Surviving MIGW

I went to Melbourne International Games Week for the first time, and boy was it a lot.

I cobbled together "how to do MIGW" from a bunch of different sources, so I figured I'd write a guide for other newbies - especially other solo devs.

This is more instructional (read: more wordy & fewer gifs) than your usual fare, but we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming (heh) next time.

MIGW

Melbourne International Games Week is held every October, and covers gamedev events (GCAP + AGDAs), a con for the general public (PAX Aus), and - in true Australian fashion - high doses of absurdly-overpriced alcoholic beverages dispensed under the auspices of various gamedev-adjacent parties.

Melbourne: a quick 4 hour flight from Perth (for my international readers).

Pro tips:

• Book your hotel and flights at least 4 months in advance; I booked 2 months in advance which cost me an extra hundred bucks or two.
• Hotel cost is about 250 AUD per night for a 4-star CBD hotel (mine was a 20 min walk from the Melbourne Convention Centre, where most events were). If you can find others going, try to split an apartment.
• Sign up to your state's screen agency newsletter in case they have a grant to subsidize your travel. (thank you Screenwest!)
• Melbourne city blocks are big - trust Google when it says something is a long walk, and use the free trams. ¹

GCAP

Games Connect Asia Pacific is a Mon-Wed conference organized by IGEA, oriented towards the programmers, artists, designers, musicians, etc making games.

GCAP is pricey at ~600 AUD, but you get a free ticket if you're a speaker, an AGDAs judge... or if you are fortunate enough to get Screen Australia funding and get accepted into the Screen Australia Local Lounge: ²

My game being played in the Local Lounge (thanks Screen Australia!)

This conference is for networking: the advice I got was to attend no more than 2-3 talks of the 30ish available each day, especially since the talks are mostly³ recorded, and spend the rest of the time talking with strangers. That seemed about right - the couple of business (marketing, publishing, etc) talks I went to were good but as a solo dev I didn't get much out of the other talks.

They provide an app to chat with other attendees, so you can set up meetings before and during the event; for example I set up a few meetings with other solo devs, but you could also e.g. reach out to publishers or potential employers.

Unfortunately the app was slow and not everyone seemed to be using it,⁴ so in practice it was hit and miss. I had more luck starting conversations around coffee machines, food, or busting into other peoples' cliches to learn what they were all about.

Pro tips:

• GCAP releases tickets quite late (circa August?) relative to other events but I have heard they "never sell out" so no need to rush.
• You spend an enormous amount of time standing, so dress casually with comfortable shoes.⁵
• Talking with strangers is intimidating but most people there are tired introverts so just roll with it. "I am so tired" is a good opener.
• "What do you do" or "what is your game" are also good openers - have a 90-second highlights video on your phone and a QR code to follow you handy for when they reciprocate.
• Ask in your local state/city's gamedevs Discord who else is going - they'll almost certainly do a group photo and may also have state-sponsored paraphernalia to help you stand out to each other (e.g. Canberra devs had a bright purple lanyard).

The AGDAs

The Australian Game Dev Awards are kind of like the Oscars, except based around games, about 100x smaller, and you know, Australian. It was the evening after day 3 of GCAP so the audience was entirely gamedevs & family of nominees (at least, I didn't see any press).

You buy tickets as part of your GCAP tickets (or separately). There is a lot of clapping, laughs at the hosts' jokes, canapes, free drinks, loud music, and a bit of dancing for those game enough.

The hosts kept the award ceremony interesting.

It's good fun to recognize fellow devs' wins, and the organizers did a great job setting up the venue. As an industry newbie I was a bit over meeting new people by this point but I'm sure it's a good time if you already know a bunch of people to hang out with.

Pro tip: the dress code was "red carpet" so as a man take at least a nice collared shirt; most men wore suits or fancy jackets.

Play Now

Play Now is a whole Thursday of publisher pitching organized by VicScreen⁶; this year 21 publishers accepted VicScreen's invitation to attend and receive pitches from 80ish game developers.

