– Changed exhibition venue to BEXCO, sold non-competitive booths, strengthened global promotion support
– BIC Festival 2023 to be held at BEXCO from August 25th to 27th
Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Hyung-Joon), Busan Information Industry Promotion Agency (Director Jeong Mun-seop), and Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee (Chairman Seo Tae-gun, from now on referred to as the BIC Organizing Committee) have held the ‘Global Indie Game Festival’ in Busan every year since 2015. Busan Indie Connect Festival (BIC Festival) has been held for nine years.
The 9th BIC Festival, which attracts the attention of developers and gamers worldwide with new attempts and differentiated strategies every year, is preparing an event this year with a sensational and novel challenge.
# Expanding the scale of events to BEXCO, a professional exhibition convention
In the highly polarized reality of the game industry, it has become more critical than ever to build a virtuous cycle game ecosystem by creating a growth ladder from startups to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Original indie games based on novel ideas are an essential foundation for start-ups, and the scale of the indie game industry is expanding yearly. Reflecting this, the BIC Festival is renewing its scale every year.
The BIC Festival, which renews its enormous scale every year, will move to BEXCO, a professional exhibition and convention center, in 2023, and expect the convenience of both developers and gamers and the qualitative growth of the show, aiming for the most extensive collection ever.
# Sales of non-competitive booths for public and educational institutions
The BIC Festival has been carrying on from the beginning of the event, where developers and gamers meet and communicate in person, and aims to provide exhibition opportunities to more developers and establish a communication channel between developers and gamers.
The ‘non-competition booth,’ attempted for the first time this year to provide more exhibition opportunities, is conducted for public and educational institutions and starts with a limited size to prevent excessive booth creation.
You can apply for four booths (Type A) that can display up to 8 works and six booths (Type B) that can display up to 12 pieces, and applications are accepted until June.
Detailed information can be found on the BIC Festival’s official website (http://bicfest.org/).
#Strengthen global promotion support for indie games
BIC Festival has posted indie games for six years since 2018 to promote indie games in Korea. It has continued to produce indie game content through virtual influencers on YouTube, representing an inflow window for the MZ generation since the previous year. We are working hard to expand the publicity base for the game. The global promotion of this year’s indie game foreshadows the production of multilingual short-form content by recruiting English-speaking virtual influencers.
In addition, about 84% of the works exhibited at the BIC Festival last year were PC-based, confirming that the axis of indie games is gradually shifting from the overheated mobile game market to the PC-based game market.
The BIC Festival has opened a new ‘BIC Curation Page’ on Steam this year to diversify its promotional channels for the ever-increasing number of PC-based games.
