The DeanBeat: The place in Venice Beach where you can find the real innovation in gaming

VENICE BEACH, Calif. — I was freezing atop the windy penthouse of a beachside building last night. But I didn’t mind, for the most part, because I was seeing the future of the game industry. The games I saw all came from independent developers, and they showed that there’s still a lot of innovation happening in gaming in advance of the industry’s biggest trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in mid-June.

Nathan Vella of Capy Games co-organized the event. He’s from Toronto, and he swears he didn’t know the rooftop penthouse he rented next to one of the most famous beaches in the world was going to be so cold. He gathered some of the best indie games he could find, with the help of game showman Geoff Keighley, Greg Rice of Double Fine Productions, Sony PlayStation, Microsoft’s ID@Xbox, Humble Bundle, and Nvidia. The event came at the end of a long week of corporate game presentations. The indies represented the creative part of the industry well.