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Hey, I just pledged to IndieCade's Anywhere and Everywhere Kickstarter campaign. If you can afford to support the indie games community, I encourage you to take a look at it, too. Let me tell you why this means a lot to me. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/indiecade/anywhere-and-everywhere
If you follow me, you've probably heard me talk about IndieCade @IndieCade, but you might not know much about it. IndieCade is an annual games festival that celebrates small, strange, experimental, and innovative games by independent creators.
I myself learned about IndieCade when I started my MFA in interactive media at USC in 2008. I was working on a project called Spectre, a recombinant narrative platformer. The project was led by my good friend Jamie @jamieantonisse, and was the focus of his thesis work.
Jamie submitted Spectre to the IndieCade festival, and it got in, so I spent three days in October 2009 trading off with other members of the Spectre development team at a small booth, demoing the game to IndieCade attendees, and wandering around the festival itself.
I was struck by two things. The first was that the IndieCade grounds hosted an almost overwhelming density and variety of beautiful, strange, bewildering, delightful, and unfamiliar experiences. Puzzle games, impact games, jam games.
Osmos was there. Closure was there. Daniel Benmergui's games were there. Tale of Tales! Dear Esther! Train was there! In grad school, we were talking about all the different kinds of games that could exist, and here they were, actually existing. What a cool thing that is.
The second thing that struck me was that this game I had made - that I had spent a year on, talking and thinking and working on, that I had become exhausted by, burned out on - that showing it to people made me excited about it again, in a way I hadn't realized was missing.
Talking to people about my game made me remember why I had wanted to work on it in the first place, why my friends and I had put so much effort into it, what we were trying to do with it. Just working on it, heads down, for so long, I had forgotten a lot of that.
I knew that you needed to playtest games, that doing so was part of a good iterative process. But I didn't know that you also had to *show* your game, talk about your game with people outside your team, remind yourself through other people why you are doing this, why it's cool.
IndieCade is not just a place where neat, creative, groundbreaking games come together. It's a place where the people who make those games, play those games, and appreciate those games come together, too. IndieCade is a community, in a very real, very impactful way.
Weird games - especially weird games that don't make money - need community to survive. Because we give each other energy, we give each other hope, we give each other perspective. IndieCade is the foremost bastion of that precious thing: the community of weird games.
So, this is my pitch. IndieCade is important. They're working hard this year, especially hard, to create a great show. In some ways, it will be more accessible than ever. Come, play games, talk with developers. Inspire them, and get inspired. Be part of the community.
And, if you have the means in this extremely strange and difficult time, give them some financial support to continue doing this weird, hard, precious thing that they do. IndieCade: Anywhere and Everywhere. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/indiecade/anywhere-and-everywhere
