FreePlay was absolutely stellar this year. This is my third FreePlay, and it's the third set of people organising the event/conference/festival here in Melbourne, Australia. Maybe it's a sampling bias, but to me it feels like there is something in the genetics of this thing that guarantees enjoyment. Just the right mix of "well organised" and "punk rock", it carries a delicious slice of the indie gaming zietgeist over here to Australia.
That's not to say that Paul and Eve don't have anything to do with how great it was. On the contrary, it remains so great because it has come to rest in such capable and nurturing hands. These guys are green-thumbed indie gardeners, ripening a plot of earth where many tiny seeds of ideas will end up growing into lovely games. And they are such incredibly nice people too.
A lot of the angst was gone this year. Many of us have left our jobs in industry and are doing that starving punk rock game developer thing. And it rules. The we-can-make-something-beautiful vibe was palpable. The inspiration and desire to create was so infections that I found myself reaching for the laptop to hammer out some code whenever I could, and so Infinite8BitPlatformer saw a few bugfixes and enhancements between sessions.
Just as it was a highlight meeting Jonathan Blow in 2007, for me a highlight of this year's festival was meeting Brandon Boyer and Adam Saltsman. Brandon and Adam each brought their own brand of energy and love for the art form. I only wish I had been around to hear Petri Purho speak last year too, all of whom highlight what a great job is being done of getting critical thinkers and practitioners over here each year.
Brandon's keynote was brilliantly emotive, and perfectly captured a sort of wistful energy for those games that don't yet exist, but could. He painted a brilliant, shimmering image of possibilities in front of our eyes, and lent us a powerful lust to coax our ideas into reality. When he pulled up a slide full of American indie record label logos from my youth, like Dischord, and Matador, and Calvin Johnson's K records, I felt a definite tugging on the heart strings, a flood of bittersweet memories, and this simultaneous realisation that hey, we are part of something as awesome as that whole thing was.
Adam got down and dirty in the semiotics of games and redefined in our minds the level at which games and play are part of our culture, and even our evolution, our genes. Conjouring forth papers on play and games from mid-century French intellectuals and the like, he was certainly showing tight research chops. At the beginning of the talk, "war came from games" sounded very contraversial to me. At the end of the talk I was convinced.
After hours the beer flowed, and of course that's where all of the most interesting, unrestrained conversations took place. Once again Eve and Paul's refinement shone through in their choice of venue, just around the corner from the library where the festival was going on. It's an oft-underlooked aspect of conference organisation, and usually left to the delegates to find a drinking hole where the ideas of the day can be unwound, probed, picked apart, and put back together again. At FreePlay however, this was all taken care of, and that was an excellent thing.
So anyway, there it is. Great festival, wonderful people, with the most awesomest of organisers.
Now it's time to create.