Like most business ideas on the internet, it all began as a chat thread.

Former Kotaku Australia editor Mark Serrels and fellow journalist Jackson Ryan were discussing the dismal fate of gaming journalism in Australia, spurred on by the closure of Kotaku Australia in 2024. The pair both contributed to the website — Serrels at one point served as its editor — and later worked together directly at CNET Australia. They were well aware of the gaping hole the closure left in Australia’s already receding games journalism industry.

They tossed around ideas for a new platform. Something they could operate within the constraints of their current roles. Serrels runs consumer advocacy group CHOICE’s editorial division, meanwhile Ryan freelances across both science and videogames journalism. A newsletter? A TikTok channel? A YouTube show? Nothing stuck until the most retro variant of media around came into the c…

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Players are in for a good scare when they pick up the latest copy of Resident Evil Requiem. But it turns out the real horror occurred within the first 24 hours of the game’s launch.

In what has to be up there as one of the most dystopian moments ever seen in gaming journalism, long-running UK games website Videogamer published an AI-generated review of the latest in the storied survival horror series amid all the other launch reviews.

It came onto readers’ radar when the review was automatically ported onto Metacritic, a review aggregator that drives significant traffic to websites around the world. Outrage ensued.

It gets worse. The piece is attributed to an AI-generated journalist. Yes, you read that right. Something ripped straight out of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where its main newsreader is revealed to be an AI designed to subtly influence public opinion (sorry for the spoiler there), is now in a rudimentary form,…

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Over 100,000 flock to Melbourne International Games Week events each year. While your average gamer will tell you that the three-day expo PAX is their absolute highlight of the week, those in the games industry will give you a very different answer.

Parallels, an event nestled in the middle of the very crowded week, has become the undisputed staple of the Australian indie game development community.

“It provides a chance for devs from all walks of life and experience levels to finally connect,” Ben Shuster, editor of Qualbert and Game Community Manager at Gameloft Brisbane, told Infinite Lives.

“Where else can you share a drink with a fellow local dev and bond over shared trauma, and seconds later be speaking with Team Cherry about the store-crashing success of Silksong? It offers an important space outside the crowded PAX expo hall, celebrating the sheer creativity and absurdity of games that you’ll not find elsewhere…

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Welcome back to the Infinite Lives newsletter; what a time to write about gaming. I originally intended this first piece back to be a gentle ease into the new year. A light read, covering off the major points that will shape this year.

It may just be writer’s enthusiasm from taking almost a month off from penning this newsletter, but as I kept going, the thoughts really piled up.

We really are living in a fascinating time for the sector, where so many ideas and trends are actively affecting the way games are made, the way we play them, and the overall health of the industry.

There’s a lot to talk about. So let’s get into it. Here are the big questions that I think will shape gaming this year.

Will the gaming industry continue to try to hike prices?

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Let’s get this out of the way: I’ll be the first to say that typically, prediction pieces can be a bit of a waste of time.

Back when I was a tech reporter many moons ago, pulling these stories together was usually an exercise in finding the most outlandish claims to hang a headline off. So they weren’t really a representation of what’s actually going on, just what made for the most interesting copy. And, truth be told, in most sectors, everyone’s crystal ball is just as hazy as anyone else’s.

Yet in gaming, I’ve found people’s takes on the future to be quite intriguing, conservative, and as a result, more astute. For an industry built on creating the fantastic, its key participants and veterans are quite realistic and pragmatic, hardened by just how difficult it is to create, launch and succeed in gaming.

Even with last year’s predictions, where I mainly polled Substack writers, I was pleasantly surprised at just how many of them came true:

• The rise of AI-based NPCs, as seen with Whispers of a Star

• More use of gaming intellectual property in TV and film, a Zelda movie is now a reality

• Further troubles for Ubisoft…

• More ports for the Steam Deck and other handheld consoles, with the Switch 2 launch ramping up this trend.

• Gaming journalism’s struggles continue — though there are some green shoots.

• And while this feels more like an observation than a prediction: release dates were few and far between this year with no details until months before the game came out. The only game we really knew about going into 2025 was Grand Theft Auto 6, and that was delayed twice in one year!

Yes, there were a few misses. Nintendo isn’t getting into VR yet, but there’s always next year.

So this year, I’ve doubled down on this idea, focusing on industry participants. I asked everyone I interviewed or sourced comments from in 2025 to provide a prediction for 2026. It’s a good mix of indie developers, marketers and other support services for games, as well as key gaming journalists. Not everyone got back to me—many were too busy, which at this time of year is fair enough.

I didn’t lead the predictions either. Last year, I asked contributors to try to provide unique takes to avoid doubling up. So this piece is more or less a raw snapshot of the Australian gaming industry’s psyche heading into the new year.

What’s on people’s minds heading into 2025? Read on.

Indie devs will continue to blend genres; Nintendo’s Switch 2 lineup will grow – Ben Schuster, editor at Qualbert, Game Community Manager at GameLoft Brisbane

With the rising popularity of the roguelike crossover genre, as seen with recent indie titles like BALL x PIT, Balatro, and Cloverpit, there’s a high chance this trend will continue into 2026. Independent developers will continue to push the boundaries of genre, as we see familiar concepts like coin pushing and deck-building combined with addictive gameplay loops.

Entering the second year of the Switch 2, I expect we will see the announcement of a new 3D Mario title, coinciding with the release of the Super Mario Galaxy movie. I’m certain Nintendo will also drop a teaser announcement for a new Zelda title, as well as the release of the first Mario Kart World DLC pack.

Frustrations with gaming discoverability will grow in 2026 – Alex Harding, Founder of The IndiEXP

The battle for indie game discoverability will only get more difficult with there being more games launching each and every day and less press media keeping their heads above water to cover them. We’ve already seen a shift in external discoverability be dictated by YouTubers and Twitch streamers, and with TikTok becoming an increasing avenue for awareness, written media (unfortunately) just doesn’t have the influence it once did. Not only that, but it also puts more pressure on the indie developers, stressing that you can’t just make a game and make big money anymore; another Slay the Spire clone just isn’t going to cut it. It’s up to them to create new and innovative experiences – otherwise, it’ll just end up in the virtual Steam bargain bin.

