Inside game trailers
Because the best things in life are at Freeplay.
At Freeplay’s awards night, Director, Chad Toprak, raised a point that made me feel old. He said that, especially because it has been running for 15 years, this vibrant indie game festival attracts ‘generations’ of people working in and around games. These days, I’m definitely a videogame mum, possibly a grandma, if you’ve seen some of the games my composition students are working on. Certainly, I was tremendously impressed by how warm and welcoming Freeplay was this year. People of all ages, genders and backgrounds mingled effortlessly, sharing knowledge and ideas.
Earlier in the evening, Jacob Leaney (of Monster Mansion) introduced himself to me as a relative newcomer to games. I was still smiling over the branching musical he and Jade Stewart improvised at the conference, based on audience participation. The protagonist’s journey from harried office worker to the founder of a boutique brewery was an emotional rollercoaster. Jacob asked me about the history of the indie game scene in Australia and I told him that I rarely saw any independent games when I started writing for PC Powerplay in 2007, let alone anything Australian. That was only 12 years ago.
Videogames have matured rapidly in recent years, however, with hundreds of local teams working at the intersection of art, experimentation and play. At the conference, Jaz Hee-jeong Choi examined the design of urban systems and how they often fail to care for those who engage with them, even when care is the aim. She even mentioned a mirror designed to remain opaque until its intended users - cancer patients - smile. It kind of makes sense, until you are dying and just want to brush your hair. Incredibly, some of her recent work in working with homeless communities was to offer people a hand-drawn portrait in colours and styles they liked as a personal way of keeping and sharing their stories.
I also had the chance to play Noise Drawers, by Maize Wallin, which can be found at maizewallin.com/ noise. Presented as a filing cabinet in virtual space, I rifled clumsily through drawers, trying to locate musical parts that would match a texture I had in
Jacob asked me about the history of the indie game scene in Australia and I told him that I rarely saw any independent games when I started writing for PC Powerplay in 2007.
mind. It was like a large metaphor for composing music, really, with each drawer revealing a new sound, sometimes altering based on how quickly, or how far, the drawer was pulled out over the length of your arm. Maize then performed evocatively with their instrument, taking us on a seamless, aural journey through a range of interconnected moods, including humour and sadness.
Honestly? I was expecting the conference to be more explicitly focussed on game design; possibly just a bunch of Unity tutorials, but this space “around games” was far more inspiring. Holly Gramazio raised forty ways to NOT engage with games, and the creation of games, including, “You can lie about creating a game,” revealing that the territory claiming game she said she’d invented, made by the shadows created from the roof of the British Museum was, in fact, not something she’d invented. That this lie was so plausible was a testament to the imaginative games she has created, in physical spaces.
Holly also challenged us to reflect on how people will engage (regardless) with the aspects of your game that you don’t design or include. Certainly, over the last several years, I’ve played Australian indie games and longed for Indigenous representation. Phoebe Watson, from the Yarrer Gunditj clan of the Maar Nation, delivered an exceptional account of her role on Chaos Tavern, by Dragon Bear Studios; “to ensure any Indigenous inspired elements of the game are appropriate and presented in a respectful manner.”
After Freeplay, she told PCPP, “I helped create the character Vyanna. I wanted her to be true and proud of her Indigenous roots but not in a stereotypical way we always see. Chaos Tavern’s world takes inspiration for how Indigenous communities run, where the elders are the knowledge holders and very highly regarded and respected.”
As Freeplay started to come to a close, we viewed a moving recording from Rosa Carbo-Mascarell, about how she came to create an idle game in which a flower grows, for Rami Ismail’s Meditation Games project. If the flower needs intervention, you can touch it. I won’t retell her story - Freeplay’s talks will be archived online. But she also raised hypothetical contexts for the creation of deeper games, including exploring the death of a grandparent. As a young videogame grandma, I’m not quite ready to leave games yet, but Freeplay is timely reassurance that the future is in great hands.