Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’ve been involved in games and play since forever, I love bringing people together to share knowledge, create games and play. Which is probably why I am involved in many different playful projects and why I focus with my own company zo-ii on ‘play & global happiness’ or playful culture.

Some of the things I do are: Playful Arts Festival (co-founder & curator), Playful Culture (curator), Women in Games NL (Founder) and Global Game Jam (worldwide Executive Director). In the past I have co-initiated INDIGO, a showcase in the Netherlands for Dutch indie games. I travel around a lot to different festivals and events as I am always looking around for playful happenings and new opportunities for playful culture.

How does your work relate to play & games?

All my work and most of my spare time relates to play and games in some way or another. Either by curating, talking, organizing, teaching, tweeting, archiving, observing, recording, documenting, photographing, showcasing or exhibiting play, games and development.

I’ve always been interested in physical & pervasive play, early on I focused research on games & bodily interaction and performative play, I started working at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht in 2006 at Interactive Performance Design where it’s all about cross-overs (theatre, play, games, performance, interaction). When I worked at Dutch Game Garden I got more involved in creating a community for Dutch indie game developers, give them spaces to grow and become more visible. The past few years I have found ways to combine all of those interests and fields by focusing initiatives on Playful Culture.

What is your favorite way of playing?

So many ways to play! Video games give ample opportunities to play. I used to play a lot of RPGs, platformers and action-adventures on my Playstation 2 back in the day. One of my longtime loves is the music game genre (ranging from Rez to Amplitude, to Vib Ribbon and Beatmania to more recent games such as Cipher Prime’s Pulse). I still update my console collection with the latest generation, however these days I don’t have time to play long hours anymore sadly, but I like to think I have a playful spirit, so running around, jumping up and down is nothing out of the ordinary. I keep a close eye on indie games and local multiplayer games. Oh and Johann Sebastian Joust is one of my all-time favourites!

And of course in most of my work & spare time I like to make other people play somehow or let them rediscover their playfulness.