the Digital Dragons Academy project and is a co-author of the State of the Polish Video Game Industry report.
David František Wagner
Former teacher and historian, now working as a political advisor. He has been writing larps for the last fourteen years and founded rolling.cz, where he led the development of projects like legion.rolling.cz, delabete.rolling.cz and requiem.rolling.cz. He developed educational games with the Czech Institute for Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) and Post Bellum and led a course on how to use games in history education.
Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz
Ever since she was a child, she dreamed about working in the gaming industry, and since 2010 she managed to fulfill them diligently. She started her career in the industry as a tester, only to become a quest designer in the production of “The Witcher 3” in 2012. After moving to Bielsko-Biała, together with a group of long-time friends of developers she created SEVEN and an addition to this game entitled “The Drowned Past”. Karolina currently works as a Design Director, on co-production projects with Larian Studios (“Divinity: Original Sin”) and pre-production of the original Fool’s Theory.
Jakub Rokosz
Like most employees in the industry, Jakub became a developer because of his passion for video games. For the first five years he was working on many smaller projects, but the turning point was joining the CD PROJEKT RED team in 2010 to work on the game “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings”. After finishing his work on the third part of Geralt’s adventures, Jakub and his partners founded the studio Fool’s Theory based in Bielsko-Biała. After signing a contract with IMGN.PRO for the co-production of the first studio game, in the years 2015-2018 he held the Project Lead position for SEVEN. The game was released in December 2017 on PC and 2018 on PS4. Currently, Jakub runs a 20-person company that, in addition to cooperating with foreign contractors, is involved in the preparation of the next original production of Fool’s Theory.
Błażej Augustynek
Błażej Augustynek is a Quest Designer at CD PROJEKT RED. Previously a game modder, he’s a co-author of “Olbrzym w cieniu” — a book about video game narration — and spends his free time painting miniatures. Błażej graduated from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, worked as a Quest Designer on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Blood and Wine expansion and is currently involved in the works on Cyberpunk 2077.
Tomasz Marchewka
Project Leader:
Villa Decius Association
Project Partners:
Univerzita Karlova
Szépírók Társasága
Nemesys Games
Asociația Companiilor de Creație din Moldova
Slovak Game Developers Association
Mladý pes
The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
International Visegrad Fund