The Future of Gaming at Tribeca's 25th Anniversary with Casey Baron

0:03Spawn on Me is the premier podcast spotlighting people of color. Every week we talk news, what we've been playing, and tell you who's invited to the cookout. Our show is all about talking about gaming through a prism of blackness because we are the culture. Welcome to Brakago, y 'all. Yo, what the deal be everybody in Brakago. This is the Spawn on Me podcast with Kahlief Adams. I am your host, Kahlief Adams. I hope you're doing well, having a wonderful week. I hope you are checking out all of the content. Literally, we dropped an episode yesterday on the feeds. Please go check that out. We had a conversation and showed some love to our friends over at Housemarque and our friends over at Supermassive with reviews of Syros and Directive 8020.

0:49And I also jumped into the far end, the deep end of the pool, in the grifter pool, uh, talking about the latest scuttlebutt around mixtape. But again, checking out all the stuff on our feeds, Apple podcasts, video versions and audio versions on Spotify, also going up on our YouTube channels as well. So please make sure you're subscribing to all of those dope spaces, dope paces, dope spaces to check out some of the content that we have on the show. This episode is very special as well, because we have a almost hour long interview with Casey Barron, who is the senior programmer for film and games over at Tribeca Film Festival.

1:30They just shared some awesome news about some of the programming that's going to be happening during the show. And we got the scoop on all of that goodness and got a chance to talk to Casey about all of it in this episode. So check out this dope interview and we'll be right back after the break. What's good everybody in Mercago? We are here with another episode of Spawn on Me and a fantastic, fantastic guest rocking with me today is Casey Barron, who's a senior programmer for film and games over at Tribeca Film Festival. I am so excited to have you on the show for multiple reasons. One, because it's very rare these days to get someone who is in, who is from my hometown in my hometown uh getting to come on the show to come hang out and two it is also great to have met you before we got you on the show chop it up hang out for a little bit and now we get a chance to do it live and in person here on spawn on me casey thank you so much for taking the time to come hang out with me and talk about everything that's tribeca this day yes sir it's an absolute honor and a pleasure um i've been a fan of yours for a long time it's funny i was looking back and I was trying to figure out when I initially subscribed to the YouTube.

2:42It's been a minute. It's definitely been a minute. So I'm just a fan of yours. I just want to say congratulations. Ten years, that's a big deal. You've been doing a lot of amazing things in the industry just to get to see some of the folks who've come on the platform and had some really cool careers in the space, but to also watch you grow in the space. To see you, Danny, always going back and forth at it and to watch your relationship grow has been a lot of fun. I can't say cock and cook yet, but I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to support the movement. I mean, look, we'll have to do it live at Tribeca Field Festival.

3:17We'll have to do it during the show somehow. We'll have to get De Niro to come back out and he'll do the thing for us and moderate with you on the panel as well. Thank you for the amazing kind words. It has been a really fun, fun ride. and having someone like you on the show just boosts that up even more. I'm excited to hear about your foray into this space because a senior programmer at Tribeca is not a small thing to sniff at, especially with the gravitas that that festival holds and to be in a very specific space where you're talking to film and games, which is fairly new into the festival, now in its sixth year after a 24-year run of the festival itself.

4:09Talk to me a little bit about your background and how you got into all of this. Yes, sir. So I'll give you a little bit more foreground on myself and then jump into the festival side of things. So I started doing curatorial work, really more on the literary magazine, overall literature side of things. started for me with short stories and poetry. And so that sort of evolved into getting an English degree. And part of the necessity to get that degree going out of Florida State University was to have an internship in media studies. And that's how I started working in film. I was doing social media marketing for indie films.

4:45It's funny, I've worked with Ailey Joel Osment's team on his first film, Sings the Sixth Sense, back in 2014. And that snowballed into working at film festivals and that's really really where i got rooted in film programming and you know i always had a love and passion for games um i was born and raised on island dominica in the west indies my cousins my sister would pass down their old consoles to me whether it was an old atari a playstation one you know so on and so forth like we we would just jump around in all the things i very much was a more handheld gamer back in the day as well love playing pokemon on the bus and all that.

