■ Smilegate ‘Stove Indie’ participates in BIC Festival 2023 as Platinum Sponsor
■ Actively cooperate with BIC, organize 54 ‘Smileer’ and ‘Stove Indie Town’
■ Providing visitors with a broader variety of entertainment besides gameplay
The indie game platform ‘Stove Indie’ operated by Smilegate Stove, plans to form a ‘Stove Indie town with participants at the Busan Indie Connect Festival 2023 (BIC Festival), the largest indie game festival in Korea, to welcome visitors.
BIC is the largest indie game event in Korea. It is an indie game show that started in 2015 and has accumulated 811 exhibited works and 200,000 visitors. This year, the offline festival will be held at BEXCO in Busan for three days from August 25 (Fri) to 27 (Sun). Stove Indie participates as a top-tier Platinum sponsor and runs a booth at the BIC Festival.
Stove Indie also operated a booth at BIC Festival 2022 last year, while 40 companies, accounting for 31% of BIC exhibitors, participated in Smilegate’s indie support program. This year, 54 exhibitors, including Team Cutie and Heungdo Heungdol, participating in BIC for the first time, are directly or indirectly related to Smilegate, which is more than last year. It shows the ‘sincerity’ of the gate.
Stove Indie increased the festival’s scale this year and prepared an unprecedentedly rich event through active collaboration with the BIC Secretariat. A total of 54 companies related to Smilegate’s creative ecosystem support program that participated in BIC 2023 will be named ‘Smileer,’ and ‘Stove Indie Town’ will be formed with them to deliver more excellent fun to BIC visitors.
‘Stove Indie Town’ is an event within an event prepared by Smilers and Stove Indie. Visitors to the BIC Festival 2023 can acquire ‘Smile’ goods that can be used at the BIC Festival site through missions at designated ‘Smile Spots’ among the ‘Smileer’ booths.
Acquired smiles can be exchanged for goods and discount coupons for Stove Indie games at the ‘Stove Indie booth, the ‘Town Hall’ of ‘Stove Indie Town,’ or donated to Hope Studio. BIC visitors are expected to enjoy various games and have fun collecting ‘smile’ goods. Creators can communicate directly with game fans and make the BIC Festival a more meaningful time.
Seunghwan Yeo, director of Smilegate Stove Indie, said, “We planned ‘Stove Indie Town’ to help make the event colorful based on freshness and new challenges suitable for indie games. I hope ‘Stove Indie Town’ will allow people who love indie games to enjoy the BIC Festival even more.”
In addition to BIC, Stove Indie is expanding its support area by sponsoring or participating in various indie game-related events such as PlayX4, SIGN, GIGDC, and Indie Game Show in the room. In addition, it plans to join Smilegate’s indie game event Burning Beaver directly, held at DDP in Seoul in December.
Meanwhile, Stove Indie will hold a pre-event before the start of the BIC Festival. You can apply for the event after purchasing more than 8,000 won from Stove Indie, and through a lottery, BIC admission tickets, Naver Pay, and ‘Smile,’ a currency exclusive to the BIC festival, will be presented. For more information on Stove Indie’s BIC Festival pre-event, visit the Stove Indie website ( https://indie.onstove.com/en/event/exhibit/405 ).
