In 2011, the Tribeca Film Festival’s unprecedented decision to include a video game as part of the official selection may have seemed like nothing more than a glorified bit of cross-promotion between a for-profit festival and an elite publisher with a very expensive new blockbuster to sell.
In the years that followed, however, it gradually became clear that Tribeca had a more expansive vision for the role that video games can play in the arts.
By 2017, games had become such a pronounced aspect of the Tribeca experience that a parallel mini-event — the Tribeca Games Festival — was created to contain them all.
This year, that changes.
The sea change started when Tribeca Games announced a new advisory board last fall comprised of Nia DaCosta, Jon Favreau, and gaming luminaries like Kiki Wolfkill and Kojima himself.
While movies are still very much the main event at Tribeca, the newfound emphasis on gaming is consistent with the festival’s long-term investment in games as central to the cultural conversation, and not just a sidebar.
“This being the first year I also wanted to do some outreach just to eliminate the conception of what people should submit based on the games that we’ve showcased in the past.
As in a film festival, Baltes stressed that the lineup highlights established talents alongside first-time creators, with the hope that the wide variety of games would reflect the wide variety of people who play them.
While there’s no in-person component to Tribeca Games in 2021, the COVID-era phenomenon of virtual festivals has opened a natural opportunity for games to occupy the same space.
It’s the kind of earnest, open-minded dialogue that makes film festivals such vibrant environments, and will hopefully carry over into the physical world when the new incarnation of Tribeca Games goes 3D next year.
So far as Baltes is concerned, that will be the ultimate measure of success.