This week has been dead for arcade news, and I haven’t had the time to cook up an opinion piece or article, but I was able to Joe of Slackerz Inc. and Indie Arcade Wave last week, and he posted the podcast for it today. I figure that it’s a good idea to shine a broader light on Indie Arcade Wave, which I’ve mentioned on the blog before, giving them a stronger focus.
I’ll let their description on the podcast serve up the explanation:
Indie Arcade Wave is diving into the scene to show you how arcades are evolving. Exploring Indie game design, indie arcade games, arcade bars, and music that comes with the arcade. Each week we focus on a new game, artist, developer, arcade, or member of the arcade community. All things indie and indie arcade. All nerds welcome!
Overall, Joe is doing an awesome job in highlighting the indie scene, which is pretty tough, given that you already have most of gamedom ignoring arcades unless there is some giant IP/name attached to it, then within the arcade industry, many among distribution networks and FECs ignoring the little indie guys on top of that. As it is, all indies I’ve heard of have found it pretty difficult to sell their games – and that was when times were great.
I should mention that Joe and his team created the indie arcade game Galactic Battleground, which I first discovered at Amusement Expo 2019 a while back. So he not only is speaking to other developers as a developer, but one who has put his money where his mouth is and made cabinets to sell to the market.
Podcasts are posted here; Joe also posts the podcasts to YouTube where he ties it in with video. While there is a focus on arcade indies, he also talks with home game designers too. The most recent discussion, apart from my own, was with Nikita Mikros of BumbleBear Games.
And for the latest podcast where Joe & I talked arcades (well, I rambled a lot about them 😛 ), here you go. Forgive my not-so-photogenic face for the cover and my odd sounding voice (I didn’t use my good Blue Snowball mic for this, which I forgot to bring with me when recording) 😛 :
