Showing Up In The Melbourne Games Ecosystem

The weather is switching from clear and sunny to dreary in classic Melbourne fashion. Power tools whir from next door’s construction and the tram occasionally dings before passing by with a low rumble. But inside Paper House it’s cosy, and outside is drowned out by the sounds and smells of someone listing the ingredients of their Gochujang salmon bowl:

“The ~ Mediterranean Diet ~ ”

“Those…were not Mediterranean words that you used.”

Paper House is a bunch of things; a shop front, a studio creating the game Wood & Weather (and previously, Paperbark), a co-working hub and an occasional event space. Co-directors Terry Burdak and Ryan Boulton, who have contributed to the Australian video game scene for over a decade, describe it as a reactive space, guided by the support needed by themselves and their community at any given time.

Towards the end of lockdown it was just Terry and the glow of his laptop in there, watching the businesses across the street close one after another before eventually being filled with new cafés and galleries:

“No one wants another gallery, who cares… Everyone says co-working space, co-working space, but nobody actually wants to do that because you have to pay money!”

Now it’s filled with colourful prints and trinkets, books and games for sale, desks, computers, and the half-empty teacups of developers preparing for this year’s Melbourne International Games Week. For Terry, the place is “a form of self-expression,” and allows them to focus on showing up rather than showing off, as Ryan describes:

“I wanted to make my games and show the world how special and cool I am, but over the last few years it’s more about getting better at this craft so I can help other people make their things the best they can be.”

It’s common for everyone in the studio to be constantly tapping each other on the shoulder, with that day being no exception. As the creative director of Little Pink Clouds, Chantel Eagle was working closely with her office mates putting the finishing touches on Letters to Arralla, which released the following week. The game has already been nominated for Excellence in Accessibility for the upcoming Australian Game Developer Awards, but this isn’t the only reason the studio was buzzing.

I was thankful the devs agreed to swivel away from the important work on their desktops to chat to this outsider entering their safe little indie bubble about their plans: T-Dog’s pitch for their game Clownbaby was accepted for Play Now, as was the game Parasensor, says director of Ghoulish studio, Mickey Krekelberg. Leura Smith of Apartment 809 also has a tonne on with their game ACMI EGG showcasing at ACMI Microgames, and the architectural game Canvas Street being presented via talk at Freeplay: Parallels.

Clearly even within this small pocket of devs there’s a lot being contributed to Games Week. Terry thinks it’s important to remember that “the only thing that makes something like MIGW are the people.”

So I wanted to learn more about how the Melbourne game industry, scene, community, communities, were working, being sustained, and what it means to show up to them.

SHOWING UP

Ryan recalled a moment from when he had just graduated. He was one of the remaining people at GCAP one evening when his mentor was told to find two students to take to an exclusive networking event (which led to a substantial opportunity in his early career). His mentor’s words at the time stuck with him:

“I’m not choosing you because you’re special – I’m choosing you because you’re here.”

Every dev I spoke to mentioned showing up in some form, whether physically just being a body in a space, or how we’ve come to use the phrase to describe how someone can seriously and earnestly invest in something. Being the last one at the party, being a bum on a seat, or as Leura described, the phenomena of someone seeing your face so often that they’ll eventually feel the need to say hello. Terry describes it as “much like a protest…you just being there is massively contributing to the thing.”

A similar experience plays out between the residents of ACMI X, comprised of creatives working across the moving image, including solo devs and studios alike. I spoke with Maddy Clute about her time there, her upcoming game Call of the Golden Valley, and presenting at the upcoming GCAP and High Score conferences:

“When you quit your prestigious corporate job to make a video game a lot of well-meaning people have questions. It’s so nice to be in a space where people are like ‘oh yeah, of course you did that,’ rather than gently being suggested therapy.”

Maddy says the game would not exist, especially at its professional level, if it weren’t for the people in the ACMI co-working space, both for logistical reasons and because being there physically had helped sustain her energy and excitement for the scene:

“I thought, how lucky am I? Half the people in the [game] credits are such talented people with a depth of knowledge, and I can turn around to them and be like, ‘hey, what do you think of this?’”

Former freelance developer Nick Loki helped in this exact way often:

“She said, ‘I’ve been looking at this room for a year and a half trying to figure out why it looks weird’ and I told her the window doesn’t have curtains on it…that kind of component is an important part of sharing a space.”

