Freeplay has, over the years, become something of a fixture in Melbourne’s game development calendar. When, earlier this year, we spoke to people about running Freeplay, the response was overwhelmingly positive…. which was nice.

Festivals, however, don’t fund themselves, and having taken on the commitment to do Freeplay, we set about making sure that ours would have a roof over its head, and that we could afford to print programs, publicise it, and generally make Freeplay the event we wanted it to be.

Luckily, we’ve found brilliant partners in Next Wave, who previously ran Freeplay and have been excellent and generous mentors, in the Victorian Government, who are very focused on growing the Victorian game industry, and last but by no means least, the State Library of Victoria, who have really embraced game culture, and are keen to explore video games as an artistic and cultural medium.  (And gave Freeplay a roof over its head.)

We’ll keep saying this, but our thanks go out to our partners for helping Freeplay play on. You can check them on our Partners page.

Hello,

Today, Next Wave officially announced that Freeplay 2009 was being put together, and we’re really, really excited about that.  There’s still a lot to do, but behind the scenes, we’ve had lots of meetings and conversations and emails, and we feel good about the event taking place in 2009.  We know, from talking to students and gamers and developers and artists that Freeplay is a really important event in the community and we plan to keep that going.

Stay tuned for more announcements about venue, speakers, ticketing, how to get involved, and all of the usual stuff coming over the next few weeks.

Oh, and subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on twitter, join our facebook group, or just drop us an email at info [at] freeplay [dot] net [dot] au, to say hi.