Scope SCREEN INDUSTRY VIEWS
Above: Hand of Fate 2 by Australian games company Defiant Development
SPENDING NOT-SO-LIBERALLY: VIDEOGAMES REMAIN UNFUNDED Dan Golding
It’s hardly the biggest issue to come out of the 2019 federal election, but many in the Australian games industry will be wondering where the re-election of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Scott Morrison leaves them. Videogame policy became an unexpected topic of discussion late in the campaign. This was largely driven by the suite of cultural policies put forward by the Australian Labor Party (ALP); among many other commitments to the arts, it promised – if elected – to restore the now-defunct Australian Interactive Games Fund (AIGF) to the tune of A$25 million. The AIGF has had a long and storied history. Established by Julia Gillard’s ALP government in 2013, it boasted a pool of A$20 million, to be awarded to Australian game developers and their projects. Halfway through the fund’s implementation, however, Tony Abbott’s Liberal government was elected and the AIGF was cancelled; the remaining A$10 million was then redistributed to other programs in the 2014 budget. Had the ALP risen to power this year, and the AIGF, been restored, it would’ve represented the only federal funding avenue for Australian videogames. As it stands, however, there is nothing. The only money to go to anything approximating the local games industry since the AIGF’s dissolution has been from former arts minister George Brandis’ controversial Catalyst fund (A$125,000 for an exhibition of racing games at South Australia’s National Motor Museum) and a single competitive grant from the Australia Council for the Arts (A$23,000 for Melbourne’s Freeplay Independent Games Festival, which I am on the board of). So it was with some excitement that the games industry greeted the ALP’s promise to not just revive the ill-fated AIGF, but to actually
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increase the original fund’s coffers by $5 million. Of course, this was all in the shadow of a much earlier – and longstanding – pro mise from the Australian Greens to restore the fund with a frankly enormous investment of A$100 million. These numbers are significant for Australian videogames, which have always received piecemeal and scattered federal support at best. The original AIGF, however, was – according to the studios whose games drew support from it – close to becoming profitable after only one year of operation. This was not a grant-exclusive program: funding over A$50,000 was treated as a recoupable investment by the government, and these investments were quickly being repaid. Videogames make money in ways that federally supported feature films, for example, often do not. This is not necessarily an argument for the need to fund videogames (it says little about the cultural worth of these industries, for instance), but it does speak to the low financial risk involved. The strength of such an easy cultural investment was reinforced by 2016’s Senate Inquiry into the Future of Australia’s Video Game Development Industry. The cross-party inquiry, though initiated by then–Greens senator Scott Ludlam, concluded with a unanimous finding: that Australia’s games industry should be supported, and that the first order of business should be restoring the cancelled AIGF, or establishing an equivalent fund. The government at the time (led by the Liberals’ Malcolm Turnbull) noted this recommendation in a response tabled to Parliament in January 2018, but has so far done nothing more on the subject. ‘State and territory governments also offer a range of funding,’ the government pointed out in response to the Inquiry – and indeed they do. Victoria, in particular, has maintained strong monetary support for videogames for almost two decades now. The result is that, according to the Game Developers’ Association of Australia (GDAA), 53 per cent of the nation’s games industry is now located within the state, with the next-highest proportion being just 16 per cent (in Queensland). Funding is not the only factor here, but it is clearly a significant part of the equation. It is, of course, crucial to point out that apportioning federal government money to the Australian games industry – whether in the form of investment or grants, or anything that looks like the AIGF – is not a silver bullet. There are big questions to be asked about what this money is supposed to achieve, or what kinds of game studios and projects it should prioritise. Should money be used to help already-sustainable companies take the next step, or should it be used to help start entirely new studios and projects? What is the role played by non-funding-based regulation and support, such as training initiatives, research, and cultural festivals and events? How, in other words, do you cultivate a world-class games industry? These are all essential questions to be answered if the strongest possible form of such an industry is to be sustained in Australia. But the fact is, a debate can’t occur in a vacuum. Despite encour agement from a cross-party Senate Inquiry and decades of bipartisan backing at state levels, in our federal parliament, policy in support of local videogames is only coming from one side of politics. We simply cannot engage with a federal Liberal Party policy for Australian videogames because it does not exist. It has never existed. Here’s hoping that, from 2019, the re-elected Morrison government will shift course and finally commit to engaging with the promise and profitability of our games industry.