5:23But it very much fed into my love and passion for it. I really wanted to make games as my initial career, but we made the pivot. And so at Austin Film Festival, where I really got my roots in the festival foundation of things, I started the game writing track through the Writers Conference. AFF has been around for over 30 years, and they've always provided a space and platform for writers and storytellers. So we're seeing like showrunners and screenwriters of your favorite TV shows, your favorite films from the last couple of years at the festival talking about how they do what they do, how they write these stories, how they made their inroads into the industry, so on and so forth.

5:59And for someone who's always been a big fan of games and loves the narrative sort of through line that's available in games and just how immersive and interactive that experience could be, it felt like those artists also needed a platform as well, you know, especially as there was so much more consideration from audiences and so much more curiosity about what that actually looked like. So we founded the game writing track at Austin Film Festival, and that was really sort of starting the game's curatorial and overall work for the festival arms. But around 2020, I also started working with Susan O 'Connor, who is a great writer in her own right.

6:37Susan's based in Austin, Texas. She was teaching games writing out of UT Austin, and that's how we initially met because she was helping me put together some of those ideas at AFF and she launched her own thing essentially teaching folks how to write for games in her own in her own classes called the narrative department so I was part of the pilot cohort for the 1.0 and the 2.0 for that for those sessions and it was really like a six-week intensive on how to break story how to write stories and so I started working with local game developers in Austin trying to do some of that, you know, writing on games, doing some production work on games.

7:16Shout out to my very good friend, John Baxter, who's still in Austin, who's working on a follow-up to his incredible game that came out some years ago. And so those were really some foundational pieces that really helped me get more of a foothold in the industry proper, if you would. And then Tribeca came calling in 2023, or really 2022. I started working at the festival in December 2022. It was like a four-month, five-month process to actually get the gig. And from the second I got my first interview with our CEO, well, former CEO, now Jane Rosenthal, I really was front and center with her like, hey, I want to work on the game side of things.

7:55I love film programming. I love curating big feature premieres. But what really excites me about potentially working here is what you all are doing with games. Everything I was trying to do at AFF was very much fashioned against what my predecessor, Casey Bultos, was doing with the games program. And so it really was for me the real sort of North Star and how I wanted to take my career, but also maybe help or have some form of impact on the industry as well. And so we've been, you know, riding that wave with me and the festival since the December 2022 date. but Tribeca has been really providing a platform for games since 2011.

8:35We worked with Rockstar Games to hold a big bod event involved around L.A. Noire. We had the actual Tribeca Games Festival. We had a bespoke three-day event over the course of 2017 when that took place. It's always been leading to this, where we launched in 2021 the Games Gallery, where we've been hosting official selections for games. So we've had games like Sable in the past, Blueprints, which obviously has had an incredible year over the course of last year. Absalom, Despolote was a Tribeca Games original selection in 2023 and just came out last year. And so I think that also typifies for folks what it might look like for a game to come through, be part of the program, have that experience.

9:18And it still might take a little, you know, a little runway to actually release out to the public. So it's been a really awesome process. I'm excited about what we've got Cooked up for this year I'm really looking forward to hear How folks receive the program Free and open to the public at Pier 57 And we're launching June 10th June 10th through the 14th Our dates this year for the Games Program That's amazing Thank you for sharing that Because I think a lot of the reasons Why I was so excited to have you on the show Is I think we're continuously seeing This really awesome Venn diagram Of film and games In a way that we haven't seen as kind of fully kind of pulled to the last parts of where we want this thing to kind of go.

