Indie Games at GDC Festival of Gaming

Last week, San Francisco hosted the GDC Festival of Gaming, the largest gathering of game developers in the world. An official badge is incredibly expensive, and I didn't have one. The good news is that the real magic often happens outside the Moscone Center. The city was packed with free indie showcases running all week long. So my strategy was to RSVP to free events, show up, have a few beers, play some games, and talk to the people who make them. I hit three events at The Midway, DNA Lounge, and The Great Northern.

Day of the Devs has been running since 2012, and the mission is to celebrate the magic of games and the culture that surrounds them. The event is completely free for both developers and players, and features 60-70 unreleased games, all playable, all staffed by the people who made them. Every booth had a QR code so you could instantly wishlist anything that caught your eye. I scanned about twenty over the course of the evening.

What I love about indie games is that the same constraints that make them brutally hard to build are what makes them so original. Nobody's in a meeting asking whether the concept will test well. The result is games like Vikings on Trampolines, a record shop simulator, and a school hallway brawler where the bullies are the enemies. The creators build little hyper-specific worlds that wouldn’t be possible if the games had to have mass commercial appeal.

One game that kept drawing me in was Dressmaker, a cozy sim where you take commissions and actually construct garments, select fabrics, cut patterns, and stitch it all together on a sewing machine. A major studio would probably never greenlight this. And yet it was deeply satisfying, exactly the kind of early-stage work this event exists to showcase.

I love seeing the reactions on developers' faces when a stranger picks up a controller and plays their game. After all the private debugging sessions and playtesting with polite friends, here is a real person reacting in real time. I had a couple of whiskeys and bounced from table to table. It was a great way to spend the evening.

Courage XL has a great origin story. Ten years ago, organizer Menno Deen was heading to GDC on a Dutch grant. He was too late to apply for a showcase, so he threw his own party at a bar in the Castro. He called it “Dutch Courage” because you need a drink before showcasing your game at GDC.

This year’s event was held at The Great Northern, a place where you’re usually more likely to attend an EDM show. The vibe was rawer than Day of the Devs. The games were more works-in-progress, which in its own way was interesting. I gravitated toward puzzle games, which in retrospect was a strategic error. I was a couple of drinks in, and puzzle games are not forgiving of that condition. I couldn’t tell if the games were too difficult, or if I just wasn't in the sharpest state of mind to solve them. Fortunately, the game developers were very patient and gave me hints until I was able to get to the next level.

The SF Game Development community throws their own annual GDC-week party at DNA Lounge, and this was their fifth. The event was free to attend, and had four rooms, dozens of game demos, tech talks running every hour, and a DJ for anyone who needed a break.

The energy was the highest of the three events. I played a variety of games including Project Metal Fist, Swing Striker, Toadled: Eating Frenzy, Dream World, and Varren's Expanse.

Late in the evening I caught a talk by Michael Silverwood of Pixile Studios, who was presenting eight years of Super Animal Royale in front of a noisy bar.

Silverwood and his co-founder, Chris Clogg, have known each other since they were kids. Over a decade ago, they began building a game from nothing on Discord while still working their day jobs, eventually quitting once they could go all-in. They have now reached 13 million players across every major platform. As someone who spent over a year working on a small indie game that wasn't a commercial success, I had immense respect for what they achieved. While most people in the room were either casual players or developers struggling to get anyone to care at all, Silverwood had built something played by millions.

Between the three events I probably played two dozen games and didn't pay for any of it. Day of the Devs is a nonprofit, SF Game Development is run by the community, and Menno Deen has made sure his event is accessible to anyone. I’m very grateful to the people who organize these events so that the blood, sweat, and tears of these game developers can get the recognition and visibility they deserve.