Scope SCREEN INDUSTRY VIEWS
Above: Hand of Fate 2 by Australian games company Defiant Development
SPENDING NOT-SO-LIBERALLY: VIDEOGAMES REMAIN UNFUNDED Dan Golding
It’s hardly the biggest issue to come out of the 2019 federal election, but many in the Australian games industry will be wondering where the re-election of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Scott Morrison leaves them. Videogame policy became an unexpected topic of discussion late in the campaign. This was largely driven by the suite of cultural policies put forward by the Australian Labor Party (ALP); among many other commitments to the arts, it promised – if elected – to restore the now-defunct Australian Interactive Games Fund (AIGF) to the tune of A$25 million. The AIGF has had a long and storied history. Established by Julia Gillard’s ALP government in 2013, it boasted a pool of A$20 million, to be awarded to Australian game developers and their projects. Halfway through the fund’s implementation, however, Tony Abbott’s Liberal government was elected and the AIGF was cancelled; the remaining A$10 million was then redistributed to other programs in the 2014 budget. Had the ALP risen to power this year, and the AIGF, been restored, it would’ve represented the only federal funding avenue for Australian videogames. As it stands, however, there is nothing. The only money to go to anything approximating the local games industry since the AIGF’s dissolution has been from former arts minister George Brandis’ controversial Catalyst fund (A$125,000 for an exhibition of racing games at South Australia’s National Motor Museum) and a single competitive grant from the Australia Council for the Arts (A$23,000 for Melbourne’s Freeplay Independent Games Festival, which I am on the board of). So it was with some excitement that the games industry greeted the ALP’s promise to not just revive the ill-fated AIGF, but to actually
126 • Metro Magazine 201 | © ATOM
increase the original fund’s coffers by $5 million. Of course, this was all in the shadow of a much earlier – and longstanding – pro mise from the Australian Greens to restore the fund with a frankly enormous investment of A$100 million. These numbers are significant for Australian videogames, which have always received piecemeal and scattered federal support at best. The original AIGF, however, was – according to the studios whose games drew support from it – close to becoming profitable after only one year of operation. This was not a grant-exclusive program: funding over A$50,000 was treated as a recoupable investment by the government, and these investments were quickly being repaid. Videogames make money in ways that federally supported feature films, for example, often do not. This is not necessarily an argument for the need to fund videogames (it says little about the cultural worth of these industries, for instance), but it does speak to the low financial risk involved. The strength of such an easy cultural investment was reinforced by 2016’s Senate Inquiry into the Future of Australia’s Video Game Development Industry. The cross-party inquiry, though initiated by then–Greens senator Scott Ludlam, concluded with a unanimous finding: that Australia’s games industry should be supported, and that the first order of business should be restoring the cancelled AIGF, or establishing an equivalent fund. The government at the time (led by the Liberals’ Malcolm Turnbull) noted this recommendation in a response tabled to Parliament in January 2018, but has so far done nothing more on the subject. ‘State and territory governments also offer a range of funding,’ the government pointed out in response to the Inquiry – and indeed they do. Victoria, in particular, has maintained strong monetary support for videogames for almost two decades now. The result is that, according to the Game Developers’ Association of Australia (GDAA), 53 per cent of the nation’s games industry is now located within the state, with the next-highest proportion being just 16 per cent (in Queensland). Funding is not the only factor here, but it is clearly a significant part of the equation. It is, of course, crucial to point out that apportioning federal government money to the Australian games industry – whether in the form of investment or grants, or anything that looks like the AIGF – is not a silver bullet. There are big questions to be asked about what this money is supposed to achieve, or what kinds of game studios and projects it should prioritise. Should money be used to help already-sustainable companies take the next step, or should it be used to help start entirely new studios and projects? What is the role played by non-funding-based regulation and support, such as training initiatives, research, and cultural festivals and events? How, in other words, do you cultivate a world-class games industry? These are all essential questions to be answered if the strongest possible form of such an industry is to be sustained in Australia. But the fact is, a debate can’t occur in a vacuum. Despite encour agement from a cross-party Senate Inquiry and decades of bipartisan backing at state levels, in our federal parliament, policy in support of local videogames is only coming from one side of politics. We simply cannot engage with a federal Liberal Party policy for Australian videogames because it does not exist. It has never existed. Here’s hoping that, from 2019, the re-elected Morrison government will shift course and finally commit to engaging with the promise and profitability of our games industry.
