This article in Now Then Magazine is at its heart a lovely profile of three local game developers: one small work for hire boutique, and two artgame devs making the sort of thing that’s very close to my heart. Indeed, it’s the kind of thing I constantly have to explain even to people who consider themselves gamers: Maisha Wester’s Coded Black, co-written by Desiree Reynolds, is a walking simulator about anti-Blackness in the US and UK; and Benjamilian Swithen’s Trans Theft Horso is an adventure game about gender gladness. It’s the kind of work I’d expect to see at Now Play This or Indiecade, and that was visible in the vibrant indie games scene of the San Francisco Bay Area when I spent time there in the mid 2010s.
I must admit though, I flinched at that headine: “Does Sheffield have an indie games scene?” But at least they didn’t call it “gaming”! It’s true that Sheffield seems to lack an indie dev scene, despite being home to people making cool indie games. I assume the German language has a word for the longing for a community of practice, which is as fundamental an emotion for me as romantic loneliness or professional insecurity - I’ll just call it “the angst”. It wasn’t sated even during my time in the Bay Area, and I’ll probably never have it that good again.
Counterintuitively, I probably wouldn’t even be a full-time artist making games today if I lived in a place known for its games scene.
Ever since I moved back to South Yorkshire, I’ve been frustrated by the lack of an indie games scene here. In fact, one of the moments that came closest to reproducing that scene in Sheffield was Gaming the Gothic, an event co-organised by Maisha Wester. Apart from that, Sheffield just doesn’t seem to do alternative games events (the AMAZE outpost last year provided a much-needed intervention). There are no playtest events where you can regularly see quirky works-in-progress, and I have no cosy group of weird games people with whom to regularly cowork in a cafe.
One reliable salve for the angst is a gratitude practice. I didn’t have access to these things in the Bay Area simply because of the character of the place – it was in large part thanks to Randy O’Connor, who immediately befriended me and made an intentional effort to include me in things. All of it was set up on a grassroots level by various organisers in the scene, with little to no institutional support other than occasional in-kind contributions from tech companies – as is the American way. Organisers also received very little recognition for this work, though presumably they benefitted professionally from the relationships they built in the process.
As is common for games coverage outside of the games press and blogosphere, the article spends a lot of space at the top defensively trying to explain games’s existence and importance as a whole, particularly with reference to the sphere of arts and culture. “It’s difficult to make the case for video games as a medium. Almost everyone has, through intention or misadventure, been exposed to a good film…” The rehashing of the “are games culture?” faux controversy then ends up framing the issue of game developers’ invisibility in Sheffield, with the implication that games have been excluded from Sheffield’s arts and culture scene.
This risks giving an unrealistic picture of things, at least in contrast to my own experience. The one thing that’s saved me since moving here has been the embrace of games by South Yorkshire’s art institutions. To give just three examples: Rotherham ROAR has let me use their space for games installations a couple of times since 2017. In 2019, Site Gallery selected me for the Platform residency, allowing me to create games for gallery spaces, including their own. I’ve been a supported artist of Sheffield Theatres since 2023, when I was selected for the Bank Cohort programme; they’ve given similar support to other game-making artists such as Erin Marsh.
None of these things provided significant sums of money in themselves, but they have been helpful in securing other funding for my work. All of these institutions have put resources into supporting the development of local artists and profiling their work – by which I mean, there is at least one person who is paid to do the work of building and managing relationships and co-designing programmes of support with the artists themselves. It’s not cultural recognition that facilitates this stuff – it’s the everyday work of people who make space with one another.
I think it’s probably important to recognise the difference between a city’s games scene and the visibility of successful games with a clear identity from that city. In contrast, consider Thank Goodness You’re Here, a game developed and set in neighboring Barnsley that received significant recognition nationally and locally. Although Barnsley’s creative scene is doing well (I say enviously from Rotherham) I’m not aware of a thriving indie games “scene” there. Am I wrong? Is this another instance of Sheffield missing out on opportunities by failing to properly engage with its smaller neighbors?
