January 2025 Update
Happy New Year, Hello Indies!
2024 was a busy year for Seattle Indies. We hosted nearly 200 events throughout the year, including our best attended SIX, Holiday Party, and Summer Picnic. We brought back the monthly Show & Tell event giving our developers a chance to showcase their games and get critical feedback from our community members.
We proudly supported Diversity Collective+ to send our first two scholarship recipients to GDC in 2024. Deliberations are underway to determine who the 2025 recipients will be. This is thanks in part to our generous sponsors and donors who contributed to support the annual Pride celebration held at Mox Boarding House in Ballard.
We started the Seattle Indies Speaker series, a bi-monthly event featuring talks from developers in our community about their development process, and game marketing strategies. Look for the series to make a return in February.
We started new regular social meetups in Lynwood marking our first regular event outside of King County, and one in South King County alternating between Kent and Burien. Look for a Tacoma social to be starting soon in 2025 for those in the Pierce County/South Puget Sound area.
We brought devs and games to the inaugural editions of the WA State Gaming Expo and Geek Fest West and look forward to returning to both in 2025 with a bigger presence at Geek Fest in the works. We also attended Explore IT at Everett Community College, running a series of four 15 minute game design challenges for middle school students from the Everett, WA area and our Executive Director Tim Cullings gave a talk at Seattle Creates in December, speaking on Graphic Design related careers in the games industry.
We teamed up with Clove Experiential to produce and host the first Rise of the Indie Studios roundtable at SIX 2024 bringing together 40+ business leaders in the indie games industry to talk about challenges we are all facing and how we can work together to overcome them. This led to us combining forces with Clove again to launch a bid for a Federal Grant to kickstart the WA State Gaming Innovation Hub, a planned physical location for Seattle Indies to host incubator and accelerator programs and to have a community events space. Stay tuned for more information about this as we push to make this a reality in 2025.
Seattle Indies Expo (SIX) will be returning in 2025 on Sunday August 31st at the Hilton Motif Seattle. We have plans to expand the event to accommodate more games and give our attendees more room to enjoy the festivities, we will be announcing more information about that as it gets closer. Check out the highlights from SIX 2024.
Speaking of grants we teamed up with our partners at Ed Tech Seattle, foundry10, and Perfect Day Games from the successful series of Games and Education Industry Colliders to launch Washington Interactive Learning Alliance (WILA) and expand the Collider event to a full day of talks, workshops, and an expo floor that was held at Pacific Science Center back in November. This was bolstered by our successful bid for an ICAP grant managed by the WA State Department of Commerce. The remainder of the funding will be used to help fund a capstone project by students at the University of Washington HCDE focused on building a game design handbook for developing games to be used in classrooms, and a hackathon we are partnering with Seattle U and Revere XR focused on building educational, interactive experiences to preserve and celebrate the legacy of black-owned businesses in the Central District of Seattle. Check out the highlights and full slate of talks here.
We closed out 2024 on a high note with our highly anticipated Holiday Party that saw 400 of us come together to celebrate the season and look forward to the new year, followed by the news that we have been awarded $69,000 in grant funds from the Doors Open program managed by 4Culture, which will be paid out over the next three years. This is a 9x increase from our usual sustained support we have been receiving from 4Culture over the past 7 years and will go a long way to help support our efforts to support the game development community here in the greater Seattle area. We thank King County for providing the funds and 4Culture for managing the grant funds to make this possible.
We thought 2024 was an amazing year for Seattle Indies and 2025 is shaping up to be another great year for the organization and the community. We want to hear from you in our first ever Seattle Indies member survey.
We’re working to ensure that the Seattle Indies is as inclusive and representative as possible, and we’d love your help! By taking just a few minutes to fill out this brief demographic survey, you’ll provide valuable insights that help us create a more welcoming environment for everyone.
Your responses are completely confidential, entirely optional, and every voice counts! The demographic data helps us better identify the community we serve when we apply for grants that ask for this information. No personally identifiable data will be shared with anyone outside of the organization. Thank you so much for your time and participation. We truly appreciate your input.
We’re about halfway through the decade now, crazy! We hope the start of the new year is re-invigorating you to start (or continue) on new projects. With Spring approaching, there’s some events to keep an eye on as well…
PocketGamer is coming up in London from Jan 20 to 21, and another one in March in from 17-18. Click here to learn more.
