Freeplay is an Independent Games Festival this weekend in Melbourne. The festival includes a free arcade and expo in the Experimedia room of the State Library of Victoria. The conference program over the weekend at the Library’s conference centre has two stream of speakers, from whom I am hoping to find out more about the lifecycle of the local games industry and what it means to be ‘indie’ and ‘independent’ to video games developer in Australia.

I think the winnitron AU will be popular, and going to treat the event like a practice run for the research trip to Sweden. I am only going to have couple of days I have in Stockholm and Umea and I am going to have to cram as much into them as possible. Freeplay will provide a very timely chance to observe the local industry and its public reception. The festival first ran in 2004, and seems pretty well known in Melbourne.