Busan Indie Connect (BIC) Festival 2020 has begun accepting game applications for the General Division exhibition, as announced by the Busan Metropolitan City (The Acting Mayor Sung-Wan Byeon), Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency (President&CEO In-Sook Lee), and Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee (Executive Chairman Tae-Geon Seo).

The Busan Indie Connect Festival 2020 edition will be all hosted online to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to ensure the safety of developers and participants, which includes the exhibition, conference, and all events. Dubbed “BIC Festival 2020-Untact(zero contact) Live”, it will be held from 19 to 25 October.

The organization is planning to build a real-time communication platform for developers and visitors, to bring the sense of real-world excitement from an offline setting to online. BIC intends to share feedback, while at the same time leading an expansion of the indie games’ base with indie games’ challenging spirit.

The General Division exhibition applications are open until 15:00, 30 June. Any individual or team over 14 years old who develops indie games can apply. The Rookie Division will open applications from 1 July. Details can be found on the official website.

BIC Festival is a global indie games festival which has grown to become one of the biggest indie game events in Korea, held in Busan since 2015. The festival finds and cultivates local indie game titles and helps their global exchanges and expansion into the overseas market through their events. In addition, the organization has tried to revitalize the indie game development industry and expand the emerging market’s basis. It has carved out its own space in the market that will help it resolve the deep imbalance between indie games and leading companies that dominate the gaming industry.

Skul by SouthPAW Games won “Excellence in Art” in the General Division last year and has since gotten a publishing contract with NEOWIZ, one of the biggest game developers/publishers in Korea. Ratropolis by Cassel Games, won “Rising Star” in the Rookie Division, managed to rank 1st on the STEAM Top Sellers chart.

“We decided to host the event online this year since the BIC Festival is a global event with worldwide indie developers and our top priority is safety. The Committee is working hard to build a system which allows people not only to watch the games, but also brings the sense of real-world excitement. We hope many people show us a lot of interest.”

In-Sook Lee, President & CEO of Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency

“We deliberated about figuring out the best practical support for indie game developers every year. And those thoughts and the hard effort of the developers seem to have achieved some outcome already and we are very happy about that. We will be able to have more participants since the event is held online this year, so we hope to have a lot of indie game developers’ participation and interest.”

Tae-Geon Seo, Executive Chairman of the Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee