The Freeplay Independent Games Festival is

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's longest-running and largest independent games festival, first established in 2004. The Festival celebrates

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artists and game makers, and highlights grassroots developers and

art game An art game (or arthouse game) is a work of interactive new media digital software art as well as a member of the "art game" subgenre of the serious video game. The term "art game" was first used academically in 2002 and it has come to be un ...

s. It gathers artists, designers, programmers, writers, gamers, creators, games critics, games academics and

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to celebrate the art form of independent games and the culture around them. Freeplay is funded primarily through arts grants. Past and present sponsors include

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(ACMI), and

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. With the aim of celebrating game making as arts practice, Freeplay has consistently aligned itself with the arts, and over the years has partnered with arts organisations such as

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Next Wave Festival Next Wave is a biennial festival based in Melbourne, which promotes and showcases the work of young and emerging artists. Next Wave encourages interdisciplinary practice and fosters the creation and presentation of works by emerging artists wor ...

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, and more. The current director of Freeplay is Chad Toprak (2017–). Previous directors have included

Dan Golding Daniel "Dan" Golding is an Australian writer, composer, broadcaster, and academic. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, and is currently a lecturer in media and communication at Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, Austral ...

(2014–2017), Katie Williams and Harry Lee Shang Lun (2013–2014), Paul Callaghan and Eve Penford-Dennis (2008–2012). The founding directors of Freeplay were Katherine Neil and

Marcus Westbury Marcus Westbury (born 1974) is an Australian urbanist, festival director, TV presenter, writer and broadcaster. He is based in Melbourne, Australia where he filmed the TV series '' Not Quite Art''. for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation scre ...

History

The Freeplay Independent Games Festival began in 2004 as

's three-day-long

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-based indie games conference 'Free Play', to celebrate

independent game development An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...

and games culture. Since then, it has run in a variety of formats and venues across Melbourne. In 2009, Freeplay hosted its first festival away from Next Wave, and rebranded itself from 'Free Play: The Next Wave Independent Game Developers Conference' into 'Freeplay Independent Games Festival'. Since 2009, Freeplay events have generally run annually. In 2014, inspired by Venus Patrol's alternative E3 press conferenc
Horizon
Freeplay introduced Parallels, a one-night event that serves as a counterpart to the main Freeplay festival. It takes place as part of

Melbourne International Games Week Melbourne International Games Week is the largest game professional and consumer communication and networking platform in Asia Pacific, hosted by Creative Victoria. It comprises a confluence of events for three areas of interest, business, consumer ...

, and highlights "unique, experimental, personal, and culturally significant games" made in the region. Parallels "is notable for providing the public first looks at games that would go on to be global gaming phenomena," including

Untitled Goose Game ''Untitled Goose Game'' is a 2019 puzzle stealth game developed by House House and published by Panic Inc. Players control a goose who bothers the inhabitants of an English village. The player must use the goose's abilities to manipulate object ...

, Necrobarista,

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, Heavenly Bodies, the Frog Detective series, Unpacking, and

Cult of the Lamb ''Cult of the Lamb'' is a roguelike video game developed by indie developer Massive Monster and published by Devolver Digital. The game was released on 11 August 2022 for macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, a ...

. In 2015, Freeplay held, for the first time, both a multi-day Freeplay festival (10–19 April 2015) and a Parallels event (24 October 2015). 2020 and 2021 saw a virtual festival take place due to the

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. For the online Parallels showcases, Freeplay created an online pixel art version of the event's in-person venue, The Capitol, called The Zone, described by

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as "a pixel-art version of an art gallery, except its for video games and you're doing the whole thing through your browser." In 2022, Parallels took place at RMIT, marking Freeplay's return to in-person events.

Freeplay Festival

Freeplay Parallels

Freeplay Awards

External links

Official website

References