Kinect Camp 2012: 1 week, 15 programmers, 2 games developed

On April 2012, as a part of the Digital Art VIA festival organized in Mons (Belgium), social games demo have been planned in Mons city streets. The target was to present games using the Kinect technology, on the theme of the legend of the Angels of Mons. Fishing Cactus (game development studios, specialized in Kinect Technology, working for UbiSoft for instance), Technocité (ICT and Digital Media Knowledge Center), the VIA Digital Art festival and the MIC Belgium worked closed together to develop, in only one week, two city sized video games. It ended by an outdoor game that took place on Mons’ Grand Place. The aim was to spotlight the talent of the Walloon region and raise awareness of Social Gaming in the city.

To develop the games, The MIC Belgium has organized a one week Microsoft Kinect SDK Camp. The principle was simple: 15 volunteers (10 developers and 5 game designers) who didn’t know each other have been selected based on their CV and talents. They’ve been trained on Kinect SDK and .Net technology during one week, supervised by Fishing Cactus and they developed two of the games that have been presented during the VIA festival.

Besides the social dimension, the project demonstrates the innovation capacity of the MIC in the city that will become in 2015 the European Capital of Culture. Two games were developed and were played and appreciated by the public as you can see in the video below. This is a great achievement for all organizers and developers and we are very proud to be driving this project.