10:04Like there was a big conversation in the beginnings of when much larger games came to the space where there was like, are we actually kind of making that artistic leap? You know, at first it was a conversation around kind of graphic fidelity, but now we're seeing the narrative bits really come to the forefront, right? So that cultural competency of not only having done this so many times within the festival space, but now seeing how both are actually kind of meeting in the middle now, right? Where we're seeing Tribeca be a tastemaker in so many different ways with games like Dispatch last year, which has won so many awards and gotten BAFTAs and all these other things that have been in the space.

10:48It feels like all of those conversations are now actually coming to a space where they're actually getting the light that they deserve. So it's really cool to be able to see you be a person who's leading that charge in this space by having all of that information and all of that history in the film and narrative space. Does this feel like we are kind of meeting that space now? Do you feel like with the work that you're doing, you are helping to move that conversation forward? And do you feel like through the curation process and the growth of games themselves that you are actually seeing games as art kind of really be games as art?

11:30Well, I see it sort of of two minds. You know, it's interesting thinking about something Ben Starr said recently where he was asked a question about the wave of adaptations, right? You're seeing so much more in that way, whether it's tied to TV, film, et cetera. And by no means do I think games need the adaptation leap, right? I think what it does is it provides the opportunity to potentially invite in a new audience who may not be familiar with games for whatever reason, or they just may have missed it, which is, again, one of the things, one of the pillars we try to do at the festival as far as help discoverability.

12:09but it also can provide the opportunity to expand the universe of a project of an ip whatever that that may look like for those developers and that creative team so i do want to foreground that but in the way that we are inevitably seeing that happen and there's so many conversations about games being the new um comics the new pieces of literature where folks are really jumping to grab those rights we are front and center in that in a lot of ways and those actual conversations, putting creatives on panels to talk about that kind of work. You know, we've had the folks from Story Kitchen at the festival last year, Demetria and Karu, they were talking about how they really approach having those conversations with different developers and creative teams.

12:54But you alluded to the team at Dispatch. We had Pierre and Nick also on panels last year with our good friends over at Brass Diner Entertainment talking about how they're looking at the full transmedia, the buzzword we have right now. sort of development process and cycle and what that means and how it gives them more opportunity to find audiences in different ways but also have a lot more sort of creative freedom and liberties with regards to the Experiences that they're trying to build and bridge but as far as the in real time I guess sort of execution of it also you're seeing lots of creators now start to say okay okay, how can we take maybe that formula or that idea that Netflix tried to push forward with Black Nerd Bandersnatch and take that to another level, right?

13:42So we have an immersive project this year called Escape the Internet that's created actually by a local creator, Lucas Risotto. Lucas has been an alumni through the festival with other immersive projects as well that is really like that idea to the nth degree and utilizing a full audience to create a full game experience essentially where they're making choices, they're making decisions essentially to save the internet. It's very much in the title, not to give too much away from it, but we're very excited to have that project at the festival. I think you're seeing a lot of different ways that developers are approaching it and I think we're just trying to provide a platform, provide space for that and let the creativity run wild in any sort of way, any sort of shape and form that it might take.

14:27It's funny to think of the dispatch team, right? So many of the ad hoc folks are former Telltale developers, and they've had some footing in that studio. So we've been in this sort of, if you want to call it an iterative process in and of itself, of really figuring out what that looks like as far as the mix between the two mediums. And those lines are just going to continue to blur in a lot of fun and exciting ways. First, shout out to our friends over at BreastLion. uh i'm dying to see how how that wu-tang project continues to grow in that space yeah and i think you you spoke to it perfectly around that conversation around the transmedia layer of it i think the you know had just come from the mortal kombat 2 premiere last week and was seeing so many of the folks and then the icons uh festival or conference from the esa uh that same week and they had a panel that had those folks on it.

