A Parallel World

PLAY16 was Hamburg’s games festival in November. Not the polished convention thing - just indie developers, artists, students, people showing work they made for its own sake. Workshops, exhibitions, talks about design and creation. Everything centered on bodies and presence, physicality in games.

Three games won awards at the town hall. The developers mentioned something that stuck with me: winning the award felt like stepping into a completely different world from their actual life. Which is exactly how it works when you make anything. You’re living in two places. Your real job, your responsibilities, your normal self. Then there’s this other world you’re building in the hours nobody’s watching, in the margins. Most of what you make stays there. When someone notices, it’s disorienting.

The games themselves don’t matter as much as the fact that they exist - FAR: Lone Sails, FRU, a tank simulator, whatever. Someone cared enough to finish them when they could have done anything else. That’s the whole story.

People wandered through exploring. Some wanted to learn how to make games, how the code and music and design worked. Others just wanted to experience what someone else had made. Both are valid, both are the point.