The rapid release of new games will make discoverability even harder – Kate Hall, co-founder at PlayIndies

In 2026, indie games will continue to thrive. Quickly-developed titles will continue to launch. More “friendslop” is on the horizon! And I’m here for it. The market has been oversaturated for years, making it a challenge to break through the noise. The era of spending several years on an indie project is coming to an end as more teams embrace the new strategy of quick iteration and rapid release. 2026’s indie scene will be more oversaturated than ever, requiring agile, bold marketing strategies to earn awareness. I’m ready for the challenge. Bring it on!

Indies are on the rise and will finally get their time in the sun next year – Briar Francis, Special Counsel at Thomsen Geer

While Silksong broke the internet, in my very humble opinion any number of indie titles deserved equal recognition this year. That hype, coupled with near-weekly news of mass redundancies at big conglomerates and the rise of content houses churning out unfulfilling slop games, makes me feel like the tide is turning. As we wake up to the reality of what it takes to make great games, my prediction is that both consumers and developers alike will seek out independent studios for intentional, rewarding games from businesses who create by a more ethical and sustainable ethos.

The stalemate on AI in gaming will break next year – Aaron Vernon, Split Atom Labs, maker of Land of Livia

In 2026, AI will finally break its stalemate with the games industry. It’s usually an early adopter for tech, but GenAI has been an exception. Developers are split, console and PC players mostly dislike it, while mobile gamers who drive the largest slice of revenue don’t seem as worked up about it. But the amount of money pouring into this space is enormous, so the power law will take effect. Someone will ship a game that uses AI in a way that’s genuinely fresh and fun. Expect a 100x outlier that forces the industry to recalibrate.

Generative AI in gaming will self-correct, as various gaming studios behave as they always have – Chad Habel, Bad Plan Studios, makers of End of Ember

It’s a pretty safe bet that next year we will hear more about Generative AI in game development, from predictions of a cataclysmic bubble burst to some dystopian future worse than anything Asimov could have imagined. Practical use cases are only just emerging and we don’t know quite what the future looks like.

Here’s an utterly vanilla prediction though: the future with gen-AI is likely to look quite similar to the past without it. Although this disruptive technology is producing some visible disequilibrium right now, the big systems will right themselves and settle into the same patterns that have established themselves over decades and centuries. Corps will be corps, indies will be indies, and gamers will be gamers. The only thing that is certain is that the next truly big thing (like COVID, or the GFC before it) is going to come without any warning.

Microsoft’s Forza Horizon 6’s launch could test the waters with generative AI – Alice Clarke, Australian gaming journalist and reviewer

My prediction for 2026 is that Forza Horizon 6 is either going to be the most incredible racing game we’ve ever seen, taking full advantage of the Japanese setting to have a satisfying mix of surfaces, good vignettes about Japanese car culture, and some new modes based on player feedback. There is so much potential there for my new favourite game.

Or, Microsoft will force it to be shoved full of so much AI slop and terrible AI translations that it will be basically unplayable. There probably won’t be much in between.

Granted, there will probably be other games involving cars released in 2026, but (as usual) the majority of my focus is on Forza Horizon. While I’m normally comfortably confident that it’ll be incredible, Microsoft’s brutal redundancies and aggressive push to generative AI means that I can no longer be sure about that, and I hate this feeling. Ever since Microsoft invested in OpenAI, the whole company has been like Sideshow Bob with the rakes.

Puzzle games find funding as interest grows – Al Thumm, CEO of Lamplight Forest, makers of As Light Fades

My thoughts for 2026 are less of a prediction and more where my headspace has been the last few years. Having released a hardcore puzzle game this year, I’ve been quite focused on the puzzle community and the interesting growth happening there.

Thinky Games has been putting a lot of hard work into growing the puzzle community, and over the last few years publishers like Annapurna, Devolver and Raw Fury have had some surprisingly great results, both creatively and commercially, backing puzzle titles like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, The Talos Principle, and of course the breakout hit Blue Prince. Similarly, Jonathan Blow’s next big game, The Order of the Sinking Star, is coming out in 2026 and is bound to make waves.

So while I wouldn’t say puzzle games are having their moment, I’d say a more subtle culmination of factors (perhaps helped out by high-profile examples like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom’s greater emphasis on puzzles) is resulting in increasing potential for bigger puzzle ideas to get funded and find big audiences and perhaps more importantly, through style/atmosphere/narrative etc, transcend just being seen as puzzle games, and thus break out of that niche audience (the stylish and mysterious Lorelei is a great example of this).

Adjacent to that, also in the thinky-realm, I think the indie immersive sim space is coming up fast and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some breakout hits from there in the next few years!

(Editor’s note: Al is not affiliated with Thinky Games)

Mixtape will be Australia’s next big indie game, and physical media may make a return – Mike Roberts, Studio Head and Creator, The Kids From Yesterday, makers of Dolven

Mixtape, by Beethoven & Dinosaur (published by Annapurna Interactive), is going to be a landmark for the Australian indie game scene—both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. I played the demo at SXSW Sydney 2025 and called it then: Mixtape could be the Almost Famous of video games. It’s the 2026 title I’m most hyped for.

My bonus take: The cultural zeitgeist of the global game-buying public will keep noticing the downsides of a fully digital world and begin marching back toward ownership and physical media. Including, but not limited to, game magazines!

(Editor’s note: Mike is not affiliated with Mixtape or its development)

Direct-to-consumer sales will continue to grow – Simon Slee, Regional VP ANZ, Xsolla

While 2026 won’t be a pivotal moment for “direct sales”, this trend will accelerate as more games adopt some level of direct and evolving monetisation, either through their own communities, or indirectly through content creators.

Changes around alternative payments (Apple vs. Epic), distribution fragmenting, and reduced organic game discovery (on Steam now too) are forcing game studios, who are increasingly having to self-publish, to consider a mix of other revenue streams to diversify risk and find their audience in a saturated market.

Game studios are already doing the work building direct player communities, why not simply offer the game directly and capitalise on the relationship, which is a better experience for all, rather than send it all to the walled-garden platforms who are heading towards becoming a download site at this point.

