Ten years of Freeplay's Parallels
A history of the early years of Melbourne International Games Week's best event
Today is the fifth anniversary of Untitled Goose Game being released. That game was, I think, more consequential for me than any other creative project I’ve ever worked on, and probably ever will. I might have some further updates about that in coming weeks because a) an amazing exhibition dedicated to the game has just opened at ACMI, and b) James O’Connor’s book on the making of, and legacy of Untitled Goose Game will be coming out soon. It is pretty extraordinary that the game still has a very public life, five years on.
For now, though, there’s another and quite different anniversary I’ve been wanting to write about for a while.
Ten years ago, back in 2014 when I was director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, I initiated and ran an event called Parallels. A decade later, and the event is not just surviving but thriving. It is in many ways one of the premiere events of Melbourne International Games Week, which makes me feel quite a lot of things.
In 2014 Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW) was not yet a thing. PAX, as a mega fan culture convention, had been held in Australia for the first time the previous year. MIGW was dreamt up by Creative Victoria as a week-long event that could house PAX Australia, and provide a sticky glue that would mean PAX Australia could never be tempted interstate.
Freeplay was itself then coming up to a ten year anniversary, which in independent game circles made it practically ancient. Freeplay ran its first festival back in 2004, only a couple of years after Eric Zimmerman had contributed an essay for a Barbican exhibition asking whether independent videogames could exist at all. He wrote:
“It’s possible to assert that there aren’t any independent games at all; that the game industry consists entirely of mainstream corporate product; that the independent game is a myth; that the game industry is Hollywood without independent films, a hit-driven business that is all center and no margins.”
But by 2014, Freeplay had spent a decade illustrating that there was an independent world of videogames, and that that world was as vibrant as it gets. It wasn’t just a showcase of independent games culture, too: following the end of Australia’s big videogame studios at the end of the 2010s, Freeplay had become one of the major showcases of what it meant to make games in Australia, full stop.
When Games Week became Games Week, I was part of initial conversations about how Freeplay might or might not fit. Apart from anything, the first MIGW was to take place around the October-ish time that Freeplay usually occurred. As I recall, there were conversations about the main Freeplay festival happening during MIGW, or even as a sub-section of PAX Australia at the Exhibition Centre.
To be frank, I remember feeling a little annoyed that PAX, an American convention that had no prior connection to Australia, could be welcomed with the kind of open arms and pockets that locally-grown game events had never - and would never - be shown.
That Penny Arcade was and remains in my view - and that of others - a deeply problematic entity with a history of bigotry certainly underscored my approach, though I also want to acknowledge right away that those who have been part of the Australian convention have worked really hard to make it an inclusive event. There does seem to be a fairly effective division between Penny Arcade, the webcomic, and PAX, the pop culture convention managed and run by ReedPop/RELX (an enormous company that also owns Elsevier, the academic publisher, among other things). Still, I don’t speak at PAX Australia, though I hold nothing against those who do. It’s just not really part of my games world.
Instead of the main Freeplay festival anchoring itself to MIGW, Parallels was born as an alternate offering from and for the local community. Freeplay would move to a different time of year and maintain autonomy, while Parallels would be a flag in the sand for local games culture at MIGW. It would be not oppositional, or elitist, or a gesture of refusal (despite my own personal rejection of some of MIGW at the time). It would simply be a way of highlighting that in among everything else, these games and these people exist. They don’t exist in opposition to other kinds of game culture, as better or worse or even as a fringe, or a provincialised form of games culture. They aren’t the same, but they aren’t necessarily seeking to live in the same space. They exist in parallel. Hence Parallels.
The Parallels format was straightforward: get a bunch of exciting game makers to briefly show and talk about their works in progress. Part press conference, part making-of interview, all with the hope of showcasing the incredible creativity that was going on at the time.
The line-up that year was pretty remarkable for a first go around: Push Me Pull You (House House), several games by Ian MacLarty (subsequently BosonX and Mars First Logistics), Provision Supply Cat by Alexander Perrin (subsequently Heavenly Bodies), and an amazing pre-recorded video filmed in the front seat of a cut-in-half car from SK Games in Perth (one member of whom now co-directs Freeplay).
