For the fourth year in a row we went to GovHack, the world's biggest open-data hackathon, and made a game. We (Paris and Jon) teamed up with Rex, Seb, Matthew, Tim, Arabella, and Josh, and build Beat the Press, a game about news (sort of?) Check out the video, and the website for the project! It was a great way to spend 48 hours.

We're looking forward to coming back to GovHack next year! Thanks to all the organisers and volunteers in Hobart, as well as the other participants. Everyone made it such a great experience as usual!

In London, in October, we'll be giving a talk about our experiences turning open data into video games at OSCON; it's one of our favourite conferences, and we'd love to see you there!

At Linux.conf.au 2016, in Geelong, we presented a talk on our experiences building video games at open data hackathons, such as GovHack. The video and slides are now available! The video is available on YouTube, and embedded below, and the slides are available on SpeakerDeck.

Paris Buttfield-Addison https://linux.conf.au/schedule/30351/view_talk Open data is cool, especially when it comes from government. What's even cooler than open data? Games. Games are cool. So why not combine them? This talk explores the potential for spreading the word about open data, as well as providing for deeper engagement with data, through game development.

We had a great time preparing and delivering this talk! You can check out our GovHack entries from 2014 and 2015 online.