Freeplay Independent Games Festival

Goal 1

The Australia of the 21st century has embraced videogames as entertainment, culture, and art. The recently released Digital Australia 12 report shows the shifting demographics of those who play videogames – with 95% of homes with children under the age of 18 have a device for playing computer games, the average age of people who play games 32, and 75% of them over the age of 18 - and research from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts the interactive game market is expected to reach $90.1 billion by 2015. We now live in a world where new generations have games as simply a part of their life, and for whom the possibilities of the medium will draw them to become artists looking for ways to experiment and express themselves through new technology. At the same time, current developers and practitioners are developing a clearer games literacy that underpins the artform and which is already having an impact on education, culture and art.

However, in these changes there are bound to be stumbles along the way – economically, culturally, and artistically – but to properly place Australia at the forefront of these developments, support for these sorts of experiments is essential, whether through individual developers, artists experimenting with playful or digital work, newly emerging studios, established companies, cultural institutions or collaborations between any or all of these.

No longer confined to a narrow band of cultural practitioners or audiences, videogames are now pervasive, and a contemporary cultural policy should acknowledge that, along with the diversity of practitioners, and support them at different levels according to needs.

As part of that diversity, significantly greater work needs to be done to enable access and support to prospective Indigenous Australian developers and artists to engage with the medium as outside of a few notable examples, the Indigenous voice is largely absent in the development community.

Goal 2

Videogames as an enterprise and an artform both build on and drive the creation of emerging technologies. The most significant areas for games are in the ease of content creation and access to global audiences. New and free technologies and middleware have brought high end tools such as the Unreal Development Kit or Unity into the hands of any budding game creator, and the accessibility of tutorials and information makes it easier than ever to make a game.

While access to these technologies has a low barrier to entry, the skills necessary to create with them as well as the essential games literacy and design skills require education and local support networks. Support for skills sharing between development, education, cultural institutions, and artists in ways beyond economic imperatives, as well as for international linkages, skills sharing, and mentorships – all potentially enabled through communication technologies like the NBN – create new learning opportunities for creators and artists.

Videogame creators at all levels – from individuals to studios - have already embraced digital distribution platforms such as the App Store, Steam, and the locally created Desura and IndieDB, and the NBN will further support these, as well as enable new possibilities for both smaller, geographically disparate teams, to collaborate in real-time and for regional areas to connect with traditionally metropolitan centres of development.

Goal 3

Videogames, while currently discussed and funded through the lens of screen culture and agencies, are not necessarily storytelling forms. Essential in creating resonant and successful work is the reframing of these discussions and the development of games literacy and public discourse with them as fundamentally separate – although still synthesised from – technology and screen culture. Other artforms such as visual art or dance or opera are not predominantly narrative or storytelling in nature, but each have their own strengths and weaknesses in how they communicate and engage with aspects of art unique to them, and videogames are no different. The question of whether or not the core of what games are – rules and systems and an enveloping fiction – can capture some aspect of ‘Australianness’ as laid out in a Significant Australian Content Test in the same way as narrative mediums is one still open for exploration and examination, but to place those forms of creative restrictions on potential experiments before they are even begun stifles essential innovation and artistic development.

Despite this reframing, the creation of games by Australians and the telling of those development stories is important and does constitute telling of stories by Australians both here and overseas. These local games from independents to studios should be celebrated and promoted by government and the development community as the accomplishments they are.

The notion of excellence and world-class endeavour only emerges when we work to connect meaningfully with the creative work from the rest of the world and embrace their diversity and vision and place our own work within those broader contexts – all elements especially important in a truly international artform. It is essential that Australian developers and creatives are given opportunities to look beyond their borders for inspiration as they find ways to uniquely identify and cultivate their local voices and games.

Goal 4

Videogames – like other creative industries outlined in the discussion paper – are both entertainment industry and artform, and for the health of both it is important that a broad ecosystem of development exists – from individual, artistically driven practitioners to publisher owned studios working on high-end, high concept, franchised titles. Different tiers of development enables people to develop skills, nurtures smaller creative projects, and creates opportunities for collaboration.

While more artistic development projects unbound from economic imperatives may not directly create jobs or revenue, their importance as part of that ecosystem creates a culture of creativity, of vision, and of talent, which contributes to the sense of the country as culturally and creatively diverse, ambitious, and self-sustaining.