FILM PODCASTING: ONE FOR THE FANS Rochelle Siemienowicz
After nine years, one of Australia’s longest-running film podcasts, Hell Is for Hyphenates, has called it quits. The monthly hour-long show was the brainchild of two obsessive Melbourne film buffs and friends, comedy writer Lee Zachariah and filmmaker Paul Anthony Nelson. The heart of Hyphenates, which started back in 2010 when podcasts were still a rarity, was its ‘Filmmaker of the Month’ s egment, in which a prominent guest would enthuse about their favourite film director, covering their entire filmography: Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino on Maurice Pialat, Australian author Christos Tsiolkas on Pier Paolo Pasolini, Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde on Jane Campion, and so on. In laborious preparation for the recording of the podcast, the guests and the hosts would watch or rewatch as many of the director’s films as possible. I know this for a fact because I hosted Hyphenates alongside Zachariah during the show’s final two years. It often felt like cramming for a stressful exam. The huge amount of work involved – all done purely for love – is part of the reason why Hyphenates has wound up, much to my own personal relief. But Zachariah himself feels that podcasting as a form has moved on. ‘There are just so many innovative podcasts out there now that incorporate sound design, actors and creative postmodern concepts,’ he tells me. ‘I do feel like Hyphenates got taken over. It’s almost like making silent films after sound has come in, after The Jazz Singer [Alan Crosland, 1927], or still making [Charlie] Chaplin shorts while MGM is making musicals.’ Auteur theory underpinned the whole Hyphenates project (as it does for many a film podcast – One Heat Minute or The Senses of Cinema Podcast, for instance): the idea that a director is the author of a film, and that certain preoccupations or themes can be traced across their body of work. And so our show’s grand finale – released in late April – was a mammoth three-and-a-half-hour edition devoted to Martin Scorsese. Around fifty previous guests contributed prerecorded segments talking about their favourite films or moments from Scorsese’s fifty-year career: Ozploitation legend Brian TrenchardSmith on the director’s entire oeuvre, filmmaker Kriv Stenders on the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Chaser’s War on Everything’s Chris Taylor on the famous garlic-slicing scene in Goodfellas (1990). This was highbrow fandom at its best. Which brings us to the fact that fandom drives the majority of film and television podcasts, both internationally and in Australia. This is both the strength and weakness of the medium. Like blogging before it, podcasting is democratic; anyone can have a voice to obsess in as much detail as they like about anything, from Seinfeld to Sergei Eisenstein to Married at First Sight. The nature of the form, divorced from the strictures, deadlines and gatekeeping of traditional screen criticism, allows for complete indulgence in fandom. At its best, this means that deep thinkers and great communicators can explore screen culture outside the churn of daily journalism, with its ties to what’s on at the movies that week or to what’s on TV. Strange and beautiful things can flourish when obsession is given such freedom. At its worst, though, the fandom that drives much podcasting means that any criticism offered is likely to take the form of disappoin ted ranting, spiralling further and further into niche nonsense. The recent explosion of podcasts in all areas of entertainment, from sport to self-development to true crime, is evidenced by the fact that, as of 2019, there have been three editions of the Australian
Above: Martin Scorsese on the set of Goodfellas
Podcast Awards, held in Sydney every May. According to its website, 339 self-nominated podcasts participated in this year’s ‘Popular Vote’ category, accumulating a total of 20,000 votes. There were also twenty-four other categories judged by experts in each area. I find it surprising to note that, in the ‘TV, Film & Pop Culture’ category, not a single one of the six finalists dabbled, in any way, in traditional film or TV reviews or analysis. Nor was there anything like the sophisticated yet engaging application of theory to pop-culture products that we saw in the brilliant, but now defunct, podcast The Rereaders, hosted by critics Mel Campbell and Dion Kagan. Instead, these finalists were bright, chatty shows like Mamamia Out Loud, Chat 10 Looks 3 and Shameless – a ‘pop-culture podcast for smart women who love dumb stuff’. Interestingly, it was in the category of ‘Best Fancast’ that cinephilia finally emerged. Driven by fandom again, these shows – including One Heat Minute (in which film critic Blake Howard devotes an episode to every minute of Michael Mann’s 170-minute 1995 heist film Heat), Eyes on Gilead: A Handmaid’s Tale Podcast (co-hosted by SBS Movies managing editor Fiona Williams) and Club Soderbergh (a show devoted to the films of … you guess who) – embody the adoring and niche concerns of most screen podcasting, for better or for worse. Even as a former podcaster myself, I remain most wedded to the written word when it comes to considering and analysing screen culture – even if it’s just for fun. Yes, there’s a vitality that can arise when multiple voices bounce off one another, sparking new ideas and connections. But there’s also a tendency to talk too much about too little. For this column, I’ve taken the opportunity to ask the ultimate cinephile, world-renowned film critic Adrian Martin, whether he liked and listened to film podcasts. ‘I listen to almost none, on a regular basis,’ he replies. One thing that does turn me off very swiftly is what I think of as a compulsion for everyone involved – especially when they’re having group chats – to fall (almost without thinking) into a kind of ‘radio patter’, with a lot of forced jokes; short, sharp retorts; and attempts at snappy screwball rhythms of overlapping speech … like a bunch of bad stand-up comedians. Yet Martin won’t write off the form completely: ‘I like them when they go deep,’ he says. ‘Podcasts can actually be more intimate and more unique. I’m still looking for the perfect example that fits my idea of this!’ Personally, I’m all ears for that too.