I met Nick in one of the co-working meeting spaces, where he came armed with a gigantic box of donuts from a student mentee in exchange for imparting his wisdom for several hours beforehand (all devs in this piece provide active mentoring or peer-support). After discussing the nature of vegan custard and fiddling around with the room lighting, we spoke about why he had recently decided to leave the game scene for various reasons, one of them being that there just isn’t enough work.

Writer and narrative designer Alexander Swords also shares the space and acknowledges how many people with wisdom leave:

“Nick is a good example. He’s got enough experience that he’s vital to the ecosystem, so any mechanism for him to stay would be great…there’s at least a dozen people I know in similar situations.”

Nick, Alexander, and Maddy run Dev Together, a monthly peer-support group that meets in the ACMI X kitchen. The group offers administrative advice around funding and bookkeeping (“what do you mean I have to pay super?” was a frequently heard phrase during these interviews), but is also more informally a check-in. Nick says, “it gives us a lot of what we miss out on working in small studios or as solo developers.”

While they’re all typically able to bounce ideas off other people, as jobs, money and time become tighter, the opportunities for these in-person interactions dwindle. As Alexander lays out, “usually you’re either money rich or time rich, but no one is rich now because there aren’t enough people with money, which means no one has the time.”

MONEY

Money was a consistent theme since everyone I interviewed acknowledged how they, weirdly, need it to survive. Currently, there’s simply no way to ignore how it affects game development. Funding in Australia fortunately exists and is quite substantial compared to other places across the globe. Maddy reflects that as a new Australian she was “pleasantly surprised to find out that the government supports independent game makers,” and similarly Chantel speaks to her experience at GDC:

“It was a different planet. Especially with queer indie developers in America. They have to work so hard to scrape by and keep the lights on, and then we tell them that we were funded by the Victorian government to go there…they couldn’t believe it.”

There’s a keen awareness that the indie gaming scene here as we know it would likely collapse without this funding. Every dev described a sense of the scene being on the brink of exploding, bursting, crashing, and how spaces and communities have been and need to continue to be buffers against this sense of doom.

“I see places like [Paper House] as the new wave of what the indie game industry is going to be,” says Mickey, with more time investment in trying to work out what the new way should be, rather than trying to compare it to the industry lows of yesteryear. Leura says that the “figuring out” aspect of it is really exciting, especially when you feel you’re with people you trust and feel safe around. When I asked Ryan what this new way could be he put it plainly:

“I think games have to be smaller, a lot faster developed, with much smaller teams, just because no one on the planet has twenty dollars to buy a game.”

It was a different planet. Especially with queer indie developers in America. They have to work so hard to scrape by and keep the lights on, and then we tell them that we were funded by the Victorian government to go there…they couldn’t believe it.

– Chantel Eagle

While many devs strive to create artful games, they‘re also working tirelessly to make commercially successful ones and building studio businesses. T-Dog highlighted the envy that sometimes comes when you see older developers with houses, and Chantel knows that any of them could try getting into the mobile gaming scene if they were actually interested in getting rich quick. In the five years of working on her game she is still to see a cent, saying that directors are often “the sacrificial lambs who take the hit on not getting paid,” so that they can pay other team members appropriately for their expertise. Nick had also experienced this:

“(jokingly) we’re not allowed to exploit people anymore, which means that instead of taking on more employees we focus those resources on being able to exploit ourselves as the owners of the business as much as possible.”

So, why continue? Leura, having left games for architecture and then returning, says she was “either gonna make a million dollars or no dollars… so I might as well count my pennies and make some cool shit.” Similarly, Terry remembers what a previous mentor had told him:

“Just try to enjoy it ‘cause you don’t know how long it’s gonna last.”

VIBES

These developers often spoke to how lovely and safe their community spaces are, but there are still consistent struggles between the intersections of work, art, money, and belonging. Divisions between games as art and as products sometimes play out as natural tensions within the ecosystem, and other times can become points of nasty contention. Nick feels there is always a balance to be met:

“I’m not saying one of those things shouldn’t exist—the fact that they both do is a great sign. A healthy ecosystem has to have a certain amount of conflict because it means that people can have discourse and opinions. It means we’re not a monoculture.”

