Oh hey, it’s the morning of Day 3 of Summer Game Fest. I was supposed to write something up about yesterday. I did have something written up about yesterday, actually, but I went to sleep before I published it, and then WordPress ate my draft. Yes, I write in the CMS. Yes, I didn’t back it up before going to bed. No, I won’t learn or grow or change from this experience. I’m still writing in the CMS right now and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.
Anyway, yesterday was a pretty lean day in terms of showcases and presentations. I almost considered using yesterday as a catch-up day to watch the Guerrilla Collective show from earlier last week, but I super didn’t, because I got exhausted after just two hours of the actual presentations that aired yesterday and the Guerrilla Collective show is fucking three hours long by itself. Truth be told, I’m not sure when or if I’ll be able to squeeze it in this weekend. Saturday and Sunday are both packed to fuck, and I’ve got a freelance assignment not-so-patiently waiting for me to finish it soon.
So with the behemoth (temporarily?) out of the picture, what was it like watching the game trailer avalanche yesterday? I’ll be very honest with you: I didn’t glean much in terms of games I’d like to play, but I did get to see an interesting contrast of showcase forms.
Access-Ability Summer Showcase
I first watched the independent Access-Ability Summer Showcase, run by Laura Kate Dale of Access-Ability UK and various other games media. This was the inaugural event so I expected it to be a bit rough, but genuinely, production values were as good as – if not better than – some of the other stuff I’ve seen this week. It stands toe-to-toe with something like a Nintendo Direct, and considering this is an indie project, it did so for a fraction of the resources something like the Directs cost to make.
The purpose of the Access-Ability Summer Showcase wasn’t to wow audiences with its flashy trailers and its t-shirt-and-suit-jacketed marketing bros surgically inserting gamer buzzwords into PR copy. It wasn’t about seeing who had the biggest budgets or best graphics. It was instead entirely about which games had developers thoughtful enough to consider players with different physical, audio, visual and cognitive experiences to their own, and make features and settings that included those players.
The showcase itself was designed to accommodate disabled audience members, with Laura and several of the guest presenters describing their appearance and backgrounds for blind listeners, and several versions of the presentation that included variable subtitle options, ASL interpreters, and BSL interpreters for Deaf viewers. None of the trailers were overly flashy or action-packed as is typically the custom of these kinds of events, and in each segment we got a full rundown of a given game’s accessibility features and settings.
Even though I don’t have a physical, cognitive or audiovisual disability, I still found myself appreciating the level of descriptive detail going into each trailer. And even if I didn’t really find the games themselves to be my bag (aside from BOSSGAME!!! Go play BOSSGAME!!!!!), the fact that the show had a variety of games that would meet a variety of people’s needs and interests was another really nice, thoughtful touch.
I think everyone should watch the Access-Ability Summer Showcase. I also think this format should inform game showcases in general moving forward. It may not have the pomp and circumstance of something like the Game Trailers Fest Geoff Keighley hosted on Thursday, but like, I got more out of the Summer Showcase than I have from years of watching other such events.
Go watch it. It’s right below this line. You have no excuse now.
Tribeca Games Spotlight
On the other side of the coin, the Tribeca Games Spotlight (which was streamed on Summer Game Fest official channels) was kinda mind-numbing, I’m not going to lie. Seven games were shown in this presentation: A Highland Song, from Inkle; Goodbye Volcano High, by Ko_op; Chants of Sennaar, by Rundisc; Nightscape, by Mezan Studios; Stray Gods, by Summerfall Studios; The Expanse: A Telltale Series by Telltale games and Deck Nine; and Despelote, by Sebastian Valbuena and Julián Cordero.
I actually dug quite a few of these games, but the way they were presented in the spotlight made me want to fall asleep. So here are the trailers for the games I enjoyed:
I really like Inkle’s output, and the fact that A Highland Song looks to be faster and leaner than the sprawling narrative adventures the studio is known for is a really interesting choice to me.
A game modeled after the Myth of Babel, where language itself becomes a puzzle in need of solving, drawn like old Moebius comics (and more recently, Sable)? I’m already signed up. Fuck me up, Chants of Sennaar.
Nightscape came completely out of left field. It’s a 2.5D side-scrolling puzzle action game about an astronomer who has to restore the Arabic constellations in the night sky with a magic astrolabe. It looks gorgeous, the concept is fascinating, and the dev team seems pretty stoked to be making it. Absolutely stoked to see this come out.
Finally, Despelote. Described by the devs as, paraphrased: a game about soccer and a slice of life adventure game set in 2001 Ecuador, when the country’s soccer team was close to getting into the World Cup. I’m not super big into soccer by any means, but like, the fact that Cordero and Valbuena took it into their own hands to make a huge chunk of Quita, Ecuador explorable makes this an absolute will-play for me.
That’s it from me for now. I have six minutes to share this before the Wholesome Direct starts. It never ends. It just never ends.