Hope for the Australian gaming industry, as a drier funding market leads to innovation – Dave Lloyd, Partner at Powerhoof, makers of The Drifter

In 2024 funding dried up for most Aussie devs and the outlook felt bleak. In 2025 things haven’t improved, but the vibe has changed—the Aussie game industry’s pulled itself up by its bootstraps and we’re getting on with it. There’s hope. It’s an echo of similar hardships from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which resulted in the birth of Australia as a powerhouse for indies and world-class original IP. In 2026 we’ll start to see a new wave of Aussie games announced—less reliant on overseas funding and more than ever our own unique thing.

The industry will shift to smaller teams as a new normal – Edmond Tran, Managing Editor of This Week In Videogames

My hot take (or rather, hot hope) is that we’ll be able to see the landscape visibly shift towards small and medium-sized games from small and medium-sized teams being embraced as the new normal, both in terms of investors and publishers as well as audiences.

We’ve seen a clear fallout over the last few years of medium-large studios staffed by AAA veterans pitching ambitious games, being shut down or closing or having live games getting cancelled, and audiences realising that short, focused games are great, actually. Perhaps 2026 will finally be the year the wider industry wakes up and has its clarity moment after a regretful hangover.

Realism and immersion will improve as graphic capabilities surge forward – Joel Gibbs, JG Games, maker of Fall of an Empire

I think in 2026 we’ll see more progress in ultra-realistic rendering using Gaussian splatting, but we won’t be seeing a game use it for another few more years until lighting and animation are figured out.

We might see an actual game released that uses a world model like Google’s Genie 3 (check out the paint demo, it’s crazy). This would be a huge step forward for realism and immersion, but takes away some of the sense of curation. Good if you like open-world freedom, bad if you like your games to be like movies. Game development may become like what they imagined in 90s sci-fi.

I don’t think we’ll see much progress in VR, I do think we’ll see plenty more arguments about AI, and I think that web3 will stay buried.

What do you think of these predictions? Do you have any interesting takes for 2026? Leave them in the comments.

Infinite Lives will have one more edition coming out this year (Dec 30), before taking a break until after Australia Day (January 26).

Below is Infinite Lives first paid contribution, from Australian writer and journalist Naomi Jackson. Paid for at rates well above the industry average for videogame writing. Thank you to all the paying subscribers that have made this possible — it’s a huge milestone for this publication.

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Valve sure knows how to blow up the internet. Less than a couple of weeks, stories are still flowing thick and fast about every available ounce of information on Valve’s new gaming machine.

The latest? It’s confirmed (more or less) that it won’t bundle a new Valve original game, like Half-Life, with the device.

For those unfamiliar, the creator of the game marketplace Steam will next year launch a console device aimed to sit under your TV (or PC) screen, with specs comparable to the Xbox and Playstation 5.

It’s bringing one of the world’s largest, most active marketplaces to a console audience. One that thrives on game discovery, discounting, user reviews and serving as a platform for every niche title imaginable.

This actually has massive implications for Australia and our local indie game development scene. Perhaps more than many other markets.

To say Australian game developers fixate on Steam would be an unde…

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Dave Lloyd tried something novel this time around when launching his latest game: the old-fashioned approach.

Typically, indie studios resort to YouTube streamers and content creators to build buzz and awareness. In addition to engaging them, Lloyd’s studio Powerhoof took a risk hiring a PR firm to manage a global process for videogame journalists to review his game, The Drifter.

Even though this produces free exposure for the game, pitching traditional media can be expensive gamble. This kind of support can cost a studio well over $20,000 and for a small bootstrapped indie title — potentially its entire marketing budget. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that reporters will give a positive review, or even express any interest in the game.

While Lloyd is the first to admit there’s no one method for launching a game, in this instance his hunch to buck the trend of influencer-only approach paid off.

“I think there are about 39 Metacritic reviews for The Drifter, whereas we had about five for Crawl,” he said. “So quite a big difference.”

That density mattered. Lloyd says the volume and timing of reviews, all landing within a tight launch window, creates a snowball effect that pushes visibility on platforms like Steam. “That general critical mass of coverage really makes a difference in pushing people to check out a game.”

Less than a decade ago, Lloyd’s thinking here wouldn’t be novel. In fact, the overall success of any game would somewhat depend on whether videogame journalists decided it was worth initially checking out, possibly covering its preview and then reviewing it at launch.

It speaks to the waning power of both gaming media outlets and critical reviews. The industry now sees media reviews as less the ultimate gatekeeper of success, and instead one of many levers that can be pulled to drive attention to a game. Some see it as a much needed correction of power. Others, the downfall of a key institution supporting the industry, giving way to a pay-to-play marketing channel run by content creators.

The consensus, however, is that critical gaming reviews and coverage from traditional media mean a lot less than they used to. And the trend isn’t reversing any time soon.

Industry veteran and Regional VP of ANZ at Xsolla, Simon Slee, remembers a simpler — but arguably more expensive — time in games marketing, one that was at its prime less than 10 years ago.

“If you had a big game and needed coverage by a certain date, you’d fly journalists to BlizzCon or E3 for behind-closed-doors previews,” he said, presenting his personal views to Infinite Lives, not those of his employer.

“You’d pay for their flights, they’d get exclusive access, then produce a multi-page preview. That was a negotiated package: exclusivity, page count, ad placement, cover placement. PR teams chased those exclusives.”

“As the industry moved online, that became much harder,” he explains. Digital exclusives now have a lifespan measured in seconds, not weeks. A splashy reveal on YouTube or IGN is swallowed almost instantly by the broader internet.

When games launch, studios are now fighting to capture a fleeting slice of online conversation — a window that might last 24 to 48 hours at best. With more than 10,000 games launching on Steam in 2025, that’s more crucial than ever before.

“Digital exclusives have a lifespan of seconds, which reduces their value to media,” Slee says.

“That’s one reason studios shifted to creators. A creator’s first-hands-on Twitch stream is now the new ‘exclusive preview,’ and everyone tunes in. It’s no longer a private, behind-closed-doors moment for press, it’s a communal moment for fans.”

As Slee explains, there are myriad reasons why the industry now favours creators for reviews.

“Younger audiences in particular learn about games through creators,” he said.

“There’s also instant call-to-action: a creator shares a link, and a viewer can buy the game immediately. Traditional reviews don’t have that,” he adds. While some video-game newsrooms have dabbled with affiliate links for accessories and hardware, media reviews by and large don’t include these due to ethical considerations.