15:25And it was really interesting to hear them discuss not only how the overall media landscape has changed, but how these game properties and especially Mortal Kombat, which has had a life cycle of over 30 years, has had these cultural touchstone moments that have been ones that have gone through and have now become parts of the culture and the ways that we talk to each other and the ways that we talk about memes and the the ways we talk about little pieces of the game and toasty and all those things how those all kind of like still still come through in those ways does it feel like when you're curating these projects that are coming into your purview into your space to be able to say like all right we're going to put this one in the festival and and or maybe not are you finding that the folks who are really coming to the process with an understanding of how each one of these pieces is even more connected than before are finding more eyes on their projects because of that ability to say we are playing in this space but we're also playing here and and how does that kind of play with a crowd that is usually more attuned to film tv and movies in the tribeca film festival then specifically games which again is growing and is getting much bigger and the conversations around those folks are getting bigger because now they're touching each other in those ways they're kind of touching touching safe spaces do you feel like the folks who were just kind of in that game space i'm sorry in the movie space are now like oh we should be paying attention to this because this is now in a space that is actually growing and actually my kids are seeing it or i'm playing or any of those things Are you seeing that happen as well?

17:17That's definitely happening. I think it's happening from the perspective of audience, but also with regards to executives, right? Who may be fully staunched on the film side, and they have looked at the possibilities of new stories that they can bring to the table within specific buckets, going back to what I mentioned with regards to literature and things like that. But now you have even a company like CAA has a very specific games division and looking at how they're tackling not just supporting developers and creatives specifically for the game, but for whatever life exists beyond in different mediums and what that could mean.

17:54So I think that's definitely taking place. It's funny you mention with regards to audiences, I have a lot of friends who are becoming new parents or have been parents for like, you know, a decade or so now. And now their kids are bringing things to them from the game side of things that is really piquing their interest. And particularly for narrative reasons. The other thing I love is that people are finding games in a variety of ways. You don't have to own the latest console, right, to be part of this community by any means. You can find really engaging options on your phone. You can find really engaging things on a PC.

18:30I love my Steam Deck. I just want to be very clear. Valve, if you're listening, shout out to you all. That portable, that is a really cool thing that's come into the forum that gives folks access to a lot of their Steam library in real time no matter where you are. Very much looking forward to the next console as well that they're putting out. So I think, yeah, you're organically seeing that. And with some of these adaptations hitting culturally, not even to talk about the numbers, the way they have, think of The Last of Us and how that's dominated Sunday nights, right? That big HBO Sunday night slot that usually whatever is in that area is going to be a water cooler sort of moment for that next week, perhaps.

19:15And so The Last of Us has had that sort of impact as well. You see, going back to the Story Kitchen team, what that team, along with their fellow producers and creative teams, have done with the Sonic films and really bringing both a young audience but also an older audience who has some of that nostalgia tied to that franchise, whether they're playing it on the Dreamcast or something else. Like, those are all having a bit of an intersection moment right now, I would say, that's really propelling new folks to seek out these games and just quiet as it's kept like coming out of COVID so many folks found a bit of respite in games during COVID whether that was Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Call of Duty, whether that was Hades like people found different experiences in a lot of ways that spoke to them.

20:08I love that for some of my friends they love Hades because it's just so sexy. It's like every character in that game is good looking. And they're like, all right, I dig this. This is a lot of fun. They're not really thinking about how interesting the mechanics are, even though we might eventually get around to that part of the conversation. But games are utilizing a lot of different things, right, to attract audiences. And I think that's certainly something for me every time I step in these shoes with my curator brain or curatorially forward i try to think about because for me there are lots of different things that pull me towards a project right it's not all one it's not one size fits all i mean i want hades too to have on the back of the box hakate is a baddie as a back of the box quote i need i need that to be a thing and agree right where it does wind up becoming these you know where do you find yourself within the entire scope of the genre and and and the the entertainment layer like you know and i'm happy you talked a little bit about COVID because I think, you know, COVID was in its weirdest version of it, a forcing factor for media, right?

