Ten significant Australian-made games, and how they relate to the National Cultural Policy
Freeplay is currently calling for game devs and game-adjacent people to submit to the Australian National Cultural Policy to push for better representation of games-as-culture for how the Australian government should support/fund/value the arts.
It's a noble endeavour, and we'll have to see how much we can sway them when they literally say on their page that they'll use LLMs to 'make summaries of the submissions' which is frankly laughable and simply revelatory of how The Arts are being considered by the powers that be... but it doesn't hurt to give it a go.
Anyway, one of the prompts posted by Freeplay board member Travis Jordan in the semi-private discussion about this stuff was 'what are ten Australian games you'd pick to highlight the diversity of Australia's current game making scene?'.
I gave it a think and here are my picks:
- Mars First Logistics -- A visually stunning game that is part of Melbourne-based Ian MacLarty's monumental body of work, Mars First Logistics is a self-evident fruit of consistent government support for an experienced artist throughout his career to hone his skill and enable him to work with talented collaborators.
- Big Walk (Upcoming) -- House House's followup to Untitled Goose Game, highlights spontaneous playfulness and collaboration in an unmistakable reproduction of Boonwurrung Country. Great intersection of commercially promising direction while also adding another title to the cultural cachet of Australian game making.
- Umurangi Generation -- A stylish cultural phenomenon and international success by the then-NSW based Naphtali Faulkner that is explicitly inspired by the 2019-2020 Black Summer, an urgent examination of climate collapse and the people that it affects.
- Under a Star Called Sun -- (sorry, that's me lol...) A non-commercial microgame by Cecile Richard made as a commission for/collaboration with the Asian-Australian literary publication LIMINAL, significant in its cultural influence with creating a wave of small personal games around the world, while being specific in its representation of Melbourne life.
- Final Profit: A Shop RPG -- A peculiar looking game that has essentially reached cult status internationally, with a very deft balance between a distinctly Australian sense of humour and clever, gripping game design.
- Draculesti (Upcoming) -- A beautiful and beautifully written visual novel made by a multi-talented mostly Melbourne-based team, ran a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign on top of receiving government funding.
- Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg -- An experimental game which has gorgeous art and writing, inspired by sprawling narrative films. It's a striking game that notably has a surreal representation of Sydney streets and urban fauna (i.e. our friend the iconic white ibis).
- Leap Year -- A puzzle game by the very prolific Sydney-based Daniel Linssen whose work has been exhibited in both art spaces and game events around the world, commissioned by the equally prolific Dutch artgame group Sokpop.
- Seethe And Scab -- A short game by RMIT lecturer and game maker Max Myers that examines the impact of nuclear waste on Indigenous land through the lens of the internationally extremely popular genre of short-form horror.
- Bluejeweled -- An uncompromising comedy game by Brandon Hare, representative of a new era of transgressive games by a (hopefully) nascent Australian experimental artgame scene.
Not a comprehensive list by any means, and perhaps still skews a little too commercial for my tastes even though these are literally my picks, and it doesn't help that the Australian artgames scene has been in a bit of a dormant/slump/flop era in recent years, the increased professionalisation/'corporatisation' of game making practices in this country being partly to blame--but I digress, still a solid list after all.
I don't know, you should check these out and then submit your damn contribution to the NCP if you're feeling cheeky. Here's something to start with.
Regardless of how this all shakes out you bet I'll still be making games.
And so should you.