The D.I.C.E. Summit is a video game networking conference which includes a variety of intimate and exciting events spanning several days. It takes place February 11 to 13 in Aria, Las Vega. Click here to learn more about it and book tickets early.
The annual Game Developer Conference is approaching, so it’s probably time to start planning if you want to attend. It’s a 5 day long event taking place in San Francisco from March 17 to 21. Click here to learn more! We have a 10% discount for our members on All Access, Core, or Summits Passes: GDC25-SI-10
Register here: https://gdc.informatech.com/2025/registrations/Attendeemc=bartergdcsf_3pvr_le_olb_si_2025
If you want to get a list of all upcoming game event shows and get ready early, The Indie House has published this fantastic list of upcoming festival that’s exactly that. Well worth a bookmark!
This month’s Seattle Indies spotlight feature is Kieran Lampert!
Hey, I’m Kieran! Since 2011 I’ve been creating characters and other art for video games and toys. I relish the opportunity to take an appealing character design and capture the essence of it in 3D. I also enjoy experimenting with different styles, learning new skills, participating in game jams, and otherwise collaborating with those who share my same passion for creating unique, handcrafted, memorable products.
What inspired you to become an indie developer?
To be perfectly honest, it was playing Psychonauts for the first time. Up until that point most of my experience playing games were with big AAA titles, but the quirky art style, clever writing, and overall unorthodox premise of Psychonauts captured my heart. It’s still my favorite game to this day, and playing it caused me to start exploring deeper into indie games and discover that these were the types of games I wanted to play as well as make – games with unique voices made by smaller, passionate teams.
What is one important lesson you have learned in your time as an indie developer?
Somewhere along the way I heard someone say “finished is better than perfect,” and I’ve tried to make that one of my main guiding principles. You learn so much by seeing something through to the end and putting it out there. Perfection is an unreasonable goal, and if you hang on to things waiting for them to eventually be perfect, they will probably never see the light of day.
What is the one piece of advice you would share today with your younger self before you started your career as an indie developer?
Along the same lines as “finished is better than perfect,” I would urge my younger self to do things, even if I don’t think I’m good enough to do them yet, because doing things is how I learn to get better. I would often fall into the habit of watching tons and tons of tutorials, waiting to feel “ready enough” to start something new, afraid I was going to be bad at it my first time. And I was bad! But actually doing the thing was always the most direct path to improvement.
How has the game developer community had an impact on your career?
The game dev community has been such a consistent source of support and inspiration, especially here in Seattle. I see all the creative, unique, amazing things people are working on and it inspires me to want to do better and contribute something meaningful and personal to the medium. Posting progress work from my personal project to the Seattle Indies Discord has also helped motivate me to continue working on it. Without having that place to get feedback, support, and encouragement, I think I would find it extremely hard to maintain the energy needed to work on it.
What is something interesting and unexpected that people would be surprised to learn about you?
Before deciding to go to school for art and graphic design I was originally considering majoring in Linguistics! I don’t know if I would have been any good at it, but I’ve always found languages incredibly fascinating, especially in the way that languages reflect the history, values, and development of the cultures that formed them.
How can people follow you and your work?
These days I mostly post on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/kieranlampert.com), but you can also see more of my work on my portfolio site (https://www.kieranlampert.com/).
Here’s our Meetup Page with all future upcoming events.
The Eastside Meet & Drink is taking place on Jan 7, 6:30pm at Northwest Brewing Pint & Pie Public House. It’s time to get together and swap stories. Put down your keyboards and brave the outside world. Let’s meet for a drink, a bite to eat, and some good conversation!
An In-Person Writer’s Group will take place at Hugo House on Jan 8, 6:30 PM. For anyone interested or working on projects in game writing, narrative design, voice acting or more– swing by Seattle Indies’ In-Person Writer’s Group! Bring your narrative games, scripts, flowcharts, character bibles or any other story materials for sharing and feedback.
Northside Social is happening at Watershed Pub & Kitchen on Jan 9, 6pm. It’s time to get together and swap stories. Put down your keyboards and brave the outdoors. Let’s meet for a coffee/tea, a bite to eat, and some good conversation!
The Game Club is happening on Jan 15 at 7pm right on our Discord, and will focus on Citizen Sleeper. What a book club is to a discussion of literature, this event is to a discussion of game design. Every month, we agree to play a game, then meet to discuss and analyze its design and presentation.
Seattle Indies Board Game Meetup is happening on Jan 19, 3pm at at Phoenix Comics and Games. Come play board games with Indie Game Developers!