21:19Where it was, especially for games, right? Where it was like, oh, well, how do we figure out everybody's at home? You know, they're playing games or if they're not, this might be a new space for that to be in that conversation. I think that also did a really good job for film and TV and movies too, where it was like, you know viewership was was through the roof during during covid because everyone was home you know production was down a ton but but actual viewership was up a bunch in that space um i'm actually really uh i want to poke at the the curatorial part because i think the thing that i've that i have kind of learned while doing this and also now getting a chance to work at a couple studios and talking to more developers has been i used to have a feeling and understanding of the process right and now you as a person who is looking at so many different games so many different projects even the interactive stuff which sounds fascinating and i'm dying to see what that's going to be has that changed your gaming habits and has that has that opened you up into a different space to say like oh well here are some games that i might not have played before here's some genres that i didn't know i liked before and now i'm finding myself kind of looking through those more in your own personal play?

22:34Oh, that's a really good question. Absolutely, yes, because we get so many different types of games submitted to the festival. We have puzzles, we have action-adventure, we have your platformers, social deductions, we have racing games that come through. Like, there are so many different kinds, sports games of all varieties, whether it's something that's like Despolote or more of a simulation experience, and that doesn't even touch on VR projects that get submitted that we're always keeping an eye out for as well. Those are complete bespoke experiences off to themselves. So it definitely opens up my eyes to a lot of different things and it's one of the things I love about curation overall.

23:17Yes, we see a variety of types of stories but I want our games program to be able to say we have a breadth of experiences available. You're not sitting down and everything is as much as I love I love dispatch it's not all a narrative experience formally right presented in that sort of way let's make sure that we can showcase some different things that are available to available to folks but that's definitely something that's forward there and I do find it fun when I can also share some of the examples of games that are coming in or the actual games we finally confirm once we get down to the end of the process with general audiences or my fellow colleagues like we put together a list of the five things we're looking for in a tribeca game right quotes around that and of course it's more than five but one of the things i mentioned is i want an experience that i'm going to want to shout from the mountaintops about like something that is going to keep me on my console with those controller with that controller in my hands until like 3 a.m and all of a sudden i realize it's 3 a.m you know so that's that's always a fun thing for me because at its core i i love this like i love games i want to make sure if we are supporting something it is because i see something there that somebody else can find it doesn't mean that every game is for each person but hopefully you can find one or two things that's really like speaking to you when you put your hands on that control like i'm just think about rock beasts right now which is one of the projects we have this year um and that game like every time i just talk to people i'm like okay think of it as mojack horseman meets football manager meets guitar hero and that is the basic foundation and usually everyone's like what are you talking about and then you get it in front of them and they're like you know i get it but that game truly evokes a lot of memories for me of some of those really fun moments whether it is guitar era tap tap having a really cool musical experience that experience but it has that presentation also and a narrative that is uh an incredible driving force and just a lot of fun to experience and sort of work through it's always nice when you get that new nugget right where you get that new thing where you're like oh this is buzzing in my ear a little bit like this is kind of great in the way that it presents you know like i think of uh you know tribeca as a space not only for the curation of those games as you know as pieces of art and as pieces of media that people should be checking out but also it's a place where games are getting you know their first shot at being seen by the world in real big ways in some of those spaces like mixtape was a game that got a world premiere at Tribeca.

26:10And that is already, having had some time with it, one of my most anticipated games on the planet. Like I am waiting for that thing to drop because it hits so many different notes for me personally in those ways. How does it feel while you're also being a part of that curation process that you're also, you know, Tribeca has now become a tastemaker in that way. How does that feel in terms of the responsibility not only to the audience of the festival, but does it feel like we might be launching someone into the stratosphere with the work that we get a chance to do? Does that feel like extra pressure is the question for you?

26:51Yes. Certainly, yes. But it's also one of the most fun parts of it, to be honest with you. And I've had the honor and privilege of experiencing that on the feature film side, right? There are filmmakers that I've worked with who've had shorts that have programmed for world premieres like almost a decade ago now. And now some of those filmmakers have had their feature directorial debuts over the past few years. And getting to watch that arc and just be a small part of their journey to watch that success on the other side, there's really nothing like it. Honestly, it's a level of intensity, but also great joy that's hard to duplicate, I would say.

