Austin's Fantastic Arcade growing up fast

For its first six years as an Austin indie video game festival, Fantastic Arcade existed as a parallel event to the extreme genre movie event Fantastic Fest.

From 2010 until 2016, its game-development panels, tournaments and free-to-the-public arcade space went on while movie directors and actors posed for red-carpet photos and film geeks tweeted their insta-reviews of screenings over beers at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar and the Highball.

There was crossover; lots of film fans love video games and lots of gamers enjoy horror, fantasy and sci-fi movies and many of the Fantastic Arcade games reflected that.

But it was only last year, when Fantastic Arcade became a standalone event at a new location, the Alamo Drafthouse Mueller, that it was able to stop competing with Fantastic Fest for attention.

"I can tell you that as much as we loved being part of the action and atmosphere of Fantastic Fest all those years, it was 10 million percent easier to run the event with a little breathing room," said Wiley Wiggins, the actor, frequent Arcade emcee and organizer with the game collective Juegos Rancheros.

The Mueller location, Wiggins said, has been comfprtable and welcoming for Fantastic Arcade, and "not having to ask for a thing during the biggest yearly event the theater has to deal with has certainly helped," he said. "I’m gleeful about the location and the time, and the attendees we talked to said last year was their favorite year pretty unanimously."

This year's Fantastic Arcade, the ninth, will have a typically diverse lineup of titles that at times stretch the boundary of what can even be called a video game. For every cute title such as "Sticky Cats," about animated felines with a craving for fish, there's "Wrong Box," about fixing a 2003 computer at your parents' house and "Consume Me," an examination of dieting.

Two popular games from previous Fantastic Arcade events are back with sequels: "Samurai Gunn 2" and "Spelunky 2." There's a true-crime role-playing game, "Diana the Huntress" and "Ghost Dentist VR," which Wiggins says allows players to "perform dental surgery on yourself in a mirror, possessed by a spectral dentist."

About 100 to 200 badged attendees are expected for the event, with another 100 or so each day for the free-to-the-public arcade space at Barrel O' Fun, in the same Alamo Drafthouse location. While those numbers might seem small compared to Austin game expos that host tens of thousands, the titles that are commissioned for and appear at Fantastic Arcade can have a wide influence on the video game industry and are offered for download to attendees. Past Fantastic Arcade games such as "Fez" and "Samurai Gunn" have gone on to be indie hits on Windows PC, Nintendo Switch and other platforms.

The curation of the games was taken over last year by Juegos Rancheros, which is known for its monthly game-demo meetups in Austin.

Wiggins, who works alongside game curators, artists and developers in that group, said, "I think as far as picking the games goes, we’re still of the mindset that we have been for years: a cross section of what’s going on in indie games, with as many styles and genres as will fit, but all with some special ingredient. Our hope is to challenge folks' ideas of what videogames are and who plays them."

One other side-effect of moving Fantastic Arcade to its own dates and venue was that last year's Arcade event largely sidestepped a major sexual-harassment controversy that overtook last year's Fantastic Fest in September.

But that doesn't mean Arcade has been unaffected by the scandal that left many mixed feelings among Fantastic Fest and Alamo Drafthouse fans.

Earlier this year, Juegos Rancheros removed board member, game developer and one of Fantastic Arcade's organizers Brandon Boyer from its roster after complaints about outside behavior, which Boyer acknowledged in an apology on Twitter.

Fantastic Arcade had a safe space policy before the incident, but it has since been revised, Wiggins said.

"We’ve improved our policy based on examples from our peers over the past year and will be contracting a safe spaces director for the fest this year," he said.

The timing of this year's Fantastic Arcade is allowing for a Halloween theme: Several titles including "Cyberpet Graveyard" and "Faith" have a horror theme. And a Friday night event will take attendees to Austin's Museum of Human Achievement for "Real World: Witch House," an installation that marks the museum's first full-blown collaboration with Arcade after some work with Juegos Rancheros.

Zac Traeger, founder and executive director of the Museum of Human Achievement, said there will be themed rooms for seven witches at the event, all of whom are fans of video games.

Traeger said of the museum's work with Fantastic Arcade, "Where we both align hopefully attracts everyone who is drawn to non-traditional exploration and innovation in any artistic medium. I think by thoughtful curation of vibe and a welcoming attitude, the whole Fantastic Arcade and Juegos experience is a really positive and unique thing for both newcomers and grizzled vets alike."

While much of the activity at Fantastic Arcade involves having fun and playing games, it also tends to include discussion of the state of indie versus mainstream games (or where they intersect), and some soul searching about how to make a living in a highly competitive industry.

Wiggins said the event is a way to get eyeballs on labors of love and artistic projects that might not otherwise find support. He said he's very aware of the importance of that for game developers as he could soon be in the same camp.

"I’ve been nursing my own game project along for like six years, and I did everything wrong along the way," Wiggins said. "I feel like I learned a lot dragging this overly ambitious thing along, and I’m planning on sharing a public alpha of it soon and getting on with my life!"