Whaaat!? Festival Brings Experimental Gaming Goodness to ATLAS | The ATLAS Institute

Experimental video video games, arcade classics, mini golf, student-designed creations, a riff on Taskmaster and extra—Sounds like Whaaat!? Festival time once more. 

Coming Saturday, October twenty fifth, 2025 (9am – 5pm), within the Roser ATLAS Center, Whaaat!? Festival is a celebration of bizarre video games and experimental play for anybody eager about exploring the frontiers of digital and bodily sport design. Plus, all-you-can-eat breakfast cereal!

We spoke with pageant organizer and affiliate educating professor, Danny Rankin, about what to anticipate from this yr’s fest.

This Q&A has been frivolously edited for size and readability.

What is the Whaaat!? Festival all about?

It’s a bizarre cereal-fueled arcade fest with totally different audio system, occasions, workshops, video games, various controllers and experimental interactive artwork. 

We began it eight years in the past as a result of we felt there’s a lot extra on this planet of video games and play past typical business concepts. 

Hang out for a day and play—that is the factor.

Give us a little bit little bit of your background and why that is essential to you. 

I’ve labored in graphic design and fabrication and artwork design for a very long time, and I got here to grad college right here.

I received actually into video games as a result of I believed it was enjoyable to see folks at play. So I began making various management video games that we confirmed at festivals around the globe, in addition to board video games. 

I’ve performed video video games my complete life, however I did not understand simply how cool and bizarre and exploratory and inventive they will get. So for me, I’ve at all times wished to see extra uncommon types of play.

I train courses at ATLAS on sport design and on various interfaces and bizarre controllers. That’s an enormous a part of what I do as director of the Whaaat!? Lab, which is a creative studio space for designing interesting experimental games and interactions.

The Media Archeology Lab will convey a bunch of previous sport consoles and {hardware} that individuals can play.

We’re constructing miniature golf holes, operating video games of foursquare and enjoying with an enormous rainbow parachute. And we’ll additionally run a sport that we’re calling “Scoutmaster” as a dwell dialog about that work, whereas additionally torturing folks by means of numerous menial duties. It’s like the sport present Taskmaster, besides at scout camp. 

We simply determined to go a little bit wild this yr. More embodied actions, much less sitting and listening to anyone discuss.

Sounds just like the pageant will take over the Roser ATLAS Center.

We’ll use plenty of the constructing for exploration, however we’ll be operating video games outdoors, climate dependent. We could be operating some stuff on the market within the elevator and the roof—everywhere in the constructing and within the Black Box Experimental Studio. 

Who ought to come to Whaaat!? Festival? 

Anybody who likes to have enjoyable and play. You do not even should be a lover of video video games, though we’ll have plenty of actually cool video video games on show. But we additionally simply take into consideration play as a very large, thrilling factor. You can get lots of people to do enjoyable experiments with that.

And in case you like benefit badges, we will have a bunch you may earn this yr. If you want gamifying your life right into a collection of weird achievements, like whether or not you bought attacked by an individual in a bear go well with at a pageant, there is a benefit badge for that.

So it’s far more than video video games.

Yeah, I feel that we are able to take into consideration video video games as this one-sided discussion board the place you are supposed to be entertained or immersed. I like that about video games, however we’re additionally eager about video video games which are humorous or provocative or actually experimental and unusual. Games that discover play as an interactive artwork kind, issues that you just would not even conventionally name a sport—possibly it is a digital experiment. 

Lots of sport business folks have come to the pageant through the years. I attempt to develop their creativeness of what is potential as a result of we spend most of our time not enjoying any form of large studio, typical, profitable video games. People play these at house and need not come to a pageant to try this.

We curate a range we hope will blow folks’s minds round what video video games can do. 

Are there particular company? 

We’re inviting some artists from out of city. One of my longtime collaborators and co-founder of the Whaaat!? Festival, Matt Bethencourt, is coming in.

Artists from round CU and grad college students from the Creative Technology & Design program are all engaged on this factor we’re calling It Came From Camp Whaaat!? It’s a one-week sport jam the place we’re making a bunch of in-place experiments within the constructing, together with miniature golf holes and experimental controllers for video games which are going to be showcased. 

Why is ATLAS the best venue for the pageant? 

ATLAS is basically within the fusion between digital and bodily environments. So wherever you are creating issues with computer systems, however are additionally eager about how folks bodily present up and expertise these issues, that is an enormous a part of our DNA. 

ATLAS is all about radical creativity and invention. And I feel that applies to video games.