27:37And so with regards to games, I mentioned Despolote, just the idea that we could work with Julian and his crew and see that game in a very early stage. And to now watch them come back on the other side and just win a BAFTA and also have been nominated for so many different things and have these wonderful experiences. That's incredibly cool. And so for me, yes, definitely a bit of pressure, but it's also it provides the opportunity to have something to look forward to in a weird way. And you don't necessarily know what that end product is going to be. And that's honestly not necessarily the point.

28:12It's just the fact that you get to be part of the journey for some of these creative teams who put so much love, care and intention into these projects. Right. Like some of these projects have been in development for six years, seven years. And now we get to play a part in them putting it finally out into the world. So there's a lot there that I don't want to take for granted. There's a lot of long days and nights tied to this job. You know, we have lots of internal and external meetings at Tribeca. So usually when we get to actually play something, it can be really late in the evening. But there's a joy to that.

28:52There's a real excitement towards what am I going to put on? at midnight that's like really going to stick with me and is going to have me thinking throughout the next days the next like weeks that i really will want to put my hands back on whenever i get the uh the opportunity to so yeah that's that's all there and i think you know one of the beauties of because again like when i was growing up in and learning more about my own city and the events that were going on in it. You know, Tribeca was and still is a space that has a ton of buzz around it. It still has a ton of energy that is not only, you know, the amalgam of New York as its base and that energy that just continuously buzzes through it, but it is a place to see and be seen in those spaces.

29:42It is still a place that has gravity that means a ton for what that city does. Has it felt like the New York game scene has really come to it in a way that we haven't seen before? Because I know, you know, before I moved west, the game scene was literally, you know, Microsoft's offices downtown in Midtown. Rockstar, which was always very quiet in the ways that it was in beginnings of Giant Bomb East when that was a thing during that time. Does it feel like alongside Tribeca's growth that the New York game scene is really growing in some other ways that we haven't really heard about? And how is that connected to Tribeca in any way?

30:30Yeah, I mean, shout out to the folks at MoM, the mayor's office. They do a lot of really great work to support a number of the different organizations locally. And certainly we're big fans of theirs and vice versa. So we work closely with them to help support the actual program and its launch annually. And you see different organizations, different entities that have come up and do different work, like Gumbo, for example, where Sam Eng, who created SkateStory, again, a Tribeca alum in 2023. Sam spent some time within Gumbo and actually was part of that cool incubator process there. So there's a number of different institutions that are really rising alongside.

31:12When I moved to the city in 2023, actually going back to Susan, who I mentioned earlier, she made a connection for me with some of the folks over at NYU Game Center. And I've been on their board for the NYU Game Center incubator for the last few years as well. So just to see some of the talent that's bubbling up through there and how the admin and professors are also part of the local community in a variety of ways. And there are lots of conversations that I won't spoil now about some of the things we're talking about with regards to the overall New York game scene right now. I think you'll start to hear some fun things that have been percolating really soon.

31:52But yeah, it's definitely rising and growing. And I think it's curious to see how the overall entertainment situation or industry is growing here. Look at the launch of our co-founder, Mr. Robert De Niro's new studio out in Queens. You hear about what Netflix is doing and Lionsgate as well. So there's quite a lot of movement just in entertainment overall. I think games are certainly a huge part of that. And it doesn't hurt that our new mayor seems to be a fan of the medium as well. So hopefully we'll get the opportunity to get him in front of some games at the festival or just in some other ways.

32:28But I think there's a lot of support both from the larger legislative side of things, but also very much within the community that's moving and propelling things forward. So we're definitely excited to be a part of that continued growth. But we always have fun welcoming folks locally to Tribeca and getting them in front of some of the projects at the Games Gallery. I am dying to get Mayor Momdani on the show to talk about games. I am dying for that. I want that so bad. So, so bad. Again, it's dope to be able to see someone who gets it, right? Who has an understanding of the medium, has an understanding of the energy that goes along with it.