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Feature by Matt S. 

Newtown, Sydney; there couldn’t be a more appropriate place to talk about an art game and a broader games industry that has just recently opened up in a meaningful fashion to innovative game developers.

Newtown is in many ways the centre of alternative arts and cultures within Sydney. It’s a suburb filled with creatively-minded people, youthful innovators and entrepreneurs. Lining the suburb’s main street are an endless stream of cafes and restaurants that harmoniously embrace every race, religion, and economic status.

So when I sat down with Tamara Schembri and Peter Budziszewski to discuss their new venture, ToyBox Labs, which is about to release its first game (an art game called Flowmo), it felt appropriate that we decided to meet at a Newtown café near where ToyBox Labs has set up shop; this is very much the home for what the team is looking to achieve.

Article by Matt S.

For someone so often referred to as ‘outspoken,’ French-born game designer and the mind behind Heavy Rain and the upcoming Beyond: Two Souls, David Cage, is remarkably softly spoken.

Sitting in a small conference room with nothing but the air conditioning humming in the background his quiet and measured answers to questions demand attention, lest the words be lost. Back in the office typing up his comments for this feature I discovered it was difficult to catch a couple of thing he said, despite the microphone being placed square in front of him on the table.

He’s also modestly confident. Despite the memorable success of Heavy Rain, and despite being the driving force for one of Sony’s most valuable developer partners, Cage is sure of the games he would like to develop, but shrugs off any suggestion that he is on the same path of innovative approach to game design that has made Miyamoto, Molyneux and Kojima near-household names within the games community.

Stress is defined as mental, emotional, or physical strain or tension. Stress affects every human being and is a part of our everyday lives, both positive and negative. But how does stress correlate to video games?

Video games are under constant scrutiny for the supposed negative impact they can have on players, perhaps more so than ever after the grievous events that took place in the Sandy Hook tragedy. Violence is in the news every day of our lives and many people try to find parallels between the violence created in the real world and the violence found in the media. Movies and books were once the targets of the criticism, but it’s the interactive nature of video games that has now drawn the attention of lawmakers and lobbyists.

Nic Watt (left)

Twitter has proven to be a great resource; both for finding news and for finding like-minded people. For Australian independent developer, Nnooo, Twitter also found it its first business opportunity as a publisher.

Two weeks ago, we spoke with representatives of three different analysis firms who specialised in the video-games industry, gathering their forecasts and perspectives on various matters concerning the industry at present. The topics of interest included the controversy on used games, concerns towards games pricing and AAA development costs, as well as predictions on the market performance for all three next-gen consoles.

If you haven't read it yet, check out Part 1 of the two-part feature here.

Of course, these alone are but a few of matters surrounding us right now. Still speaking to David Cole of DFC Intelligence, Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities and Liam Callahan of The NPD Group, we continued the discussion to see what more they had to say on other areas of the industry's current evolution.

Being a startup or independent developer is a significant business challenge. Many of the experienced game developers in the industry are joining people just out of university to give the indie life a go as it does offer a great deal more creative control over the projects that they undertake, but by the same token it offers no real job security, and freedom aside, there are challenges in building games as an indie.

One of the greatest of these challenges is one of the first decisions that needs to be made before starting a game project; where does this game come from?