Communities should be based on the creation of safety and welcoming but there are undoubtedly vetting processes no matter how invisible they are, leading to perceptions of cliquiness. Despite Ryan saying the invitation to work at Paper House is “purely vibes-based” T-Dog was quick to say there was definitely a vetting-system, even if it manifests as a director sitting you down to say, “you vibe really well here.”

Alexander noted how some professional networks are built on social networks, and naturally there are both pros and cons to this:

“There are different philosophies about why games should be made, and some people end up being gatekeepers about who can and can’t enter different spaces. But there’s only so many people that can actually make a living from it, and the danger of that is it’s dominated by wealthy white people.”

While these tensions can be tricky to navigate, it’s also a protective mechanism against historic and current toxic game cultures and practices. Underrepresented people are always in the riskiest positions and are the first to leave the industry, which is why games is “still dominated by a boy’s club, and there’s still very much a glass ceiling there.”

Another great, amazing benefit of non-commercial spaces in Melbourne is that there’s diversity built into them from the start. The larger industry really thrives because of that

– Nick Loki

While these tensions can be tricky to navigate, it’s also a protective mechanism against historic and current toxic game cultures and practices. Underrepresented people are always in the riskiest positions and are the first to leave the industry, which is why games is “still dominated by a boy’s club, and there’s still very much a glass ceiling there.”

Chantel also recognises how important cultural alignment should be for a team and why the tapping-on-the-shoulder approach may work out better than advertising roles online:

“I’ve seen some teams get burnt by getting a hodgepodge group of people together who are all very qualified in their areas but don’t know each other. Whereas, if you know them for multiple years they’re already invested in the projects, and they can trust you to see it out until the end. It’s already built on a foundation of ‘we can do it.’”

The previous environments that Terry had worked in were also marred by incredible levels of toxicity, which led to a lot of mental and physical health issues for him. It’s why he says, at least for the purposes of Paper House, “there’s a lot of selfish people—I just want some positivity.” Maddy had expected something like this vibe in game development and was pleasantly surprised:

“Coming from corporate software, which is famously not a great industry for women, and going to gaming, I thought, have I just picked the only thing that could be worse? And the reality on the ground here is so much nicer, at least in our little happy indie pocket.”

Even under threat and amidst plenty of in-fighting, all the developers could agree on the strength of their game-making communities here in Melbourne, and as Nick says, how diversity is one of the central pillars of this strength:

“Another great, amazing benefit of non-commercial spaces in Melbourne is that there’s diversity built into them from the start. The larger industry really thrives because of that.”

Everyone here loves games; playing them, making them (although Terry is convinced that no one actually likes releasing them), but the consensus was for more focus on sustaining these physical places, people, studios, rather than relying on systems which are project-based yet ultimately cannot be fully rewarded by project-outcomes. After all, the games we love are absolute products of the people and the ecosystems they exist in. Nick was eager to remind me:

“If you’ve got community then people can move around the ecosystem. But if there’s nowhere to go, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a community.”

Chantel began on her game at the start of covid lockdowns as a means of escapism. Maddy, wanting to create something from a sense of place, had no choice but to base her game in a country town where the same lockdowns kept her tethered. Alexander, who is running the Interactive Narrative Social, says his whole work practice is based on these principles:

“I tell stories that reflect my community…It’s more about the world and the system and problems that it creates, and how as a community we respond to that”

The premise of Letters to Arralla mirrors the uniqueness of these game development processes:

“It’s literally a game about helping people through your own silly, quirky ways. Not fixing the problems for them but helping them work through them by just showing up and being there to help them have the courage… I’m really proud that a lot of suggestions, desires, and choices from team members are imbued into the game as much as possible.”

So maybe finding new ways of showing up, making money, and vibing, will keep this scene going forever, or maybe this is the last hurrah, and we are simply dancing at the end of the world. I’m sure he will love me using a quote to shamelessly plug the dancefloor at Big Games Night Out, but nevertheless, as Terry thoughtfully concludes:

“We’re physical people. We got limbs and eyes and…smell! You gotta get into a room and dance with people.”

This article was commissioned by WellPlayed with support from Creative Victoria.

Melbourne International Games Week runs from October 4–12, for more info visit https://gamesweek.melbourne/