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Get ready to play, pitch, learn and level up—because the SXSW Sydney Games Festival is back this October and it’s more ambitious than ever. From 15–18 October, the festival takes over a new home at ICC Sydney, right in the heart of our innovation precinct, bringing together the brightest minds in game development, publishing, content creation and community building.
Whether you're deep in development, dreaming up your debut title or simply obsessed with the culture of play, this is your chance to connect with the people and ideas shaping the future of games.
Originality. Experimentation. Storytelling with soul. The Games Festival Showcase returns with a handpicked lineup of groundbreaking indie titles from across the globe. With the first 40 games already revealed, it’s clear the 2025 showcase is all about big ideas and bold creativity—and there’s still room to join them. Creators can apply until 30 June to be part of the showcase and stand alongside the next generation of indie trailblazers. Submit your game here
Great games need great partners—and that’s where the Games Investment Forum comes in. This event connects studios with the publishers, investors, scouts and funders who can help bring their projects to life. It’s a rare opportunity to pitch, demo and get face time with the decision-makers shaping the business of games. Applications are open now for studios keen to participate.
Two of the most respected voices in games media are joining forces live at SXSW Sydney. Ralph Panebianco (aka Skill Up) and Danny O’Dwyer (founder of Noclip) will sit down for a candid conversation about building audiences, staying relevant and telling powerful stories in a rapidly evolving media landscape. Whether you’re a developer, a content creator or a fan of longform storytelling, this is a rare chance to hear from two masters of their craft.
The Games Festival wraps with a celebration of creative excellence at the SXSW Sydney Games and Screen Awards. Alongside returning honours like the WINGS Award—which celebrates the best game made by women and gender-marginalised developers—2025 introduces a new accolade: Best Student Game, presented by none other than Devolver Digital. The winning team won’t just take home the title—they’ll also receive 12 hours of mentoring from Devolver’s team of industry pros.
The festival’s talks and panels go beyond surface-level hype. This year’s sessions get into the guts of what it really means to build games today: the hard truths of indie marketing, the pressure to perform as both a dev and an influencer, the fine art of negotiation, and the increasingly blurred lines between film and games.
Expect insights from heavy-hitters like Vicky Wei (Akupara Games), James Marshall (The International Games Group), and Rachel Heleva (Strange Scaffold), alongside workshops and sessions that offer practical tools for surviving—and thriving—in a fast-moving industry.
A few standouts to look for:
Indie Games and Influencers
Ralph Panebianco (Skill Up) leads a practical workshop for game developers and publishers seeking to collaborate with influencers and games media to reach wider, more engaged audiences. The session will explore effective strategies for building meaningful relationships with content creators and maximising the impact of these partnerships. It will also highlight the mutual value in spotlighting indie games—demonstrating how influencers can grow their own communities while supporting emerging talent and original creative work.
Play or Perish: Why Games May Save Us All
For decades, video games have been the scapegoat for society’s biggest problems—obesity, violence, loneliness, even the decline of empathy. As mental health challenges heighten and community bonds weaken, video games are still taking the blame. In this talk, we will explore how misdirected moral panic has kept us from understanding games as one of the most powerful tools of the 21st century. All this time we have spent blaming video games as the source of society's problems, they have actually been making us smarter, happier, kinder, and more connected. It’s time to stop pointing fingers and press start.
90- Minute Game School: A Games Industry Crash Course
A rapid-fire crash course for indie developers covering everything they didn’t teach you in game dev school. From creative intention and team communication to data, finance, art, and pitching. Six expert-led micro-sessions give you practical tools, sharp insights, and fresh perspectives to level up your next project.
Publishing Across the Globe
Studios are often told there is only one way to get your game out there, find a publisher and let them do the work. But as the indie games industry grows and changes; different regions, publishers and investors are shifting their methods, scouting techniques and strategies. Join Vicky Wei (Akupara Games), Finley Cameron (Screen Queensland), James Marshall (The International Games Group) and Rachel Heleva (Spiral Up and Strange Scaffold) to take a look at the different perspectives and approaches that scouts and agencies are taking into the future.
What Nobody Tells You About Indie Game Marketing
All the secrets to launching an indie game. In this candid session, Akupara Games’ Head of Marketing pulls back the curtain on the indie launch process, sharing the real strategies, hard-won lessons, and often-ignored truths that can make or break your release. From platform politics to community cultivation, discover what it actually takes to stand out in today’s tough-but-fair market. Whether you're self-publishing or working with a publisher, this talk gives you the insider perspective no blog post ever will. No fluff. No gatekeeping. Just actionable insights from the front lines.
If You Can’t See the Shelves, You're the Product: Surviving Game Dev in a Bloated Industry
In an age where developers double as influencers and content as currency, the line between creating games and selling yourself has all but vanished. This talk reflects on the state of the industry, its exhausting demands, and how to stay creatively and mentally afloat when the system wants you to commodify your identity.
Playful Negotiation
Good negotiation actually feels like creative problem-solving. This workshop reframes negotiation as a collaborative, principled process and offers playful tools to find hidden opportunities in the negotiation process.
Your Film Is A Game, Your Game Is A Film - Anatomy Of A Cutscene
Cinema is drunk on video game adaptations right now - and most of them suck. Meanwhile videogames are becoming more cinematic than ever. While games reach upward for the cultural status of film, Hollywood reaches down for memes, nostalgia and chicken jockey. Why are these two mediums trading places? How wide is the gap between them and how can you use a cutscene to make your video game cinematic? In this session, we will go through the opening cutscene for our new video game and investigate how a good opening can establish the vibe, setting and theme of the story in under two minutes. Conversely, we will also look at TV shows and films who have adapted the best elements of videogames into the medium - without resorting to condescension or dank parody. The key takeaway from the session would be what games and cinema can learn from each other, what we learned from merging the two and how to make it out alive!
The SXSW Sydney Games Festival is more than a celebration of games—it’s a hub for the ideas, people and creative energy pushing the medium forward. Whether you’re pitching your first title, exploring new partnerships or just here to play, this is where the future of gaming takes shape.
So save the date. Charge your devices. And get ready to press start on something extraordinary.
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