Yet, Slee adds, traditional media reviews still have their place in the ecosystem, but more as a point of validation than a driver of sales.

“Even if creators generate the hype, studios still want those pull-quotes: ‘Game of the year,’ or ‘Best shooter,’” he says, referencing accolade trailers where studios market quotes from reviews to drive conversion.

“They also want strong Metacritic scores.” Metacritic, a service that collates review scores from gaming outlets, has become an informal currency for the industry. “Validation matters behind the scenes: if you’re a developer pitching your next game, saying ‘Our last game got 8/10 on IGN’ and showing a slide full of accolades helps secure funding and publishing deals.”

Those scores can also open doors. Lloyd notes that certain game showcases or placements in online marketplaces are only available to titles with a high enough Metacritic score. And that’s important for any emerging title. “Probably 90% of our traffic is people finding it through Steam, not traditional media,” Lloyd says.

When it comes to game reviews, there’s a palpable friction between content creators and traditional games media, largely around the question of ethics.

Across the Australian games industry, there’s a view that creators require payment to even look at a game. Alex Harding, founder of indie game PR firm IndiXP, says that’s somewhat of a myth. It often comes down to whether the game is good content for their audience and has some momentum already behind it.

“The more excited they [content creators] are about the game, the more likely they are to just stream it when offered a free copy or demo,” Harding says.

He also offers a foil to the idea that all traditional media are faultless in their approach. Without naming individuals, Harding says he’s had journalists from large gaming outlets request game codes with the intention of reviewing, only to publish nothing and disappear — essentially netting themselves a free game.

“It happens a lot,” Harding adds. “I have a whole spreadsheet for tracking it.”

As for receiving payment for exposure, Harding says that in cases where the game isn’t adding enough value to the creator’s audience, payment is warranted. He argues the broader industry often underestimates how hard it is to maintain a following and continually create content.

“They absolutely deserve to be paid for their work… they need to consider their own expenses,” he says.

Zooming out, the games industry is wrestling with two competing realities. Developers want a media ecosystem that can interrogate games with curiosity and independence. Many, to an extent, lament the overall decline of games journalism and resulting decline in reviews for smaller, more niche games.

Yet, in the same breath, the industry increasingly favours anything that can shift copies right now. Visibility has become such a brutal bottleneck that even old taboos have quietly collapsed.

“I was around when the idea of someone paying for a review was a horrible scandal,” Lloyd laments, adding that sadly its slowly becoming more of a norm.

This is the third in a series of pieces looking at the changing nature of press videogame reviews. This piece focuses on industry views, you can find links to the first two (with journalists’ perspective and how modern reviews work) below.

The next piece will ask creators and streamers for their take on the matter. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

If only I’d waited. A year on from purchasing a Steam Deck, and it now seems like Valve has launched a device specifically targeted at gamers like me.

This time last year, caught up in the hype, I purchased a Steam Deck OLED. I was elated when it arrived in the mail; finally, a device I could use to play all of these amazing Australian indie games I keep hearing about! Yet a few of my friends were confused, and honestly thought I had more money than sense. Some went as far as to say as much.

Knowing I was primarily a console gamer and this was my one and only step into PC gaming, they questioned whether I’d really get full use of the device.

I shrugged it off at the time. But a year on, and while I hate to admit it, they weren’t wrong.

Despite everything I’d heard from YouTubers, podcasters and other journalists about how this is the greatest gaming device we’ve ever seen, how it’s changed how they game forever, how they can’t go back, I’d w…

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Powerhoof’s Dave Lloyd has a new rule for his next project: never spend six years on a game again.

His latest game, The Drifter, a dark point-and-click adventure, took more time to pull together than the studio’s two prior games, and one year shy of the extended development time we saw with Hollow Knight: Silksong.

But, it paid off. Excluding developer salaries, the game covered its entire development cost — around $AU220,000, — within its first week on sale, selling 28,000 copies in its first month. Recently, it swept three major trophies at the Australian Game Developer Awards, including Game of the Year. Sales from The Drifter are now funding the salaries of Lloyd and his co-founder, artist and animator Barney Cumming, as they move on to new projects.

Yet, remarkably, the pair were already paying themselves full-time, senior developer wages throughout most of the game’s long development — a rarity in …

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If you ever needed a sign that indie games are becoming the focus Australia’s largest gaming expo, PAX Australia, look no further than Melbourne’s Cult of the Lamb.

In years past, Massive Monster’s unique roguelike occupied a small stall as part of the PAX Rising indie game section of the exhibition. Last year, the game ran a stand out in the main hallway of the exhibition building, separating it from the indies.

This year, it hosted one of the most visually striking pop-ups at the event, promoting its new add-on content for the game, Woolhaven.

It’s just one example of an interesting trend at the event, which yesterday confirmed it hosted 85,000 attendees over the weekend. The number of indies at the event has grown steadily over time.

This year saw it host over 100 separate up-and-coming video games including a showcase from CODE, a New Zealand economic development initiative aimed at growing its emerging game industry.

Event organisers…

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It wasn’t until late on a Wednesday afternoon, three days into the Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP) conference that the penny finally dropped.

Sitting in on an industry veteran discussion – or as they put it, “survivor’s panel” – I got an inkling as to why there was such a sense of business-as-usual for the local games industry this year. Something that’s very rarely the case.

As gaming industry author and QUT Associate Professor Brendan Keogh eloquently put it, the industry and its major stakeholders are now at peace with the idea that striking success with a game is the equivalent of “buying a lottery ticket”.

Building on this point, Trent Kusters, of League of Geeks’ fame, added that the industry is getting used to the idea of building on shifting sands; its new norm is that there is no norm. He encouraged the room to build into this, programming in both resilience and flexibility into the business design of new gaming…

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I’ve never worked so hard to earn a t-shirt.

The plan was simple: Arrive at PAX as a group as early as possible on Sunday, its quietest day. Make a beeline when the doors open at 10am for the Final Fantasy XIV stall. Get to the front of the queue. Beat the boss, win a shirt.

The execution however was fraught.

Early, 9am in this instance, wasn’t early enough. The queue hall into the event was already three-quarters full with thousands of people. What ensued could best be described as a fever dream.

