Organisers of the 2011 New Zealand Winter Games have plans to step up this year's events by further involving the communities in festivities.
Games chief executive Arthur Klap said they were close to finalising the festival programme for each of the five communities.
"It went especially well with the sports last time and we want to step that up even further, but it's the whole connection with community that's really important," Mr Klap said.
An opening event in the form of a major music concert, aimed at people aged 35 and older, would be held on August 13 in Queenstown at the Events Centre, and would be one of many events organised in conjunction with local entertainment providers, he said.
"We have a VIP games dinner at the Skyline Restaurant, we're looking to do a sport and adventure expo at the Memorial Hall and we have several other things that we're about two weeks away from being able to announce," he said.
"It's a big change from last time; we're doing our award ceremonies down-town to get a better connection with the community ... our plan is to do that in the Village Green."
Dunedin will host a figure-skating gala performance on the opening weekend and a rail-jam in the Octagon in the middle weekend, with the added possibility of a concert and a surfing competition.
The 16-day event this year returns for its second outing since its inauguration in 2009, and Mr Klap was confident that it would attract athletes of "at least the same quality as last time, if not better".
The snowboard halfpipe contest will again be a world cup event and this year the winter triathlon, a demonstration sport last time, will also become a world cup event.
Invitations to enter the games have been sent to athletes and all adaptive and able-bodied sports offered in 2009 will return and will be joined by short-track speed skating in Dunedin and mixed pairs curling in Naseby.
Mr Klap said organisers had taken control of television coverage production for host broadcaster Sky TV, and would be axing the live television component.
"Last time we thought it was really important that some of the television coverage was live but in actual fact, especially for the international market, the live component really comes from what's happening on the website, so we've invested more heavily towards making sure we've got results and images and stories and that going live on to the website."
This would mean there would be more even coverage of all the events, he said.
