Antwerp welcomes art-house gamers to Screenshake
Games collective The House of Indie invites not just gamers but the culturally minded in general to a weekend of creative, storytelling gaming
Playground
“They are usually made by smaller teams, without multi-billion dollar budgets, and they tend to be either very personal and expressive, or really experimental and try to innovate with the medium,” says Bram Michielsen of Antwerp games collective The House of Indie.
He is also the director of Screenshake, a weekend festival that celebrates independent games. Its fifth edition takes place next weekend. “We try to showcase games where the voice of the author still shines through,” he explains. “We feel these are the most relevant examples of the artistic validity of video games.”
Take Florian Veltman’s Lieve Oma, a short narrative game about a small child going on long country walks with grandma. While boring at the time, these walks become more meaningful when the child grows up and looks back.
Intriguing situations
According to Michielsen, “playing” the story is different from seeing it in a film or on the page. “The fact that it’s a game and that it has this colourful, expressionist shine to it makes it different from seeing it as a passive observer. You’re participating in this seemingly autobiographical experience.”
Lieve Oma is one of the games in Screenshake’s international selection. Other titles that leap out of the programme include psychedelic puzzle game She Remembered Caterpillars, which develops into a meditation on mortality.
I’ve always thought of Screenshake as a cross between a TED conference and the Ghent Film Festival
Then there is One Night Stand, a game where you wake up next to a naked stranger and have to work out what happened the night before, and what to do next. And Beglitched, which is all about computer insecurity as the player becomes apprentice to the Glitch Witch.
A selection of games made in Belgium is also promised. In addition, the festival features a space for multi-player games and sessions where games are played on a big screen with live musical accompaniment.
Then there is an exhibition, created by Dutch video game collective Sokpop and Keita Takahashi, developer of the quirky Katamari Damacy. There are talks on indie games by people inside and outside the industry, workshops and a “show and tell” session where developers can network and reveal work in progress.
Show and tell
“I’ve always thought of Screenshake as a cross between a TED conference and the Ghent Film Festival,” Michielsen says. “It’s for a culturally minded, general audience, but it just happens to be about games rather than movies.”
Screenshake is part of a broader movement to raise the profile of indie games and encourage the game development scene in Flanders. In particular, Michielsen and his colleagues wanted to create the kind of community spirit they saw in other countries but which they felt was lacking here.
After a week, you’ve created this tight-knit community that stretches across the globe and contains every profile
In 2013 they created The House of Indie as a non-profit games collective, along with the festival. Then came the Indie Game Salon, a monthly meet-up in Antwerp for game developers that is now nearly three years old.
“In the past year, we’ve started doing talks and interviews, to increase informal knowledge exchange and as a way to keep it fresh and give people a reason to keep coming.”
Finally there is Headstart, an international summer school that aims to help young developers make the transition from the academic bubble to the workplace. Each edition takes 15 talented, highly motivated participants from all over the world.
“The more motivated they are, the more interesting it is for the others to be in the same group as them, because they elevate one other,” Michielsen explains. “And the diversity creates a wider network for everyone.”
Central point
Accompanied by 10 mentors from different backgrounds, they spend a week together on master classes, workshops and roundtable discussions. The week ends with a two-day game jam, where they put what they have learned into practice.
“After a week, you’ve created this tight-knit community that stretches across the globe and contains every profile, from programmer to marketing, and these super-motivated kids who are ready to go and conquer the world.”
The first edition took place in Antwerp, but now it is going global. Finance permitting, 2017 will see editions of Headstart in Denmark and on each coast of the US.
A future project is to create an incubator that would bring companies working on indie games together in one place. “You would have an easy exchange of ideas and knowledge, a central point of dialogue [for the sector], and an easy entrance point for students and amateur or part-time developers,” Michielsen says. “The model we have also sees it becoming a games publisher, so it would become a label of quality for the industry in Belgium.”
Screenshake, 10-12 February, Het Bos, Ankerrui 5, Antwerp
