When: 19-23 September
Where: State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
Freeplay, the indpendent games festival, is returning this year to the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne and will be running between the 19th of September to the 23rd, a slight shift from its usual August date. This year's Freeplay theme is "Chaos and Grace":
The festival will explore the chaos of the creative process, of development, and of the political, social, and artistic culture that surround us. It will dig into attempts to transform that chaos into systems and rules, and it will look at the way grace seeps into the skin of our work.
Today's Freeplay announcement also marks a sad farewell to long time Freeplay co-director, Eve Penford-Dennis, who is moving on to other projects..
(Eve) "The Freeplay Independent Games Festival has been an enormously exciting event to run, and I feel very privileged to have been its co- director.
“It's always been important to me to promote, through Freeplay, the talent, and sheer ingenuity that people display when unencumbered by the weight of conformity in mainstream game development. It has been both humbling and inspiring to work for a community that is so positive and passionate about games, their way.
“Leaving something you've been an integral part of for a long time is always a difficult decision but I'm proud of how Freeplay has grown and transformed thepublic conversation around games and play. In particular, I'm proud of the public program which drew over 1800 people through Experimedia in 2011, the awards which celebrate the best of Australian creative development to local and international audiences, and establishing Freeplay as a stand‐alone organisation which I'm sure will support Freeplay long into the future.”
Current festival director, Paul Callaghan, is still on board to direct this year's Freeplay, however, he too will be leaving his leading role to pursue other opportunities. Freeplay, which has seen a huge growth of 600 attendees in 2009 to over 2000 in 2011, will be seeking expressions of interest for a new festival director later in the year.