Last year, I had the pleasure of visiting Barcelona for the first time for IndieDevDay, an annual video game event. All in all, I was very impressed by what I saw, and I wrote about wanting to see something similar in Canada. Earlier this month, I was fortunate to return to Spain for this year’s event, now named BCN Game Fest, and the experience has me even more certain that this is a model that other countries, including Canada, should look to.
In a lot of ways, this year’s event was quite similar to its predecessor. It took place in La Farga, a large retail and event space in downtown Barcelona. It had a solid mix of networking opportunities for developers and publishers and dozens of playable game demos for everyone, including the public, to enjoy. In fact, it’s the largest gaming event in Southern Europe with an attendance size of 17,000, up from last year’s 15,000. At the same time, that’s still much more manageable than something like fellow European event Gamescom (over 370,000) or Fan Expo Canada (over 100,000). But those similarities also just highlighted what continues to work well and what’s improved, providing a template for future events in both Barcelona and, hopefully, beyond.
BCN Game Fest is conveniently located in downtown Barcelona.
Above all else, I can’t stress enough how much I love this format. As media, the business-to-business (B2B) side of things naturally appeals to me a bit more than the average person. In that regard, the programming included more than 65 panels, workshops, over 1,200 business meetings and 12 participating academic institutions. On top of that, returning big-name companies like Larian (Baldur’s Gate 3) and Gameloft (Disney Speedstorm) can attract talent by putting faces to the people behind their popular games.
But even if you’re just a consumer, there’s a lot at BCN Game Fest for you. Altogether, over 200 games were showcased from around 180 studios. I’ll have a separate piece on my favourite ones later, but some of the notable ones include Devolver Digital’s Baby Steps, Skate Story and Cult of the Lamb, Toei Animation’s Re:Ver Project — Tokyo and Pentakill Studios’ The Occultist. And because the event isn’t overly crowded, you can actually get hands-on time with these titles without waiting potentially hours, as you likely would at a PAX or Gamescom. It’s a great way to give visibility to indie developers, especially, as well as locally made games like Gothic 1 Remake (Alkimia Interactive) and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound (The Game Kitchen). Plus, there’s just such a thrill to discovering a promising new game on the fly like that.
Cult of the Lamb had a fun presence.
And this year, I really appreciated how much more international the event felt. Japan, in particular, was the guest country of honour. Besides the aforementioned Re:Ver Project — Tokyo, Japanese outlet 4Gamer was a media partner and Yasuhiro Ohori, developer of the cult classic PS1 game Alundra, had a panel. There were also titles from the Taipei Game Show on display. Beyond my own much-appreciated involvement, I’d love to see more Canadians at the event in the future, especially considering our own industry is so massive.
Having said all of that, I will admit that on a personal level, not a lot of the panels necessarily appealed to me this time. Last year, I had two I really loved: one featuring award-winning Baldur’s Gate 3 composer Borislav Slavov, and another from fellow Canadian Manda Farough about the importance game preservation. Many of them are also in Spanish, understandably. But I also can’t deny that it’s objectively well-rounded in terms of the subjects being covered (everything from diversity in games and women composers to indie publishing with Xbox and a post-mortem on Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound (one of the year’s most acclaimed games). The website also handily mentioned which talks were in Spanish or Catalan vs. English.
Alundra developer Yasuhiro Ohori giving a talk.
And above all else, I can’t help but be impressed at all of this because it’s put on by a very small team run by Daniel Santigosa. Even with much bigger organizers and more resources, something like Fan Expo can often feel like a bit of a mess for various reasons, such as chaotic overcrowding or tone-deaf AI art. But befitting of its old name, BCN Game Fest has that indie spirit through and through, giving it a beating heart unlike most other events I’ve been to. I’m really eager to see how that legacy continues to grow, either by bringing more people from around the world to Barcelona or by inspiring others to take on their own event. I really hope both happen.
