Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo (and half of Bit-Blot) closed the Indie Games Summit at GDC Austin with one of the best talks of the conference.

Alec is best known for his award winning collaboration with Derek Yu, Aquaria

Alec went on immediately following Twisted Pixel.  People were leaving as he took the stage, and Alec confidently called them out and thrust up two middle fingers to those leaving.  He thanked everyone who stayed an immediately confessed that his talk would be different and have nothing to do with indie business and making money.  This artistic talk was very refreshing, inspiring, and intimate – making it the perfect talk to close the conference.

Alec opened with some information about himself.  He’s from Winnipeg Canada and he makes indie games… usually collaborating with others.  He went on to explain what a game encompasses and means to him – “For me, it’s a character in a world. Everything else comes out of that.”  Alec followed by shedding a little light on his creative process.  He starts with story and then moves onto other aspects of a game, but insists that game development is not a linear process.  Each piece of a game influences the others and adds to the overall package so Holowka develops in cycles.

Alec continued by giving example of the spectrum of stories (or lack there of) present in video games today.  Games like Pong are entirely based on interaction…on the opposite end you have games such as “Silent Steel” (or “Sewer Shark” or many of the other games for SegaCD) which are purely context with poor game mechanics and interaction.  Alec shoots for that tasty tasty context somewhere in the middle.  His example of this sweet spot: Final Fantasy VI for the SNES.

Alec was kind enough to show the above preview of his upcoming game during the panel

After gushing over FFVI for awhile, Alec showed some examples of storytelling in his own indie game, Aquaria (both good moments and bad) and closed his lecture asking, “Why not encourage the exploration of emotional spaces?”  This focus on emotional spaces over physical ones is a truly inspirational and lofty goal to reach.  Players are opposed to exploring emotional space in games and it’s much more difficult to execute successfully.  Even the notion of exploring emotional spaces sort of ignites your imagination and makes you rethink the approach  to developing a game’s story.

After panel after panel of indie business discussions, Alec’s personal talk immediately set a different tone and captured the strength and creative potential of indie games.  Holowka’s talk was an excellent way to round out and close the indie game summit with a more artistic and creative approach to indie game development.

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