A collage of repeated ads for Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves, mixed in with trance music. A DJ was hired to entertain the 9am crowd while they waited for the gates to open.

This was all topped off by the looping soundtrack of John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads; a song that’s been co-opted by the event to spruik its recurring theme of PAX being a “home” for Australia’s gaming community.

The wrinkle: Many others had the same idea. In hindsight, it was hilarious watching a swarm of gamers — including my friends and I — power walk to this stall when the gates opened. No running is allowed at PAX, a rule enforced by an army of volunteers for the event.

We just managed to squeeze into the end of the queue before the cutoff. What ensued was a nearly three hour wait to beat a boss we challenge almost weekly at home anyway. By midday, we were donning our highly prized t-shirts – and perhaps questioning our life choices.

This is one of the more obscure memories I have in attending PAX Australia as part of the broader Melbourne International Game Week (MIGW) for the better part of a decade. It launched back in 2014, and is expected to draw a crowd of over 125,000 this year. To put that in perspective, that’s more than this year’s AFL Grand Final which pulled in just under 100,000 spectators to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

It’s an incredibly diverse week of events. It starts with the region’s major game developer conference, GCAP. A number of other industry talks and events run throughout the week, including High Score – a game audio focused event – and the Australian Game Developer Awards right in the middle of the week. Finally, it’s topped off with PAX Australia, the country’s largest gaming expo over the weekend.

And that’s excluding so many other smaller events, developer talks and pop-ups in between.

For plenty of Melburnians, it’s perhaps the most confusing and misunderstood week of the year. Thousands of people, including many from overseas, descend on the city wearing all sorts of gaming paraphernalia.

Some are in full costume (or cosplay as it’s known), others simply donning a t-shirt or accessory sporting one of their favourite games. Though many dress plainly. You couldn’t tell they were heading to PAX or many of the other events scattered across the city.

I’ve been asked countless times across multiple years: So what character are you dressing up as? And while cosplay is huge – and growing every year – it’s not the reason why everyone goes to these events. Nor is it about the giveaways. Though it is true: If you are at the right place at the right time, you can walk away with an expensive gaming PC or bag of accessories.

I like to think of Melbourne International Gaming Week as an event that really brings together the country’s gaming community, in all of its forms. It’s where developers meet with fans, where the industry shares ideas that spur on the next generation of games. It’s a week that unites what is a disparate group of people that wouldn’t interact otherwise.

Gaming itself is a very broad church. Some may be into esports, others into roleplaying, some may only vibe tabletop games.

Call it kitschy marketing, but PAX Australia perhaps has done their homework with their positioning of the event. It does in fact feel like “home”, being among my people. A place where you meet others with a simple question: What are you playing?

But one thing is for certain: I think I’m done trying to earn any more gaming t-shirts.

Everyone has their own story with Melbourne International Games Week. So to underscore just how diverse and interesting it is, I reached out to a number of people in the games industry or who regularly attend its events. I asked what they are most looking forward to during the week and why.

Here’s what they had to say:

Elliot Lamb, Composer and Musician

Among the myriad events that make up Melbourne International Games Week, the game audio conference High Score is a particular favourite of mine, a potent collision of all my interests in one jam-packed weekend. As a musician, a composer and a gamer, the bringing together of innumerable sound designers, composers, developers, voice artists and audio professionals makes for an enlightening and inspiring event. The conference, hosted by the legendary Angharad “Rad” Yeo, and taking place this year at ACMI, is loaded up with keynotes, panels, masterclasses, demos - endless opportunities to pick the brains of some of the incredible artists working in the game audio space on topics from composition, to implementation, to networking and development.

Beyond all these flashy conference elements, however, is the most important aspect of the event, and the one that keeps me wanting to come back each year - the game audio community in Melbourne is a deeply welcoming, encouraging and supportive group of artists who want nothing more than to spend a weekend chatting to anyone who is interested in this world. For an aspiring game composer, there’s never a dull moment as the delegates bounce around sharing insights and advice over coffees and snacks with emerging and established artists alike. It’s become a staple calendar event for me, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store in 2025!

Chad Habel, Bad Plan Studios

I can’t wait to show our game, this is gonna be great! I’ve been to almost every PAX Aus since they started, usually as a punter, occasionally on panels, and sometimes on the AIE booth showing student games, but this is the first time I’ve attended with a studio to show a game we are working on. End of Ember is in the pre-demo phase and although we’ve done SAGE and AVCon in South Australia (twice), it’s perfect timing to show to the public at the biggest event in the gaming calendar. The team is working hard on a big new mechanic (swappable weapons!) and we are hoping to have this ready for a build for PAX.

It’s so exciting to think of thousands of people seeing the game and playing it, and we are also hoping to catch up with some investors and publishers to progress the business side of the studio as well. Finally, it’s the first time all three of us (Chad, Dan and Eli) are going to PAX together, so that’s a bit of a bromance moment. Hope to see lots of folks there!

Jasmine Wilson, Nova Games

PAX Aus will be the first big event where we showcase our games, Ooble Gardens and Teeny Tidy, and with both of them going from only a few months into development to being able to showcase at one of the biggest events in Australia, it’s a huge milestone for us! We’re still wrapping our heads around this opportunity, all we’ve done is work on what we love and put ourselves out there. It feels like our first real step into the industry we’ve always dreamed of joining, and we can’t wait to meet people at MIGW and see them experience the games we’ve poured our hearts into.

Renee O’Flynn, freelance writer and The IndiEXP

Unfortunately, due to me being a full-time carer I’m only able to attend PAX, although I would love to go one day and experience it all in its hectic glory. I have actually managed to attend every PAX since its inception, with the last four years being privileged enough to go as media! The thing I love about PAX the most is the indie video games. You can often see the large players online and find heaps of reviews of them, but it’s these small gems hiding in plain sight that really excite me. Seeing the passion the developers have for their projects makes them interesting, even if it’s a genre I normally don’t play. It’s here the really creative stuff happens! In a similar vein, I do enjoy tabletop but never have the time or (local) friends. PAX is the one time that I get to play a bunch of board games and discover small ones that you’d never hear of otherwise! It’s basically a time of discovery for me.

