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Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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Slamdance Game Festival shutters, festers

by Ian Bogost October 20, 2007

categories: Game Design , General

Almost three years ago, Persuasive Games exhibited at the Slamdance Game Festival. We had a great time, and got a strong feeling of real "indieness" from the event and attendees. We were lucky enough to go back in 2006, showing Disaffected!. We had an equally great time, including getting to watch friends Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern win the Grand Jury Prize that year for Facade.

Then last year, Super Columbine Massacre RPG was named a finalist at the festival, and subsequently pulled by the festival organizers. Considerable drama ensued, the details of which are too many and too complex to explain here (here's a search for all our Slamdance coverage on WCG).

I was thinking about the festival recently, and just this week I realized why: I haven't heard anything about it this year, at all. The past three years, submissions have been due in September. Last year's deadline was extended a week into October. This year? Nothing.

I dug around a bit, and although you won't find it linked from the Slamdance main page, I located this announcement at the old location of the games section of the site:

The 2008 Slamdance Games Festival will not be held in Park City in January of 2008. With the growth of independent games, and the issues facing the medium, Slamdance has decided to separate the Games Festival from the Film Festival, while still focusing on bringing independent artists together. The 2008 Games Festival will be held spring/summer of 2008 in Los Angeles, California, where participant games will be more accesible to the games industry, and Slamdance can still draw on its large community of independent artists. Submissions will start being accepted in late 2007/early 2008 - keep an eye on this space for further updates.

Slamdance Games will present a selection of the Best Games from previous years at this year's Slamdance Film Festival, bringing high quality independent games to the filmmaker's lounge, and helping to expose independent gaming to independent artists.

Perhaps this is old news, but I had never seen it. I haven't yet contacted the organizers, and I'm not sure if the Summer 2008 event is the same as or related to Indiecade, which some of the original Slamdance games folks are affiliated with. I've also not heard about any previous attendees being asked to show their work in Park City. It might just be lip service. Slamdance's statement would be hilarious if it weren't so deplorable. The "issues facing the medium" were solely their own, for example, and "accessibility" seems to mean segregation.

It's such a shame, because Slamdance was a great event, and it died so quickly, and so wretchedly.

Comments (3)

Games festival director Sam Roberts and I had discussed this some months ago. Even as I was shooting my documentary, there was much talk of pulling the games competition entirely and moving it to the safe confines of Los Angeles. It is somewhat difficult to believe the statement on Slamdance's site currently - not because Sam doesn't believe in the goals of the Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition but because it would appear that his courting the Columbine game this time a year ago has ended up costing the competition itself. I really don't understand why a town that annually permits films about the Holocaust, the assassination of Bill Gates, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, or a woman who has sex with horses couldn't support a videogame about Columbine. Maybe, as some have suggested, Slamdance never really, truly knew they believed in games as an artistic medium. They do, however, like having a room in the back of their festival that functions as a video arcade...

I think it would be a mistake to say that "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" killed the Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition; I think Slamdance did that all on its own.

DannyLedonne on October 21, 2007 9:55 PM

I spoke to Sam about this two or three weeks ago, and mentioned it briefly in a GameSetWatch post:

"I followed up via email with organizer Sam Roberts, and he told me that it'll be held as a separate event to Indiecade, which is another indie festival that's taking place next summer in L.A. - the more the merrier, I say!"

However, since then, the Indiecade page has been updated to remove references to their planned Summer 2008 L.A. event - but add references to them turning up as the 'indie representation' at DICE and other separately organized events next year.

So my inference is that we'll get the Slamdance Indie Games Fest in LA next year, and Indiecade will be the indie representation at a bunch of the larger game shows (they were at E3 and E For All already) - alongside the Independent Games Festival/Summit, which I run at GDC, of course. So there's some good diversity there, I think/hope.

simoniker on October 22, 2007 12:38 AM

Thanks for the comments, Danny and Simon.

Danny: I agree that SCMRPG did not kill the competition, and I think I was careful not to say that (and I'll clarify it here).

Simon: Thanks for the clarification that Indiecade is totally separate from Slandance. Diversity is good, but it's hard to explain how electric a game festival at a film festival was (especially one that was itself colocated with Sundance). I lament the loss of that camaraderie of artists across media.

Ian Bogost on October 22, 2007 2:29 AM