Phoenix Perry: Five ways to fall in love with indie games
Phoenix Perry is an academic, game designer and curator based in London. We asked for five things that would help newcomers to the indie games circuit understand it better, and maybe even fall a little bit in love with it…
I relocated to London from New York last November to join Goldsmiths, where I’m developing a new MA for Independent Games and Playable Experience Design. I’m politically rebellious and constantly curious about emerging forms of culture. I like play environments to be intelligent, have a dash of humour and a sense of self awareness.
After a year of exploring the UK, I’ve discovered a few events and people that have made me feel perfectly at home. Here are five of my favourites…
1. Now Play This
Last year, I arrived just in time to attend the 2016 edition of Now Play This at Somerset House. Featuring games that addressed issues around embodiment and player creativity, the core exhibition ran throughout the weekend, with special events on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I found myself there all three days.
This year, it will run for the third time over 7–9 April, as part of the London Games Festival. If you care about games in the UK, do not miss this exceptional event.
2. Robin Baumgarten
I first came across Robin’s work as a judge at Amaze in 2015. We awarded his game, Line Wobbler, the best game at the festival. To our surprise and delight, attendees also gave it the audience choice award.
Line Wobbler is a one-dimensional custom hardware game. It consists of a wobble controller made out of a steel spring and a five-metre-long LED strip display. It is an experiment in minimalism in game design, novel input mechanics, and the incorporation of physical space into the game.
Since moving to London, I’ve seen more of Robin’s games including Knife To Meet You, a custom hardware game exploring the concept of pain and people’s fear of pain. Three players cooperatively press buttons while trying to avoid a French kitchen knife on a motor. The force and sharpness of the knife has been carefully adjusted so that players aren’t actually harmed.
Robin is a unique blend of hacker, game designer and developer. I’m looking forward to experiencing more of his work.
3. Cara Ellison
Writer and indie developer Cara Ellison lives in Scotland. She publishes singular, radical writing about game developers as well as organizing an Edinburgh Indies meet. This gathering is a friendly monthly pub meet for indie game makers at the Mouse Trap pub. They welcome anyone who wants to make digital art of any kind.
The story of how Cara wrote her recent book, Embed With Games: A Year on the Couch with Game Developers is a complex one.
In 2014, in what felt a bit like a challenge and a dare to the indie games community, she said on Twitter she’d go on a gonzo journalism-style tour around the world interviewing developerss if they supported her costs on Kickstarter. Cara’s prior work had won enough respect within the community to garner the funds she needed, and she set off.
The resulting book reads half like a memoir and half like a set of incredibly personal interviews between friends. The book is the ultimate guide to the underground of video games.
4. Code Liberation UK
In New York in 2013, I began a non-profit with a young group of game developers (Catt Small, Nina Freeman and Jane Friedhoff) called Code Liberation. Together we built an organisation that reached the lives of thousands in the US, as we taught a new regime of game developers and digital artists how to programme and design games.
Mentoring these women was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Developers who emerged from our ranks have helped to expand the field of games to include more stories by women and non-binary individuals.
Transitioning a charity with you when you move internationally presents a multitude of challenges. I wasn’t sure I could rekindle the magic the founding team had with a new group of people here in London.
Working at Goldsmiths, I met some highly capable, politically motivated students. After hand selecting our new members with the remaining and new NYC members, this last year we built and mentored a new, London-based team.
Luckily, while in New York I had met Marie Foulston. With her help (in her new role as a curator at the V&A) and their great educational team, we ran our first series of workshops over two months at the end of 2016. This workshop culminated with an exhibition of the works created in it at the Parallel Worlds V&A Lates event.
Makerspace Machines Room provided us with support to take the games from digital artefacts into physical objects for the event.
In 2017 we aim to create more workshops, events and continue to build our community.
5. Ben Wilson
Ben is an irreverent game creator in Birmingham who makes projects infused with wit. His game Button Frenzy consists of simply mashing buttons in the right order. By turning the controller itself into the object, he reduces all joy-pad based games down to their most minimal element: their interface.
In the hands of a less talented designer, this exercise would be a boring experiment but Ben created a surprisingly fun game you don’t want to stop playing.
The first time Ben showed work was in 2014 at Nottingham’s Game City. Since then he’s released a series of playful, short games on itch.io and Steam. In another game, TV Trouble, the player works as a TV repair man fixing TV sets in 1967.
If you like your indie games with a dose of humour and playfulness while still retaining solid mechanics, Ben is worth checking out.
Commissioned by Lucy Sollitt, on behalf of British Council, edited by Matt Sheret
