The MIX – or the Media Indie Exchange, to use its Sunday name – usually travels with the bigger events. It’s like an indie game remora, those fish that are best-known for attaching themselves to bigger marine creatures, like whales and sharks.
That means where you’ll find E3, you’ll find the June MIX event in Los Angeles. Where you’ll find Gamescom, you’ll also find the MIX in Cologne. PAX West? The MIX goes to Seattle. The EVO fighting game championships? The MIX is there.
And the Game Developers Conference? Well, the MIX will be there, in San Francisco in March 2020, even though GDC itself won’t be.
After all the big sponsors pulled out, GDC 2020 was postponed until later in the year. This led GDC to offer refunds on passes, but the cost of travel plans? Those are harder to get back. That led to a concerted effort from developers, publishers, and other related areas of the games industry to organise fundraising efforts for out-of-pocket indie developers.
Some attendees – in spite of the health risks around travel – have decided to continue with their travel plans to San Francisco all the same. Maybe they just fancy a holiday, since they’ve already paid for it. Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, that sort of thing. But for most of those who are still planning to travel it’s for a sort of ad-hoc GDC-lite, to network, meet friends and talk about video games.
So if you’re in the area, you’ll be interested to know that the San Francisco MIX 2020 event is still going ahead.
Every game confirmed for San Francisco MIX 2020 so far
- Batbarian
- The Forest Cathedral
- Necronator: Dead Wrong
- Atomicrops
- Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan
- Drake Hollow
- Kung Fu Kickball
- Paper Beast
- The Good Life
- Skate Story
- Love Never Gets Old
- Elementals: Death Metal Death Match
- Divisadero
- HavenStar Renegades
- Below: Explore
- Moncage
- Disc Room
- Lake
- Colt Canyon
- Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl
- Deadhaus Sonata
- Obversion
- Smash Ball
- West of Dead
- Embr
- Hotshot Racing
- Samurai Gunn
- Aeolis Tournament
- Rigid Force
- Liberated
- Klang 2
The MIX is always one of the highlights for Team Thumbsticks when we attend events. It’s not as flashy as the expo show floor, and the games aren’t as “big”, but hanging out with indie developers and talking about their craft is just such a lovely thing to do. It’s not an open event – sorry, folks – but if you’re going to be in San Francisco and you’ve received an invite, you should definitely go.
Just take it easy on shaking hands. Contactless waving is better, fistbumps are OK if you must. Definitely don’t do hugs and kisses. (Actually, don’t do that at professional events anyway, global pandemic or not. It’s creepy and weird.)
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