Briar Francis, Thomson Geer

As a games lawyer who plays games, I always expend all of my energy at GCAP (usually in the Local Lounge – no regrets), then my husband drags my weary body around PAX. MIGW is often the only chance I get to see my clients in the flesh, so I’ll be taking in all that invigorating energy you can only experience by getting amongst industry, and making that feeling sustain me for another 12 months! I’m on a roundtable on GCAP Day 2 discussing AI in games and really looking forward to getting some different perspectives on such a hot button topic.

Ben Schuster, Qualbert and Gameloft

While there’s nothing quite as thrilling as stepping onto the show floor and playing your most anticipated game, it’s actually the sense of community that keeps me coming back to PAX. In an industry that operates online, the chance to genuinely connect with many people who you might only interact with over social media or Discord is an incredibly special moment. I’ve had the pleasure of running the #GamersofAUS community meet-up the last three years, and nothing quite beats the feeling of being able to bring people together from across Australia. Few other events can achieve that.

Kate Hall, PlayIndies

I’m attending GCAP, PAX Aus, and several other events during MIGW. What excites me most is how MIGW brings together such a diverse mix of indie developers, publishers, and creators. The networking opportunities are invaluable for sharing ideas and building collaborations. I’m also looking forward to spreading the word about my new company, PlayIndies, and connecting with industry professionals, indie devs, and creators who might benefit from it. As a GCAP speaker, I’m eager to share my experiences in game marketing while learning from others tackling similar challenges.

What do you think about Melbourne International Games Week? And do you have a similar event in your part of the world that brings the community together? Let me know in the comments below.

In an industry full of busy people, Edmond Tran has to be among the busiest.

For the past month, Tran has been working as an editorial Swiss Army knife for the new gaming news website This Week In Videogames — an initiative cooked up in partnership with major Australian gaming content creator Ralph Panebianco, better known as SkillUp. He's supported by part-time UK-based journalist Maddie Agne to pull together what feels like an insurmountable amount of content for a tiny team on a daily basis.

The site produces roughly three to four news pieces per day, publishes several columns each week, game reviews and collates industry news across social media. The majority of the news site's content is free. But in order to pioneer the ad-free, reader-led approach that Panebianco and Tran are aiming for, they charge a $10USD per month subscription to initially cover costs, but eventually to grow the platform.

As Tran exp…

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Bond University's Professor Jeffrey Brand is calm, collected and ready to go.

There's no sense of nervousness or trepidation on a media call discussing his research into Australia's gaming population. He deftly navigates his findings, pointing out the key figures and, crucially, its red herrings.

His tone takes a noticeable shift when he gets to the diversity findings, which plainly point out that, according to this study, more women in Australia are playing videogames than men.

"This is where one kind of falls off their seat when they see a change in the data. And this time, we saw a change in the data," Brand says.

"I don't want to make too much of it," he adds, preempting the headlines.

"For me to be responsible and acknowledge the ups and downs of statistics, because it is within the margin of error, our sample not reflecting perfect reality."

It’s not Professor Brand's first time navigating the nuances of media on one of these calls. Far from it.

Australia Plays, a biennial report into Australia's gaming population, has been running for two decades, with Professor Brand at its helm the entire time.

From myth-busting to agenda setting

The study surveys over 1000 households, capturing approximately 2500 individuals in total, with candidates stratified to be representative of Australian demographics.

It's a broad piece of research, asking about gaming habits, types of games played, and why they game. This data is then broken down by age and gender, presenting a granular look at the makeup and motivations of Australia's gaming population.

As Brand explains, it started as an exercise to prove that Australia's gaming population extends far beyond the stereotype of being dominated by teenage boys. It’s since morphed into a report which both shapes policy and informs research globally. It also proved to be instrumental evidence in the gaming industry's successful bid to establish an Australian R18+ rating for videogames a decade ago.

The Interactive Gaming and Entertainment Association (IGEA), Australia's peak body for the video game industry, has backed the report since its inception. Its CEO, Ron Curry, says Australia Plays is globally the longest-running report of its kind. Other peak bodies in other jurisdictions have turned to it for inspiration for their own similar studies, and it also informs IGEA’s broader policy efforts, he adds.

"Today, when we talk to the government about child safety and access, we can point to the fact that 81% of gamers are over 18," Curry says. "That shifts the tone of the conversation completely."

"We've normalised gaming. When we began [in 2005], gamers were the minority. Now it's those who don't play who are the exception," he says.

The deep, long-running partnership between Bond University and IGEA on the report has prompted past questions from media regarding the validity of the data. A similar point was raised in passing by this column two months ago.

When asked, Professor Brand addressed it head-on.

"Research needs to stand on its own, but it also needs funding," he said. "When the government commissions research, it's typically to guide regulation or public policy. That's an interest too."

"Yes, IGEA wants to promote the value of videogames. But IGEA has also been incredibly open in letting us design the study independently."

"We select the topics, do the sampling, and use a high-end panel company, Qualtrics, to manage data collection. So even that's at arm's length. They don't touch it."

"We're upfront that this is self-reported attitudinal and behavioural data. It's not making theoretical claims. But it establishes a baseline that other journalists, academics and policymakers can build on. That's the value."

The future of Australia Plays

Producing such a long-running report has its challenges. Effort goes into maintaining the headline data: the number of Australians that game, the size and shape of Australia's gaming population, and other strata on how they engage with the medium. All of this tells a compelling story over time.

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It beggars belief that holding the world record for speedrunning Pokémon HeartGold can come down to how quickly you catch a rare Magikarp.

It's a notoriously pathetic monster, mocked both in-game and in the long-running anime series. But in HeartGold there's an incredibly rare variant that's set at level 50. Capturing it, and boosting it by one level leaves you with a very strong Gyarados that allows you to steamroll the rest of the game. The only wrinkle: finding it is totally down to chance.

This is one of the cool insights I learned from talking to Australian speedrunner JTMagicman – who is pretty sure he discovered this strategy – earlier this year. He’s ranked #22 in the world for his fastest run of the game, behind fellow Australian speedrunner werster, who holds the world record title.

JTMagicman streamed a run of the game as part of the Superhero Streamers event in July. AusSpeedRuns, a group t…

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For anyone who plays games, there's likely only one title that's on their mind this week... Hollow Knight: Silksong.

