Cult of the Lamb.
Untitled Goose Game.
Void Bastards.
Hollow Knight.
What do these video games have in common?
Well, they all originate from Australia, but that’s not quite the commonality I was thinking of.
The one I had in mind is Australian gamers don’t seem to recognise these games come from our country.
Take Lara Blair, for example, the President and founder of the Video Game Society at the University of Wollongong.
Lara has such an investment in video games she made a whole club dedicated to bringing a community together around them.
But when asked if she could name some games that have come from Australia, she simply replied…
“I couldn’t name you any Australian companies or games or anything.”
This is not a problem unique to Lara. When I bring up the topic of Australian made games to my compatriots invested in the medium, they all respond similarly, with those more in the loop being able to shakily point a finger to Hollow Knight or Cult of the Lamb.
And this is because no one is telling them.
In July of this year, the Australian branches of games journalism sites Kotaku, Gizmodo and Lifehacker ceased to exist, due to parent company Nine cutting costs.
This marked the end of a majority of games journalism within Australia, a sector that was already quite small before these shutterings.
“The closure of Kotaku Australia might be the worst day in Australian video games journalism – the death knell for a scene,” Jackson Ryan wrote for the Guardian in the immediate aftermath of their demise.
And who can argue
Currently there is only one prominent site for games journalism in this country, GamesHub.
And as Ryan said in his article, to his knowledge there is not a single mainstream publication that employs journalists specialising in video games.
Not one.
This is for an industry that rakes in more than 3 times the global revenue of music and film combined, both of which are represented by specialist journalists in a majority of mainstream publications.
But in Australia, the gaming scene has been struggling to succeed for at least a decade, including fruitlessly attempting to win over an out of touch government who seemingly only realised the potential film studios can have when they took a major downward turn during covid.
At this rate, they might finally get on board with the gaming scene in 2057.
After a period of what looked like certain demise for the Australian games industry back in the early 2010s, when the major studios that had followed the trend of the time, setting up branches in Australia, closed their doors for good, it managed to adapt and overcome, bouncing back hard with the rise of independent games.
Small teams, often 2-4 people, sometimes even just 1, were funding and making their own games, publishing them digitally on game websites like Steam.
In 2017, the Adelaide based indie studio Team Cherry, put Hollow Knight into the world. It was a massive success, breaking into the gaming zeitgeist and was heralded as an instant classic. Two years after launch, it had already sold 2.8 million copies.
Its upcoming sequel, Silksong, is currently the third most wishlisted game on Steam, the biggest site for buying games.
And just like that Australia was back on the map.
The same year Hollow Knight released, another Aussie indie studio, this time from Victoria, revealed a trailer for the new game they were working on, and it went viral. The team was House House and you may know the game as Untitled Goose Game, which the developers stress, is not a title in and of itself. Three months after its 2019 release, it had sold a million copies.
And how can I not mention Cult of the Lamb, a phenomenon of a game made by Massive Monster and released in 2022. It sold 3.5 million copies as of the beginning of this year and stole the headlines from Melbourne’s 2023 International Games Week with a themed rave.
This year they one upped themselves with two weddings inside a specially made temple.
This sort of thing doesn’t just happen. One doesn’t slip and accidentally sell millions of games or set up a specially designed temple for legally binding marriages in the name of one. This is great success coming from Australian game studios, from multiple sources within Australia and continuing to grow, with people clamouring for more. And there are plenty more indie studios I didn’t mention, striving to meet these same standards.
The success of Australian indie gaming has breathed fresh life into the scene, but indie gaming is a packed space globally, with each game clawing for success and only a small percentage achieving it.
Indie games need a groundswell of support to get the ball rolling, and those three games were lucky to receive it.
Indie games live and die based on the momentum they generate. Five Nights at Freddy’s is the obvious example to turn to for this.
A failed Kickstarter campaign, raising no money for its development whatsoever. The first look at the gameplay coming from a small streamer who no one paid attention to. It wasn’t even a blip on the radar. No one knew it existed, nor cared.
Then Markiplier made that video.
And it was unstoppable.
Now with 12 games, countless books, and a movie with a sequel on the way, it’s a juggernaut of a franchise. Hell, it even started its own genre in Mascot Horror, all thanks to the coverage given to it by Markiplier.
For these games — no, for the gaming scene as a whole to thrive — it needs to get eyes on these experiences Aussies are creating.
We need to lift each other up and not rely on luck. Not rely on some streamer liking a game, or a clip going viral.
We need steady and consistent coverage of the games Australians are producing to give Australian games some exposure to start with and allow them to rely less on prayer alone.
We need games journalism to have a presence in Australia.
As Leah J, Williams, the journalist producing a large percentage of articles for GamesHub highlights, games journalism provides important exposure to smaller games within their areas they wouldn’t otherwise get (like Australian journalists covering Australian games. Mind-blowing stuff, I know).
“…Journalism is an important tool for highlighting the work of creators – whether in Australia or otherwise. One of the best parts of my job is getting to write about smaller Australian games and giving them a spotlight,” Williams said.
“This is somewhat of an organic marketing process – there is a strong interrelation between marketing and journalism, and it should be acknowledged. It allows creators time in the spotlight and illuminates the game development process.”
The lack of games journalism in Australia is stifling the attention Australian indie games can achieve and making it more difficult for them to seize success.
And if it continues to be stifled, we won’t have a voice in the culture of gaming.
Williams believes Australian games are not helpless and have ways to persevere despite the lack of coverage.
“Australia’s games scene has persevered through incredibly tough times, and I believe it will be okay even without games media,” Williams said.
“While this will mean less organic marketing and awareness of upcoming games, creating challenges for spreading news, Australia’s local games scene has always proved innovative.”
So, while Williams believes studios can adapt to the situation and overcome, that prayer to breakthrough becomes that little bit more unlikely to be answered without Australian games journalism.
If we want a presence in this space we need to help, not hinder, the exposure our cultural output has.
Even if some studios manage to adapt and survive, what are we losing that could have found a place if it only managed to get a little spotlight for itself.
If we want Australian games to thrive, they need all the help they can get.
Australian games journalism helps.
So you should care it’s not there.