[The punk rock spirit is alive and well at Babycastles, NYC’s only indie games arcade. Check out my coverage of their latest gallery opening party on Motherboard]
In New York City, there’s a new arcade in town. But don’t expect to find anything you could purchase at your local Gamestop here. Instead, the homemade titles that fill the ramshackle cabinets of this musty basement just off the L train’s Halsey stop are part of an underground movement that’s re-invigorating interest in grassroots game development by taking to heart a credo strikingly similar to that of the early punk rock scene.
The place is Silent Barn, an active DIY music venue in Ridgewood, Queens that has quickly become an unlikely hub of videogame counterculture through Babycastles, a curated gallery of independently developed games from developers around the world. Normally a faceless exchange operating through all manner of internet message boards, blogs and IRC channels, Babycastles co-founders Syed Salahuddin, Kunal Gupta and Arthur Ward aim to bring the indie games community back into meatspace. And they’re doing it the only way they know how to: By throwing raucous parties with live music and huge crowds of gaming enthusiasts button-mashing away on arcade cabinets lovingly crafted from planks of wood, painted styrofoam and whatever else was lying around that day.