Seattle Indies Social takes place at Stoup Brewing (formerly Optimism) on Jan 21, 7pm. Join us for some well-deserved mingling, drinks, and socialization! Make some new friends, catch up with old ones, and find out what the community’s up to.
Indie Co-working Support Group in-person will take place every Saturday, from 1:00 PM to 6:30 PM PST, at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. Seattle Center wifi will be available for use. Please bring everything you need to be productive. We will be meeting every Saturday of the month at AIE going forward. We have also added a Co-working voice channel in Discord for people to use any time they want a quiet space to work alongside their peers.
Seabug Study Hall is a new series of events taking place every week on Thursday, 9pm to 11pm, right on our Discord! Join others from the Seattle Blender User Group for a lo-fi chill out online study hall. Bring a project, just chat, and have a good time with some unstructured project sharing and Q&A.
Our regular Events that are NOT HAPPENING this month:
Feedback Circle is OFF. It’s time to stop coding, animating, making art or audio or adding that amazing new feature you thought of while you were falling asleep last night and come to Feedback Circle to get some real responses to what you have been working on from game creators in our community like yourself.
Southside Social is OFF . It’s time to get together and swap stories. Put down your keyboards and brave the outdoors. Let’s meet for a coffee/tea, a bite to eat, and some good conversation! This meetup will alternate between Kent and Burien for the next few months at least so we can find out which location works best for people.
Show and Tell, normally at Niantic offices at One Bellevue Center – Chinook Room 411 108th Ave NE · Bellevue, WA. Bring your laptop and show off what you’re working on at the Seattle Indies Demo Night. Use this event to get feedback on your game and to network with other game devs. Pizza will be provided. Please bring everything you will need to demo and record feedback for your game.
Spencer R (Serf of Cinder) released their first steam game “Archetype and the Four Winds of Hell.” It’s like a condensed item randomizer mod with all of your favorite Metroidvania abilities! Check it out!
Artistofseer’s game has relaunched to Kickstarter. A meticulously crafted LGBTQ+ fantasy RPG for the modern age, where every moment matters and teamwork takes center stage. Learn More and Support Here!
Andrea S. started a new studio whose mission is to make women’s and queer history accessible to all through a multimedia approach. Read the Official Announcement!
conorati shared that The Rat Zone has announced their next game, Creature Kitchen! Wishlist it here!
Vangi (Mateusz) has a new demo for Opus Cortex! Play it Here!
ZEROᵈᵛᶠ released their new game “The Unlit Sun!” It’s a psychological horror game where Ethan faces a twisted reality ruled by the enigmatic Nyctarion. Play it Here!
Xileh released their game Super Antonio – Check it out here!
Nick G made a game a game jam over the weekend with the limitation “only one resource”. If you like bees and ‘number go up’ styles of games, check it out here!
Harassment Policy, AAPI, Black Lives Matter, and Resources
Seattle Indies stands with the AAPI community. We are here for our members who have been affected by the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes both locally and nationally. For further resources to educate yourself on the issue and how to take action, here is a useful link: https://anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co/
Seattle Indies believes the stories of the victims of sexual harassment and assault in the games industry that have been shared. We strongly condemn the actions by people in power preying on the dreams of vulnerable people trying to make their way in the industry and strive to build an inclusive community that welcomes all minorities to provide a safe environment and a better vision for the game industry.
While our code of conduct states a zero-tolerance policy for harassment of any kind we are especially sensitive to the daily challenges faced by womxn due to the ingrained sexism that has existed in the structure of the games industry for far too long. We are actively working to build a better community of game developers and we all need to do better.
Additionally, Board Member August Belhumeur has offered to be a personal resource for anyone who needs help, someone to talk to or some guidance on next steps if you have experienced harassment in the industry either at our events or elsewhere. She can be reached at august@seattleindies.org.
Our friends at Take This Org have compiled valuable resources for anyone in immediate need of professional help for their situation.
Lastly, Seattle Indies and Diversity Collective+ support Black Lives Matter. Here are some resources compiled by Diversity Collective+ for how you can offer support, whether this is financial, contributing to petitions, preparing for protests, or getting informed. If you have additional resources, comment below and we will add them.
As always, keep an eye on our Discord for any last-minute news and discussion, and let us know about any projects you’re working on that you’d like shared on our Steam or Itch collections or follow us on all of our social media platforms.
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