Indie Cade – the established Indie Game Festival

It is a rather quaint American scene here in Culver City, where Indie Cade just had its 7th edition. Down the road are Sony’s extensive film studios, behind the Indiie Cade Village more film studios, a rather poche hotel is right next to it, renovated art deco cinemas and lots of elegant and even healthy dining up and down the street. Hollywood is not far up the road, but if you believe the organizers, it is thousands of miles away and the Festival still caters to the underground community of experimental game development. Hence, the award ceremony in an underground music venue that sits under the Santa Monica freeway. Hence, the „mission to encourage, promote and cultivate innovation and artistry in interactive media and to champion those efforts.“
the 7th edition with Indies and big players
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Indie Cade is still promoting alternatives for the game industry in focusing on new independent games and projects. But with growing bigger and more popular Indie Cade faces an influx of the big players of the game industry. And they are very welcome here. Nintendo and Sony are smartly promoting themselves with the biggest promotional tents in the Indie Cade village. Both companies were presenting around 20 Indie Games that run on their systems and managed to attract the biggest audience over the three days. Very cleverly with Indie games like Swords & Soldiers2, Chariot, and the remastered Grim Fandango they chose games that are on the rise or already guarantee success. They even managed to get a big share of the night games audience in setting up multiplayer tournaments and cinema projection for fun short multiplayer games that attract players and spectators. The developers of course like that very much and do everything to spread the word for their products.

„It may be one of gaming’s most important events“
The Los Angeles Times says: „IndieCade has long been a showcase for the odd, the experimental and the risk-taking, but in 2014 it may just be one of gaming’s most important events.“ Indie Cade has definitely made it and its 7th edition is a well established engine for Indie Games. The Indie Cade village in Culver City Plaza doesn’t have the flair of the creative game underground anymore as still claimed. It is a professional and promotional tool halfway there on the path to the big money. Slightly different is the approach in the fire station, just 200 meters down the road, where you find most of the chosen Indie Games, presented by their developers only on improvised tables and where you are able to play them if you can manage to get to the front of the crowd.

The leaf blower game
A more alternative atmosphere comes up when one of the so-called „Big Games“ is being played in the village. „Big Games“ is a new term they try to establish for Street Games. That is when you see adults bouncing at each other with fishnets, cabbage heads, basketball hoops and swim flotation devices as if they were five year olds again. A stark contrast to the tents of the big players. And if you think there may have gone lots of thinking in these „Big Games“, have a look at the game where they play crocket with a tumbleweed and several leaf blowers – yes, leaf blowers! And it is not meant as an ironic approach.

Conference pass for 500 Dollars!
I am afraid, the whole Gamergate brawl went right past me. There was a lot of talk about it in the media, old and new. And there must have been a lot of addressing and discussing it at the Indie Cade conference. But even I didn’t buy the conference pass for a whopping 500 Dollars just to hear the same old arguments again. Said was about this: „While big-budget games with guns still rule, independent developers are opening up new avenues with social, political and gender games.“ Which is fine but a bit of a repetitive mantra that we are all aware of.

The VR Zone and the Experiments
There was a rather interesting special VR Zone with several worldwide developers that build different VR systems or adapting controllers for body parts or even full-body controls. It was great to try them out one after the other and compare the systems. Some working quite well like Star Wars light sabers with Oculus Rift and some a bit shaky like the Leap Motion technology. There is clearly a lot more to come. Besides the big players in the Indie Cade Village, you also found some of the institutions that teach game development and do research. They tend to get overlooked, but present the more experimental game projects like Sunder from the Digipen Mocha Team, a two-player game that has to be played with simple 3D plastic glasses with red and blue lenses or Walden, a Game from the USC Game Innovation Lab. Walden is an adaption of Henri David Thoreau’s book Walden. I wouldn’t really call it a game. It is a first person simulation of Thoreaus’s life in the woods of Massachusetts in 1845. It is supposed to open reflective play to the player. The quaint and utterly challenge-less environment can only be understood as the longing of urban dwellers for an idyllic life, forgetting how strenuous it may be to survive in the woods. I myself prefere the first-hand experience with the creative and cooperative game Bloom (first picture of article)  that fits Indie Cade so well.
Indie Cade Festival
Review of Festival in L.A. Times