Game Hugs

Chris Wright is a 17 year veteran of the games industry and the founder and Managing Director of three companies: indie games label, Fellow Traveller, games marketing agency, Double Jump Communications, and indie games investment vehicle The Treasure Hunters Fanclub.

After a decade working in the AAA games industry including senior marketing roles at THQ, Chris found himself out of a job in 2011 when THQ closed their Australian studios Bluetongue and THQ Studio Aus. Rather than get another job, Chris decided to go indie and set out to build his own publisher from scratch. Honestly, how hard could it be, right?

Join Chris, and our host Jason Imms as they take a trip down memory lane and chat through the inception and growth of Surprise Attack and its sub-brands, what running an indie publishing label looks like, and the challenges and pressures of running your own business in the games industry.

Louis Roots is the proprietor, owner, and curator of Bar SK, the first gallery space dedicated to interactive art in Australia.

Louis has previously curated and run events in South Africa, England, the USA, and all around Australia. His interest lies in the social aspect of videogames, and he is known for quickly creating bespoke controllers that add tactility and accessiblity to the games he exhibits.

Join Louie and our host Jason Imms for a... strange, irreverent, yet fascinating episode of Game Hugs Live, recorded in front of an audience at Game Connect Asia Pacific 2018 (there definitely weren't beers there don't call the cops).

Wadjet Eye Games founder Dave Gilbert has been interested in adventure games since 1986, when his mother made the mistake of buying him a copy of Infocom’s Wishbringer. Fifteen years later, he discovered the Adventure Game Studio engine and began making his own ever since.

Dave joins our host Jason Imms this week to discuss how he moved from a career in the garmet industry to running one of the most prolific adventure game studios and publishers in the world.

Robert Yang is an assistant arts professor at NYU Game Center, and makes "surprisingly popular 3D video games about gay culture and sexuality."

Known best for his work on The Tearoom, Rinse and Repeat, and Cobra Club, Yang believes that it's important for game creators to include sexuality in their games, despite the fact that it's not always easy to do so.

Join Yang and our host Jason Imms as they discuss his games' persistent bans from the Twitch streaming platform, why he makes the types of games he makes, and what it means to create games that feature sexuality for more than simple titillation.

Our guest this week is Shang Lun Lee (李尚倫), one of the directors of PlayReactive, a "play-making" collective based in Melbourne, producing video games, interactive theatre, and installation pieces.

Shang Lun is also a former director of the long-running Freeplay independent games festival, and most importantly to this episode, an incredible thinker.

Join our host Jason Imms as he chats with Shang Lun about privilege, why we make games, how the structures we put in place to support our work can also hurt us, and what it means to make games outside of the industry.

Liam Routt leads the Games and Digital Media team at Victorian Government screen agency Film Victoria, and is the very special guest joining us on Game Hugs this week!

Film Victoria has played a big part in the re-establishment of the Australian games industry since its crash began back in 2011. Liam started his career in games as a developer, and now fosters the careers of others through his work at the country's most prolific government funding agency.

During the episode, Liam and our host Jason Imms discuss Liam's serpentine career through the games industry, the role Film Victoria has played and continues to play, and how games communities from other parts of the country might work to influence their local funding bodies to follow in Film Victoria's footsteps.

On this week's show, Australian freelance games journalist Meghann O'Neil joins our host Jason Imms to discuss her decade of writing for PC PowerPlay Magazine, her belief that all games deserve a chance to be covered, and the challenges of going back to pitching now that the magazine has dropped to quarterly publishing.

Meghann is the intersection of all things indie games, just ask one of the hundred or so designers she met at PAX AU last year. As well as ten years of freelancing for PC Powerplay and (more recently) PC Gamer, she runs a videogame ensemble and composes game music in dynamic structures. Also, if you call the HintTron 3000 in Thimbleweed Park, you’ll be delivered incremental hints, based on Meghann’s guide.

Vee Pendergrast is a co-founder of Stirfire Studios, but has something of a different perspective on launching and running games studios in Australia.   Her background is in business management and finance, meaning she has chosen the games industry not just because making games was her passion, but because she saw it as a highly capable industry.   Vee co-founded Stirfire Studios in 2010 while working in tech business development.  Vee has been instrumental in raising seed capital allowing the business to make AGDA-finalist placing game Symphony of the Machine and attempt to IPO, initially in 2017 and opening another offer in 2018.    Join Vee and our host Jason Imms to learn about the wild frontiers of taking indie games studios public, and much more!

Hello and welcome to... Dog Hugs?

Joining us this week is Angharad "Rad" Yeo, one of the hosts of ABC Me's Spawn Point.

Spawn Point is a (hugely popular in its own right) kids' spin-off of the hugely popular video games coverage show Good Game, which celebrated its tenth and final year of airtime in 2017. Rad is one of three hosts of the show, and joins our host Jason Imms to chat about life as an ABC TV presenter, her musical aspirations, and her utterly gorgeous dog Boatmeal.

Will Smith is the CEO of FOO VR (they make cartoons in real-time using virtual reality), the host of The FOO Show (a VR talk show), co-host of the Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project podcast, and a former editor of Tested.com.

Will was also the first editor to ever hire our host Jason Imms as a freelance writer! Join the pair to hear them discuss why in the world they took a chance on our intrepid host, as well as Will's long and storied career in tech and games journalism, and the rise and fall of Whiskey Media.