Letter From: Screenshake 2015.

Dear Ana,

Screenshake is over and I am on my way back home. I’m in Brussels now, waiting for my airport transfer and stealing time to write you this letter and tell you how great it was at the festival.

When I decided to go to Screenshake, I was looking forward to having an A Maze-ing experience, the two being sister festivals and all that. Last year was my first time at A Maze and I had a lot of fun there, so I was hoping to see some familiar faces and meet some cool new people. The moment I got there, the moment I opened the expo door at Het Boss, the Screenshake experience had begun – hugs, cheers and games everywhere.

Game expo

The opening day of the festival was dedicated to games, with two expo areas open for that evening. In the main expo room there were cool upcoming games from all across the world. Some of them received special treatment and had their own mini installations – That Dragon, Cancer was set in a corner covered with fallen autumn leaves, Papers, Please was embedded in a desk where you could stamp yourself denied from Arstotzka, and at the other end of the walled-in area sat a screen with Return of the Obra Dinn and memories spoken across the walls. Some other games had their own arcade cabinets. I was really happy to be able to try Push Me Pull You and A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, but the star of the evening for me was Cello Fortress. It’s a local multiplayer game where 4 players drive their tanks and fight together against turrets and mines which are controlled by a cellist with his music. It’s quite fun, especially when you start to recognize the tunes that cause the most trouble and then desperately rush for the other side of the screen to evade a gigantic laser beam of death when you hear the dreadful melody. It’s a real shame that Cello Fortress was present only during the opening night, because for me, this experience only tied with cooperative VR bomb defusal, provided by Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes.

Papers, Please

Whenever there’s an expo like this, I like to play a game, then meet the authors, talk to them and learn their story. But, apart from the guy who made Cello Fortress, this wasn’t happening here, since most of the authors weren’t present alongside their games. Fortunately, the other expo, held in the bar downstairs, was rife with developers showing off their creations. It was the local Belgian Developer Showcase. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware that this local expo won’t be open during the whole festival. I only dropped by when I arrived and once more before the Algorave party, thinking that I’d check it out more thoroughly the following day. Still, I got to see some interesting projects such as Igor Sandman’s beautiful pixel art game Guild of Darksteel. I also heard some interesting stories and during the following days I learned a lot about the Belgian indie scene. There are many talented developers there, but they are spread out all across the country. This makes an event such as Screenshake very important for them, because it helps them connect with fellow game makers from different parts of the country.

Night in the Woods

Besides games, the festival also gathered some interesting speakers. One of my favourites was Cara Ellison’s story about her year-long journey to meet developers from across the globe. Her journey began with Patreon. She set it up without expecting much, but added the dreamy goal of traveling to spend time with game makers and write about them as if they were rock stars. Imagine her surprise when the patrons flooded in to support her, overflowing her milestone goals. She was dazed and felt insecure. She thought she was undeserving of that opportunity – she kept asking herself who does she think she is to deserve so much money to travel the world and write. Cara pushed on, sat on a plane and began her journey. She spent a year with developers, learning their stories, seeing what lit their fuse and what keeps them going. And for all of them community was very important. It was a source of inspiration for many, it taught them that they can express themselves through games and it was there to provide support. Many a creator could identify with these stories, and that is why this talk resonated so well with me.

Art of Sentree

After Cara, a young creator stepped up and caused quite a stir. Adriaan de Jongh came on stage and gave a talk about having skin in the game that you’re making. It really hit a nerve. I only managed to catch the end of the talk, but when the questions began, boy, you could feel the temperature rising. Adriaan posited that in order to make a good game and be motivated to do so, you have to have something to lose, even going so far as to suggest that people who receive a salary for working on a game do not have (enough) skin in the game. As I understand, this is more of a personal stance, as in “I believe this leads to better games and I only want to work with people who are willing to take these risks, just as I am.” On the other hand, burnout is a real thing and the stance that suggests we shouldn’t have salaries in order to be more motivated kind of ignores Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I’d say this was what upset most.

Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

Another topic that stuck with me as one of the themes of Screenshake was less gameplay. Pippin Barr introduced this topic on the first day of talks. He wondered what if we made games with less gameplay and more of something else. He then showed us his exploration of various genres to illustrate his point. There was a game with simple mechanics, but a lot of different art and whenever the art changed, the game would become slightly different, even though the mechanics stayed the same. Pippin also made games that had more sound, or more code, or more writing, instead of gameplay. William Pugh, during his talk later, illustrated how he and Davey Wreden relied more on writing and theatrics to create The Stanley Parable. When they released the game they were, alongside a few other developers, at the forefront of exploring less gameplay in games. It looks like there’s still more to explore and it’s quite interesting to think about what’s next, which other elements of game-making we could emphasize instead of gameplay.

Will’s talk

On the final night of the festival, a bunch of us got together and one of our Belgian friends took us to a restaurant that serves traditional Belgian cuisine. During the dinner, we shared our highlights from the past few days, we talked about the future festivals and we enjoyed the moment, the wonderful meal and the exquisite company. After some nice dessert, we headed back to Het Boss to say our goodbyes to everyone. It all ended with hugs and “see you at A Maze.”

Bye for now,
Damir Veapi

Note: The original letter was partially edited for this post

Copy-edited by Ana Čomor