It took almost eight years for the downloadable content turned into a fully-fledged title to go from idea to release. A determined fandom and a vacuum of information created its own brand of gaming community conspiracy theories around the title. With less than a few breadcrumbs of information, the game remarkably sustained a full near-decade of interest, perhaps unlike anything before it.

So when news came out of a launch date, the internet, of course, exploded.

The Adelaide-made title stole the show at this year's global Gamescom event. As sourced by Footprints.gg and reported by the GameDiscoverCo newsletter, it generated over 1,000 press mentions globally, pipping other major long-running, well-marketed franchises such as Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Resident Evil.

Meanwhile, other indie developers have reportedly moved th…

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Solo Australian developer Joe Gibbs is excited about how artificial intelligence (AI) will transform his game. Partnering with an AI company, Gibbs intends to implement a dynamic branching story system into his real-time strategy game, Fall of an Empire.

"Maybe a character has a trait that makes them uninterested in hunting—and when that same character ends up in a hunting accident, it breaks immersion," he says.

"So the idea is to dynamically update those storylines, fill in the gaps, and make the whole thing feel more cohesive."

Gibbs's game is aiming to launch next year. But had it launched today, it could see a mixed response through nothing more than including this new tech in his title.

Certain support services within the gaming community could decline to help him, reviewers may refuse to play the game, platforms that host the game will insist that it's labelled as content that contains AI material, and, crucially, players may outright boycott it.

It's a fluid issue, and matters may be different next year. It came to a head earlier this year when the maker of The Alters, 11 Bit Studios, was caught out by players for using AI assets in their game without disclosing it to players, triggering outrage. As Gibbs points out, many of the world's most popular games clearly flag their use of AI tools, including PUBG, Lost Ark and Call of Duty.

But regardless, within AI's short lifespan, it's left a polarising scar on the global gaming industry.

"Some people are very wary or reluctant to use it. And there are certainly corners of the community that are outright opposed — you know, "death to AI," that kind of sentiment," says Chad Habel, videogames industry veteran and developer at Bad Plan Studios.

"But I think the most common view I've heard — both within our studio and with others — is: "We'll use it if we have to, when it's useful." Habel also added that his studio’s latest game, twin-stick shooter End of Ember, won’t contain any AI-generated assets.

For an industry that's often been on the bleeding edge of technology adoption, why has this tool garnered so much hate in such a short time?

Fear, loathing and lobotomisation

For games developers, AI adoption has become yet another factor eroding job viability. Some within the industry feel that by using AI, they are training their replacement. That's been the case at mobile game maker King, where 200 staff were made redundant, with reports that the AI models they were encouraged to use have supplanted them.

For those that remain, AI use may also inadvertently detract from job satisfaction. One developer at a major Australian games company, speaking to Infinite Lives on the condition of anonymity, said they feel "lobotomised" and creatively drained from using AI in their work.

"It's as if the tool causes all users to trend towards mediocrity, in both product and emotional experience, and it is incredibly difficult to get it to do anything novel -- an understandable limitation given the underlying math of the tech," they said.

"The most common use case I'm seeing is that people who were already sort of bad at making games are now sort of bad at making games quite a lot faster; processes are yet to shift to where it's being well integrated into pipelines."

Players, too, have noticed a drop in the quality of some game-related collateral as the industry grapples with how best to use the tool.

"I'm in a number of communities and forums, and I've noticed whenever someone shares a trailer or screenshots that look AI-generated, the backlash is instant. People call it "AI slop." There's a pretty nasty reaction," Habel says.

"So if players identify something as lazy, or if it negatively affects the experience, there will be backlash." Habel adds that some studios have taken a strong anti-AI stance to garner community support for their game.

Amy Potter-Jarman, former Twitch APAC Marketing Director and founder of the Frosty Games Fest, has also noticed a shift in player sentiment towards AI.

"I think, generally, players want to support the ethical development of video games – we also see this in anti-crunch policy support, for example – and understand that generative AI is riddled with ethical concerns and ultimately bad news for creative industries," Potter-Jarman says.

"I personally won't work on any games using generative AI, and we had all games featured in Frosty sign a disclosure that their games were generative AI free. I believe the majority of the other indie Summer Game Fest showcases have the same policy." She adds that some professional game reviewers in her networks have taken a similar stance.

Notably, despite debate within the industry, its peak body, the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA), supports the sector's "responsible and ethical deployment of AI, especially through robust copyright and IP protection laws."

Productivity gains, polarisation pain

Yet, across the board, Australian game developers told Infinite Lives that they have noticed productivity gains from using AI-powered tools. If not directly via creation of game assets, then through streamlining the organisational work that goes on around the game's creation. That productivity boost was most pronounced with solo developer Gibbs.

"If I want to add a new panel or a new feature, I can get a prototype out in a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks," he says.

"The side effect of that is it creates a sort of generic aesthetic. Lowest-common-denominator stuff… You should still come up with the core ideas yourself, and only let the AI handle the parts you want help with—not the whole idea."

From Gibbs's perspective, the broader debate on AI use in games is gradually subsiding. Habel agrees.

"Friends of mine who were previously outspoken critics of AI now post memes using it — maybe they didn't notice, maybe they stopped caring," Habel says.

"So in the short term, yeah, AI use might hurt [game] sales. But in 10 years? Probably not."

Gibbs agrees, likening the AI adoption furore to the debate initially triggered by the introduction of computer-generated imagery (CGI) into film or how the introduction of digital art initially upset those in the art world.

For now, the issue continues to divide the gaming industry and players, exacerbated with each major redundancy round linked to its adoption. The promise of AI creating new gaming experiences, as Gibbs intends with Fall of an Empire, or empowering smaller teams to create more involved games, has been countered with fear, frustration and, most of all, polarisation.

As Habel puts it: "The inability to talk across perspectives might be the biggest issue of all."

What’s your stance on AI use in games? And has it changed over time or galvanised? Keep the discussion going and let me know in the comments.

While I have you: I’ll be away on holiday from August 8 to September 1 on a holiday in New Zealand. Wanted to take your temperature on what you’d like to see from this newsletter while I’m away. Previously, I’ve republished older pieces from last year, topping them with new context, but I thought it would be worth running a poll to see what readers would prefer

There's a curious wrinkle with all of the studies that illustrate just how many people game: they are funded by the gaming industry or by peak bodies within it.