It was all held at ACMI’s smallest venue (about 80 seats, as I recall, with fewer available to the public due to the sheer number of presenters in the room), and happily was recorded so you can actually watch it all again still right now. I still have my financial spreadsheet on my computer, and the budget from Freeplay was $970 all in, including speaker fees. Showcase aside, the first Parallels also included a mini-fete in the foyer area at ACMI.
I only ran one more Parallels after the first, so can’t take any credit for the ongoing success of the whole thing (a lot of that credit goes to the Freeplay director following me, Chad Toprak, who grew Parallels into what it is today). I am however pretty stunned by the sheer volume and consistency of major games that have had early showings - or sometimes even first showings - at Parallels, including:
Knuckle Sandwich (2015)
Necrobarista (2015
Paperbark (2015)
Wayward Strand (2017)
Florence (2017)
Untitled Goose Game (2017)
Unpacking (2018)
Dead Static Drive (2018)
Mutazione (2019)
Way to the Woods (2019)
Heavenly Bodies (2019)
Umurangi Generation (2020)
Webbed (2020)
Cult of the Lamb (2021)
Mars First Logistics (2022)
Gubbins (2022)
Isopod (2022)
Conscript (2022)
And most recently in 2023, Janet DeMornay Is A Slumlord (and a Witch), and Mystiques: Haunted Antiques
What an absurd list! These games would have been major successes without Parallels, but the consistency is undeniable. More importantly for a showcase event like this, many (most?) of these games were not yet the assured successes they went on to be when they were shown at Parallels, which gives substance to the pitch that you’ll find your next favourite game at the event (before the rest of the world does too). I have anecdotally heard that some of these games have had more than a nudge in visibility from their appearance at Parallels, and over recent years there has been the hard-to-ignore presence of scouts and major players in the audience from publishers. It is not hard to see why. Untitled Goose Game, Florence, and Cult of the Lamb alone are some of the most definitive hit videogames to have ever been made in Australia. I am quite sure that Parallels was either the first or second time they were shown in public for at least two out of those three.
That is one measure of success. Another is simply the event on its own terms, which is rarely short of joyous and provocative. Many of my fondest memories from Parallels are from games that would never, or could never go on to become international best-selling darlings, like Need 4e+9 Speed by Kalonica Quigley and Jason Bakker, or Pigeon Game by Leura Smith. There is an electricity in the room when these games are shown.
Often those ten minutes at Parallels will be the only time that someone connects with a game. They may never buy it, or play it. The game may never even be released. But that moment of being in an audience with a couple hundred people collectively marvelling at - how did they do that - is very real way that games can make meaning in our lives and I am very glad that Parallels routinely does this.
One of my favourite things that I’ve been part of over the years is editing trailers for Parallels (between 2014-2021). One of the final trailers I edited was kind of an ode to Parallels as an event. I tried to convey the buzz in the room:
I said earlier that Parallels is one of the premiere events of MIGW, and I think by many measures that’s true. Certainly it is often one of the most influential and spoken about events of the week. It is almost always the event with the warmest vibe in the room, and often it must be said, the event that people use up that favour with a friend-of-a-friend to try and get a ticket to after it routinely sells out. Early bird tickets for this year’s event sold out in a matter of hours; I don’t think there has been a year yet where it hasn’t sold out well in advance.
I don’t think much of the success of the first ten years of Parallels is owed to the organising structure of MIGW or Creative Victoria, who very often have overlooked, ignored, unfunded, or even programmed events against Parallels. I would guess that the accumulative financial support Parallels has received from the state would be a rounding error compared to that given to ReedPop and PAX. For several years it was not on the official program, or included only very late in the picture, though I am glad to see Creative Victoria is supporting the event in a big way this year.
Very much more of the success of Parallels comes from the hard work of people in and around Freeplay, supporters of the event (venues, sponsors, and more), and of course the developers whose games and presentations actually makes the event. Maybe that is also why it has been so successful. It exists in parallel, after all.
See you there this year.