Is the world ready for more Frosty Games?

How is the southern hemisphere's take on Summer Games Fest faring?

My guest for this week’s issue of Multiplier is Amy Potter-Jarman. Amy is a games and tech marketing professional and the founder and organiser behind Frosty Games Fest. You can find more information about the showcase ahead of its upcoming stream on the official FGF website. Meanwhile, Amy can be found over on Bluesky.

Fergus: Outside of the odd PAX aligned announcement, Australia is rarely the place where global gaming news breaks. Despite that, the country has a track record for producing some of the biggest breakouts in the independent gaming space, from Hollow Knight to Untitled Goose Game to Unpacking to Cult of the Lamb. Silksong aside, it’s relatively rare for an Australian game to garner even a mention let alone airtime at overseas tradeshows. 

That’s where the Frosty Games Fest comes in. Aimed at giving developers in Australia and New Zealand a dedicated timeslot adjacent to events like Summer Games Fest, the initiative made its debut earlier this year and is now gearing up for its second livestream. Given that, it’s easy to wonder if and how the next incarnation of Frosty Games Fest might differ from the last? What did the team behind the show learn and how might that experience shape what comes next?

Amy:  What I think is interesting is more-so the perception around Australian-made games appearing on a global stage, and the local player's connection to those games. 

This year (if my memory is serving me correctly) there were actually 3 Australian-made games on the main stage at Summer Game Fest itself – Mixtape, MOUSE: P.I. For Hire, and Lego Party, and then Big Walk was featured in Day of the Devs. So it was a pretty good SGF year, representation wise! But do you think most Australian players know about these games, and if they do, do they know that they're Australian? My guess would broadly be no and no. 

I spend a lot of time pondering if players care where a game is made. I think some players care, and some will never care. But when you look at the success of more established regional showcases like the Latin American Games Showcase, or fellow newcomer this year the South East Asian Games Showcase, what I do think players appreciate is curated ways to wade through the huge amount of recent and upcoming indie games. 

So, for me, there are a few things in play with the idea of a "regional showcase." Firstly, they obviously give global players a way to see the most exciting indies coming out of a particular part of the world and help narrow down the overwhelm of "browsing Steam." Secondly, they give greater visibility to the wide variety of games being made in Australia, when, to your point, only a handful will appear on a global stage each year. And lastly, looking inwards now, I believe they provide a way for the local industry to feel more connected to global moments, like SGF, which are almost always happening in another timezone and tens of thousands of kilometers away.

Locally made games do often make appearances at tradeshows like Gamescom, especially in supported spaces like those provided by IGEA, NZ CODE, or Indie Arena etc. But, I'm not sure if you're specifically referring to the accompanying news focused showcases, which yes, we definitely have a smaller representation in. And that was certainly part of the reason why we started Frosty Games, for all the reasons I just outlined above. 

The thing we learned during the first showcase was actually that, for local developers, there is an even greater divide between them and the global showcases than we expected. The level of understanding around how to submit to a showcase, how to work a showcase into a game's marketing plan etc, was lower than we expected. But we're really happy to be able to help more local devs gain experience with how showcases operate, and it's our hope they will take that experience and momentum to apply to larger, global opportunities. 

We got a lot of really great feedback from viewers of the first Frosty Games Fest showcase in June. My personal favourite thing was the comments about how they were surprised by the quantity and variety of indie games made here, and the comments appreciating the "weirdness" of ANZ made games. Game devs in this part of the world are often taking risks and making big swings, and it's such an honour to be able to recognise their work and try to help it be seen by as many people as possible. 

So we're going to keep leaning into the weird, leaning into the variety. Yes, Frosty will always be a showcase of "games made in ANZ" but, as far as big future goals go, I hope over time we can increase the awareness of ANZ as the place where a huge variety of weird and wonderful and cool games get made. 

Fergus: Something that stands out to me in your reply is the line between the discoverability issues of digital distribution platforms like Steam and the role of showcases like the Frosty Games Fest. Although E3 as an event had plenty of other issues, it’s interesting to think about how the double-sided problem of digital discoverability played into its decline.  

The other piece of this that’s interesting to me is the culture of it all. Maybe it’s not as rare as I think, especially in the era of social media. However, it’s always been fascinating to me how much of the zeitgeist around gaming is tied to marketing. 

From a Nintendo Direct to the Game Awards to the Frosty Games Fest, gamers love to sit down and watch a bunch of back-to-back advertisements. I’ve always found this fascinating, both in terms of how it runs against the norm in terms of how we usually think about ad breaks as something we sit through to watch the thing we actually care about and also in terms of how the in-jokes, memes and cultural moments these showcases produce. Maybe that kind of thing is becoming less and less common as the mass audience for E3 fragments into smaller segments. 

Still, I’m curious how you think about the Frosty Games Fest in that context? How do the blurred lines between gaming marketing and the culture around the hobby shape your contribution to it? 

Amy: I myself exist at that exact intersection as a games fan and marketer, so there's a lot to unpack here! 

I do think the gaming audience is a bit unique in terms of a willingness to "sit through advertising." Although, I do like to point out that the Apple conferences, and even to some extent the Disney D23 showcases and expos, are kind of similar things where fans rally around what is essentially a marketing driven moment, right?  

For me, there's really a bigger conversation here around fandom, and I really think that's what's at the center of gaming's obsession with trailers and news. Fandom exists where there is a community and subcultures built around something, and those fans are always going to be interested in being the first to hear news and updates. Historically the games industry has also broadly been very smart about engaging with community and fans, and that has created an audience that is very engaged with their marketing messaging. 

To your point, that fandom is what spins up the memes and reactions around the marketing led moments, and, not to get too psychoanalytical here, for most fans they're tuning in to be part of that, to be included in those moments, as opposed to thinking "time to sit down and watch some ads!" At least I know that's true for myself with digital showcases. I want to be in on those jokes, I want to see those moments happen for the first time or live if I can, because I am very connected to the fandom of gaming so it's important to me. 

So I think with the Frosty Games showcases, we're really just trying to contribute to that fandom in a positive way, by helping to bolster these big global moments that fans are already interested in with a bigger representation of games made in ANZ. Marketing is all about finding those hooks, what might create those in-jokes or moments, might it be a cursed, dark Winnie the Pooh roguelite, or a game where you play as a turnip with a big juicy butt? Likely! And so we're definitely thinking about that when we're curating content for the showcase, but I would say it almost comes second nature to us as organizers who are also deep within the fandom of gaming.