After our biggest festival and biggest year ever in 2015 — ten days! — this year, we’re doing things a little differently.
The festival as an organisation is evolving, and that means that instead of focussing on our annual festival bringing together game-makers, artists, critics, and players for a weekend of talk and play, we’re going to do a series of stand-alone events across the whole year. This will help us restructure into something bigger, better, and stronger for the future, and we hope that we’ll be able to do lots of exciting things across the entire year as part of this shift.
This doesn’t mean we’re going to forget about the festival — far from it, we’ve got big plans — but it does mean that for 2016, we’re seeing how we go with pushing our events across the full calendar year.
So what’s happening in 2016?
Well, first up, we can tell you about Composure: Game Music, a fantastic collaboration we’ve got happening with Arts Centre Melbourne focussing on videogames and music. It’s on Friday 29 April, and it’s free – grab your tickets here. Our panel of experts will include composer and musician Tim Shiel (composer for Duet and host of Something More on Double J & Triple J) as they discuss their experience in writing music for video games, and learn about their practice, and their creativity.
We’ll also be running our Freeplay Awards in 2016 as its own event, and we’ll be opening for entries soon. Keep an eye out for our call for submissions.
And finally, we’ll be running our successful Parallels Showcase for the third year running later in the year. We’re really excited about what we’ve got planned for Parallels, which has been a highlight on our calendar since 2014. More on that — and more events — soon.
Thanks, as always, for supporting Freeplay and independent videogames. We look forward to seeing you this year.