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Above: Lego Masters contestants Maddy Tyers (left) and Jimmy James Eaton (centre) with host Hamish Blake (right)
LEGO MASTERS: REALITY TV WITH A DISTINCTLY LOCAL FLAVOUR Liz Giuffre
While there’s nothing particularly Australian about Lego or r eality TV, there’s something beautifully Aussie about the first season of Lego Masters. Originally developed in 2017 for British television by Channel 4, in partnership with Tuesday’s Child and The Lego Group, the show has since made it to Germany and Australia, with a debut on American screens not far away. Its premise is a cross-marketing dream: show off as much Lego as possible to a group of would-be master builders while also inspiring the audience at home to dust off their old sets (or, better still, get out and buy more, more, more!). The Australian version of Lego Masters, which premiered on the Nine Network this year, is hosted by comedian Hamish Blake. The tasks required of the reality-TV host are quite specific – build drama, mediate between competitors and the competition, draw the audience in. Blake successfully does all of these, but he also provides meta-commentary, regularly breaking the fourth wall to talk directly to viewers (something usually reserved for contestants) and drawing attention to reality TV’s conventions by setting fake challenges and artificial deadlines as well as addressing the ‘hidden camera’. Towards the end of the first season, Blake even invites his own mum on set to provide ‘support from a loved one’ – a stunt that is particularly fun to watch, but perhaps a little cruel for those actually cast on the show. After all, the ‘support from a loved one’ trope tends to be invoked when a trapped celebrity, isolated contestant or housebound competitor is given a little relief from their reality-TV life through this reminder of the world outside the studio. Another example of Blake’s unique approach to reality-TV hosting is seen in the episode ‘The Bridge’, which tasks contestants with building a bridge made of Lego; the structure that can bear the most weight would win the challenge. Upon the bridges’ completion, Blake and the show’s judge, Ryan ‘Brickman’ McNaught, go about testing each creation – but it soon becomes clear that the series’ p roducers have underestimated how much weight a Lego bridge can take. The pre-arranged 1-, 2- and 5-kilogram weights are easily withstood, and, soon, 10-, 15- and 20-kilogram pieces have to be found. While this scramble for additional weights is the kind of thing that might have otherwise been pre-tested or edited out in other reality programs, Blake embraces the apparent chaos. ‘We actually don’t have a plan B,’ he proclaims, with a distinct lack of the confidence that reality-TV hosts are meant to display.
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Brickman joining Blake provides viewers with a perfect TV pairing. As one of only fourteen Lego Certified Professionals in the world, and the only one based in the Southern Hemisphere, Brickman certainly possesses unusual credentials. But his experience in and passion for building extremely complex items out of Lego combine to make him a captivating character, too. Unlike the archetypal ‘mean professional’ on other reality shows – the Idol franchise’s Simon Cowell perhaps best exemplifies this – Brickman often appears like a puppy ecstatic over the chance to go for a walk. This is not to say that his mastery isn’t evident, as displays of his own work, including a life-size car made solely out of Lego, are just outstanding. Rather, like Blake, Brickman has a particular unaffectedness to his screen presence. A reality-TV judge is expected to be stoic, strong and, ultimately, impartial – perhaps even something of a smiling assassin (think: MasterChef’s Gordon Ramsay, or even a pre-presidential Donald Trump on The Apprentice). However, during Lego Masters’ first elimination round, Brickman becomes nostalgic, even visibly teary, when presenting his verdict. By now, reality TV has become a well-trodden international form. It’s widely syndicated and franchised, meaning that local versions are difficult to identify – in fact, outside the UK, Lego Masters is owned by the Endemol Shine Group, an international production powerhouse specialising in what it calls ‘non-scripted superbrands’ such as MasterChef and Big Brother. But Lego Masters’ Australian iteration does give us something distinct: that Aussie brand of irreverence, evident in Blake’s and Brickman’s endearing passion and disregard for convention. There are plenty of jokes, but they’re never at the expense of anyone participating – offering rare little moments of joy for both contestants and audience.
••• Rochelle Siemienowicz is a writer and critic with a PhD in Australian cinema. She is a journalist for screenhub and was co-host of the longrunning film podcast Hell Is for Hyphenates. Dan Golding was, from 2014 to 2017, the director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, and is a senior lecturer in media and communications at Swinburne University of Technology. He is also a freelance arts and videogames journalist, and the co-author of Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, the Fight for the Future of Videogames with Leena van Deventer. Dr Liz Giuffre is a senior lecturer in communication at the University of Technology Sydney as well as a freelance arts commentator and journalist.
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