Such is the case in Australia, where the country's Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) has pushed out several reports on the size and shape of the trend.

Significant effort goes into ensuring the validity of this data. Pouring through their methodology of the latest Australia Plays report (PDF), it is statistically valid, university-backed research that provides a lot of useful granular data on not only how many Australians game, but how they go about it too. It surveyed over 1000 households in Australia, upwards of 3000 participants for the study.

But despite all of this, an outsider to the trend could assume there's an agenda at hand. Of course a report from a gaming peak body is only going to talk up the size and shape of Australia's gaming population, or more cynically, potentially omit any data that compromises that narrative.

Well, now a fresh report commissioned by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) as part of their Digital Platforms Services Inquiry has not only reinforced this data, but should put to bed any doubt about the size and scope of gaming in Australia.

For their final report, the regulator tapped Lonergan Research to survey Australians on their interactions with digital platforms. Gaming was part of the scope of the research. The firm pulled together a representative sample of over 3000 Australians of all ages, and went about asking questions on how they engage with digital platforms.

For context, these studies typically only canvass 1000 or so Australians for statistical validity. That's the same methodology that is used by political monitors which create polls that shape national policy and political decisions.

It was a wide-ranging survey, canvassing everything from dealings with the Google and Apple app stores to views on how easy it is to remedy disputes with Amazon. But Lonergan Research committed a whole section of it to gaming platforms, and produced some interesting results.

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When Aaron Vernon started building Land of Livia he never intended for it to become one of Apple App Store's most accessible games.

Building the mobile-based role playing game was a side hustle for the Australian tech worker, who was at the time hopping between gigs in New York. He was fed up with the predatory monetisation tactics of most mobile games, that relied on either lootboxes or grindy mechanics that strongly encouraged players to pay up. He wanted to create something that was both engaging and ethical. But after he launched in 2016, something unusual happened.

"I started receiving feedback from blind players who'd found the game via a forum called AppleVis," Vernon says. "They told me it was almost accessible and gave tips on how I could improve it.

"So I started making those changes. And the feedback I received was just so heartfelt. Honestly, it became addictive."

Fast-forward almost a decade and Vernon's game was the only Australian app to make it as a finalist in this year's Apple Design Awards, nominated in the accessibility category. It lost out to Austrian puzzle game Art of Fauna, but it's a remarkable achievement in a contest where thousands of mobile games vie for the top prize.

More broadly, accessibility sits in a curious space within the gaming industry, with more studios embracing it, where cost permits. While previously underserved by major gaming companies, plateauing user growth has seen many platforms redouble their efforts, especially as the average age of gamers globally – now sitting at 35 – continues to climb.

Recently, Valve launched a slew of accessibility features including a screen reader, adjustable UI sizes and a full screen user interface for ease of readability. Nintendo also bit the bullet, honing in on accessibility with the launch of the Switch 2. A notorious holdout in this space, Nintendo's latest console includes features such as text to speech capabilities, screen colour adjustments and a screen zoom.

While Apple has lagged behind the major players in other aspects of its gaming offering, its push towards accessibility with its devices more broadly has actually seen it carve out a unique niche for itself in the gaming market. This ecosystem advantage is precisely what developers like Vernon have been able to capitalise on.

"We started with Voiceover support — that's Apple's screen reader for blind users. But instead of just ticking the box, we built accessibility into the core of the design," Vernon says.

"Then in 2023, once the company launched, we expanded support to low vision users — introducing a high-contrast interface, dark mode for eye strain, and adjustable fonts throughout.

"We even support Apple's maximum font size, which I've never seen another game do. Font size is usually a huge problem in games, but ours fully supports those larger text settings."

One of the fundamental challenges however of accessible design is crafting the game in a way that it's both easy to play, but not to the point where there's no challenge for the player.

"We work really closely with our beta testers and Discord community to find that sweet spot," Vernon says.

"I've had very direct conversations with players: "If we make this too easy, you won't get that sense of reward. So it's not binary. It's not 'accessible or not.' It's about nuance and understanding where each player is at. We meet them in the middle. That's what inclusive design is really about."

The content gap

One of the greater challenges the accessibility trend faces is that these settings and features are seen as an add-on as opposed to foundational to the design of the game. This speaks to what Vernon identifies as the industry's core problem.

"The problem isn't a technology gap anymore. The tools exist. What we're facing is a content gap — a lack of games designed with accessibility in mind," he says. What's missing, he explains, are games that consider accessibility from conception rather than retrofitting features after launch. This means fewer puzzle games with audio cues for blind players, fewer RPGs with comprehensive text-to-speech support, and fewer action games with customizable controls for players with motor impairments.

Keirron Stach, Founder and Creative Director of studio A Few Dragons, says accessibility can be a balance between player expectations and, despite best intentions, managing funds.

"Sometimes though the budgets of indies are just not big enough to include every single option we want to, and that extra time and effort may not always lead to the sales to cover that development time,” he says.

His game, The Sacred Acorn, isn't honing in on accessibility, but it still implements what Stach says are "easy wins" for all games in this regard, including eliminating screen shake, featuring high contrasting colours and adjustable soundscape, where players can independently toggle the volume of background music and other sounds.

"Good intentions don't always make a good business case," Stach says. "But we should strive to do as much as we can with what we have.”

However, Vernon says there's still an untapped market for accessible games, a business case he's trying to prove with Land of Livia.

"The people who do play accessible games are high-intent users who'll play despite barriers."

"If we can prove that inclusive design creates commercial wins, then every mobile studio will follow."

The future of accessibility

More broadly, both Vernon and Stach agree that accessibility in gaming is improving.

"Where I hope it'll be is that accessibility becomes baked into every development flow," Vernon says, commenting on what the trend will look like in five years time.

"It improves the product and expands your market — it should be embraced," he adds.

Stach adds: "I hope we see more tools that come with accessibility out of the box, pre-made set ups for engines that an indie developer can use from the start,"

"We are moving towards -- albeit slowly -- to a time where everyone should be able to play games regardless of their personal circumstances."

What do you think about the current level of accessibility in games? Is it something you care about when deciding on a game? And what’s your view on the industry’s approach towards it? Let me know in the comments below.