Indie games publisher Fellow Traveller opens submissions, Sam Barlow and Tanya X. Short confirmed to appear
Melbourne, Australia – January 19, 2021: Indie games label Fellow Traveller has opened submissions today for LudoNarraCon 2021, which will run April 23-26. Sam Barlow (Director and Writer of Telling Lies and Her Story) and Tanya X Short (Creative Director at Kitfox Games) are set to appear as speakers. Fellow Traveller is seeking development teams to exhibit at the event and proposals for panels and sessions to feature on the main stage. Submissions will close on February 5, 2021.
LudoNarraCon, a global digital convention held on Steam that celebrates narrative video games, the people who make them and the fans who love them, returns for its third year. The 2020 iteration saw significant growth from its inaugural event in 2019, with nearly 1 million attendees via Steam and a 29% increase in store page traffic for exhibiting games.
Submissions to exhibit or proposals for main stage sessions can now be made at http://ludonarracon.com.
“We started LudoNarraCon with a vision for the power of digital festivals to help indie games rise above the noise, so it’s been exciting to see the explosion of events through 2020 and how far Steam has gone in providing the tools to power them.” said Chris Wright, managing director of Fellow Traveller. “We’ve also always believed in the power of curation and feel that genre or flavour-focused events like LudoNarraCon or the Steam Tabletop Games Festival are important ways to help like-minded developers and players connect around a shared passion. We’re proud to be playing a role in helping innovative story-rich games to get their moment in the spotlight.”
LudoNarraCon began in 2019, as the very beginning of a trend towards embracing digital opportunities for highly-curated events. 2020 saw a major surge of this trend, with many well-established physical events moving into the online space due to COVID-19. While looking forward to the return of physical conventions, Fellow Traveller believes online-only events like LudoNarraCon have established an important expansion to the games industry event space, and will continue to grow and improve the opportunities available to indie games.
As in previous years, the event structure mimics that of physical events:
- Game Booths: A curated selection of developers “exhibit” on their Steam store pages, using Steam’s streaming features to provide behind the scenes looks at their games.
- Demos: Exhibiting games will have downloadable demos, available only for the duration of the event but playable at the player’s convenience.
- Main Stage: The event’s main landing page on Steam will run a livestream featuring panels on topics related to narrative games and panelists including narrative game developers, writers, and journalists.
- Press Pass: Media can register for a press pass giving them early access to demo builds, press assets and facilitating contact with participating developers to organise interviews.
- Steam Sale: The event will host a narrative-themed sale for released games, live for the duration of the event.
About LudoNarraCon
LudoNarraCon is a digital games festival celebrating narrative games and the people that make them.
Organized by Fellow Traveller, an independent games label focused on innovative narrative games, LudoNarraCon is a pioneering event, replicating many of the aspects of conventions like PAX or Eurogamer Expo but through a digital format and hosted on the Steam platform.
An annual event, the inaugural LudoNarraCon was held over four days in May 2019 and LudoNarraCon 2020 was held over four days from April 24 – 27 featuring forty-two games exhibited from locations in Australia, Canada, Germany, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Indonesia, Venezuela, the UK, and the US. There were twelve panel discussions on topics such as Games: The Transformational Experience, Developing Branching Narratives and Storytelling without Dialogue.
The content was streamed live and then looped and the panels and some of the exhibitor streams can still be viewed via the LudoNarraCon website.
About Fellow Traveller
Fellow Traveller is an indie games label exploring what narrative games can be. Passionate about the vast and untapped potential of games as a story-telling medium, its mission is to seek out pioneering game developers working on unusual games with narrative at their core, help these developers bring their creations to the world and to connect them with players looking for something different.
You may know them for the cyberpunk taxicab confessional (Neo Cab), the hacking game using real Unix commands (Hacknet), the surveillance thriller series that puts you in the shoes of Big Brother (Orwell) or the upcoming noir adventure set before during and after the Big Bang (Genesis Noir).
Fellow Traveller’s sister company, The Treasure Hunters Fanclub, brings together a group of experienced members of the games industry (the fans), scouting for interesting projects from independent developers (the treasure hunters) and puts together a deal that includes indie-friendly funding from its members and a publishing deal with Fellow Traveller. Money, marketing and mentorship in support of independent creative vision.
- Website: http://fellowtraveller.games
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/FellowTravellr
