The Boston Festival of Indie Games has announced their keynote speakers for 2014. Voice actor and writer Ashley Burch and actor Sarah Elmaleh will present An Actor’s Truth, the Future of Indies and the End of the AAA Everyman.

From their website:

It’s a thrilling time for independent games: leading the medium in formal experimentation and diversity of representation, they are rapidly expanding our perception of what games can be, and who can both make and be depicted in them.

At the heart of this revolution is bravery and faith that the colorful, the offbeat, and the particular will resonate with players – more so than a fear-based, marketing department-driven emphasis on the familiar, the bland and the catchall, a philosophy particularly evident in the recent generation of indie game protagonists. Where AAA has too often defaulted to a flawed conception of a hypergeneric ‘everyman’ – usually a stoic, gun-toting, thirty-something white male – indies’ motley crew of heroes embrace boldly specific character detail as the basis for human (player) connection.

Brenda Noiseux

Community builder, artist, convention organizer, gamer, geek writer Women Write About Comics and Sidequest. Product Maven at Almost a Game. Owner, Bittenby Studios.