#Freeplay11

Freeplay, the independent games festival at the State Library of Victoria over the weekend was excellent. The conference presentations and panels were lively and informative, the workshops were varied and interesting and the Twitter coverage was on fire and on the giant twitter wall in the Experimedia section of the festival which also housed the the awesome Winnitron AU indie arcade cabinet and a range of hands-on examples of games in development by local and indie talent. The event couldn’t have come at a better time and it helped me get a closer look at the relationship between ‘indie’ and ‘independent’ in the local games industry, and the wider operation of an Australian game culture that is not centered purely in the act of playing or producing , but an intersection of the two.