It works like this:

1. You submit a pitch deck for your game in July.
2. VicScreen sends it out to potentially interested publishers.
3. If any of those publishers say yes to you, then you get invited to the event.
4. Eat lots of good food and free coffee at Play Now.
5. In between, give your spiel to publishers and have them play your prototype. ⁷

Pitching in action: you get 20 minutes at one of these booths. Photo credit: Daniel Mahon.

One of the best things about Play Now is that it's filled with other small or solo developers who are in the same boat, so there's a real sense of camaraderie and genuine interest in helping each other refine pitches. Talk to as many people as you can manage!

Pro tip: officially you get N pre-organized meetings with publishers who said Yes to you, but if you already chatted to a publisher earlier at GCAP then hit them up again here.

PAX Aus

PAX Aus is (I think) the biggest consumer-focused games conference covering video- and boardgames in Australia. It runs Fri to Sun, and in 2024 ~83,000 people attended; I heard 2025 was even bigger still.

There were lots of cosplay costumes I didn't understand, hardware vendors showing off keyboards and throwing mousemats at hyped up crowds, cheering as teams won esports tournaments, people standing in line at the enormous Nintendo booth for over an hour, hundreds of seats to play boardgames from the PAX boardgame library, and even a retro gaming area with an actual 1980s Vectrex to play with:

And of course my favourite area was PAX Rising - 50ish indie developer booths set up to showcase their games (though not my game⁸).

Here's a small sample of non-WA games that I thought were cool:⁹

In Huedini you're a wizard who absorbs enemies to cast spells.	Skiers Landing is a chill game about hitting rocks at high speed.	Apothecary of City X is a deckbuilder that oozes an otherworldly atmosphere.

ShatterRush is an FPS about grappling hooks, mechs and destruction.	Tallest Tale is a survivors-like where you only die if the audience stops clapping.	In Enfant you're an elephant exploring a post-apocalyptic world.

The overall quality was high and - though you can't see it in the shots above thanks to my exceptional photography skills¹⁰ - many booths had people waiting to play.

Pro tips:

• 3-day tickets were sold out by early July - so book them ASAP. I think Fri and Sun 1-day tickets were still available on PAX weekend.
• Fri is the slowest day (and best day to get merch/free stuff), Sat is busiest, and Sun is in-between.
• I went for all 3 days and I think as a "professional" you do want at least 2 days: one to unwind, and one to go around systemically talking to devs, playing as many of their games as you can, and photographing their booths.¹¹
• Scam a friend into coming with you on your "non-work" days, so you can play (board)games with them!

The Parties

If you're going to spend 3k AUD traveling to MIGW, you may as well spend the extra 150ish to get into all the parties:

• The MIGW Launch Party on Sun evening had a good bar tab but not enough food.
• Freeplay Parallels on Thu evening was a party with the best talks of all of MIGW - weird and out there, highly recommended.
  • Tickets sell out really quickly (first batch was gone in 15 minutes) so sign up for the newsletter to get advance warning.
• The Megadev afterparty on Sun evening after PAX shuts down was okay but mostly everyone was tired and ready to zonk out. I still met some good people but it's worth considering saving that night's accommodation and flying home instead!

Freeplay Parallels speakers making a great point as part of advertising Pro Jank Footy, though would have been stronger if they actually had a photo of Bandit instead of Bluey.
(Slide: Pro: everyone can finally understand our accent. Con: Perfect dad).

Other Events

Things I didn't get to:

• FreakOn is GCAP meets Fight Club (or so I hear), and happens on the same Monday as day 1 of GCAP. I wasn't fast enough to get tickets and didn't realize they sometimes sell them at the door, but I heard great things so I really hope to participate next year.
• High Score (a conference for game audio people) on the Saturday before GCAP, but as someone whose musical taste is approximately "whatever the nearest algorithm recommends" I couldn't justify extending my trip & going to this.

Chaos of the Week‎

I put together a nice chain reaction level for anyone who reached the end of the game at the Screen Australia Local Lounge... but then I forgot to hook up the penultimate level to actually transition to that final level, so almost nobody saw it. Woops!

But hey, silver lining, now I can show you dedicated readers all its chaos here:

No New Playable Build

MIGW plus government grant application deadlines mean that for once I haven't got a new playable web build for you, but do try out last week's fancy lighting build if you haven't already - that's pretty close to what I showed the publishers I spoke with last week!