//2010 Festival: IndieCade @ E3

//Details

Los Angeles, CA, June 9, 2010 – IndieCade: The International Festival of Independent Games today announced it will highlight a dozen extraordinary digital games received from this year’s call for submissions. The Festival’s annual preliminary showcase will take place at the E3 Expo, the “world's premiere trade show for computer and video games,” June 15-17 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

With IndieCade’s third annual independent game festival scheduled for October 8-10 in neighboring Culver City, a diverse collection of new games have already raised eyebrows among jurors engaged in the rigorous IndieCade selection process. The jury’s out on whether these titles — the E3 Selections — will garner positions in the IndieCade Festival, but there’s little doubt they’ll help form the future of digital gaming.

This year’s E3 Highlights will include past awardees — the Copenhagen Game Collective and Canadian game-making wunderkind Erin “The Ivy” Robinson. But the independent game community is growing fast, and this year’s E3 Showcase will feature daring new voices, such as a counter-conventional game by Alexander Bruce of Australia; a “neo-noir” exploration by UCLA’s Joshua Nuernberger; a spatially divisive game by New Yorker Mark ten Bosch; a digital sand castle by a husband and wife team from Korea Arcshock; an intentionally bewildering entry by UK’s GLPeas; a “roguelike” work by Canadian Jeff Lait; outstanding collaborative projects by students from Georgia Tech and USC; a game by New York’s Greg Trefry that turns your iPhone into a golf course; a salty virtual world by a British team called Outso; and a project by an Australian team called Farbs that occupies the coveted space directly between Myst and Wikipedia.

IndieCade’s showcase offers E3’s insider audience the first hints of what is to come in the independent game scene. “Where goes the independents, the industry eventually follows,” says Sam Roberts, Festival Director, noting such independent harbingers as the Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and Machinarium, both IndieCade awardees from 2008.

At the E3 showcase, IndieCade will highlight the creativity and breadth of vision that independent game designers incorporate into their work. IndieCade Festival Chair Celia Pearce states: “Each year we’re seeing more complex, more innovative, and even some more accessible products coming from gamemakers working from garages, basements, universities, and other indie settings.” Previous E3 Showcase selections have helped young gamemakers land development and distribution deals with Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and others. “Everyone is turning to the independent creators who are willing to take risks exploring new forms of play, rapidly pushing the industry forward from the edges.”

The E3 IndieCade Showcase traditionally highlights games that will speak to the E3 audience, from among the hundreds of entries submitted by independent gamemakers. IndieCade CEO Stephanie Barish commented, “The breadth of gameplay experiences are expanding almost as fast as the scene in general. But we don’t want to lose track of the real value of the independent impulse. Without the corporate focus on the bottom line, independent creators can explore expression, emotion, artistry and the human condition. Ironically it’s only the indies who can really afford to undermine the dominant conventions of videogames, creating new forms from the ruins of old. This is what fans will see at IndieCade in October, but at E3 the crowd will have a sneak peek of what’s to come.”