BIG IN BRAZIL

Don’t know any LATIN AMERICAN GAME STUDIOS by name? That’s about to change

- Wes Fenlon 

The highlight of July’s Brazil International Games (BIG) festival was a surprise for everyone, especially the event’s blockchain sponsors: game developer Mark Venturelli’s viral talk ‘Why NFTs are a Nightmare’. In an interview afterward Venturelli said something about the convention that I’ve kept thinking about since I left Brazil, “I don’t feel I have hurt BIG by talking shit about NFTs because BIG does not need these guys,” he said. “It’s the other way around. Our biggest event here in the Brazilian industry is not going anywhere.”

Outside of Venturelli’s talk, which was a brilliant takedown of the design and politics of blockchain games, BIG didn’t make international headlines. It’s not an E3 or a Gamescom, but that belies how much potential is bubbling just under the surface of the Latin American gaming scene. Venturelli said local developers are now getting investments from Epic and Microsoft, and there are prospective 200-person studios opening in Brazil in the near future. “Right now, because of the instability in Europe, investors are looking at South America like, ‘Is this the next big thing?’” he said. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Epic were present at BIG this year, a far cry from the much smaller indie festivals of past years.

“Indie games are getting attention, but the industry still needs to evolve a little bit more to get competitive,” said developer Leonardo Castanho, head of a small team making Astrea, a ‘dice builder’ in the vein of Slay the Spire. “But if you compare games from this year to 2019, there’s an evolution. The games from Brazil are much better.”