This is a record of Interstate Arcade, the country-wide tour of arcade machines from SK Games and software from around the country. My name is Louie, I run SK Games.
I’m currently in a hotel room in Melbourne with dumplings, coopers and Eurovision. I flew in this afternoon and I’ve already offloaded a business card. This is the first leg of my journey over the next week and a half, I’ll be visiting Sydney and Brisbane before I get home, hopefully with a lot less business cards and a lot more developers behind us.
This evening I made it down to Fort Delta, a small art gallery in the middle of Melbourne, to check out an exhibition that apparently included “repurposed arcade machines”. I’ve been to similar shows before, a range of artistic talents have tackled the physical arcade machine, and I’ve seen some interesting cabinets. However, none have impressed me in terms of software. One of the cabinets this evening was built with a dvd player as a base, not a bad idea, except for the interface of the dvd player appearing every time the player advanced the “game”. Of course, this wasn’t a game, it was a piece of art, and as such I don’t feel it’s my place to judge.
One of the staff had a chat to me about games, I gave him my card, and he said he’d check out the site for the tour. He’s studying game design soon, he said. I made some approving noises, I’m glad he’s getting into it, but I wish I had more time to talk to him, maybe encourage him to start making some little games by himself, just start doing it. I don’t think we need another truckload of graduates looking for jobs in huge games companies.
This recon mission to the eastern states is purely for me to meet people, talk things over, check out some art spaces, and finally get to the mana bar. I’ll also see some old friends, and have a few beers, and I’m sure a few fortuitous meetings will take place, they always do. I’m not the most social, I’m not the one to start conversation or introduce myself, but I’m learning. At this point I have to learn, although I’m looking forward to the meetings I’ve organised and the friends I already know. Oh man, Poland is on Eurovision, churn that butter you polish bitch.
larsvonroots 