The IndieBeat: Glitch Mundo carves out a grassroots festival for indie games in Brazil

Brazil’s Independent Games (BIG) Festival ran last week in São Paulo, but it wasn’t the only event there that celebrates indie games. A group of local developers had put together and hosted their own festival, Glitch Mundo, in three cities throughout Brazil. While BIG invites games from all over Latin America as well as abroad, Glitch Mundo focuses on homegrown titles.

Two months before BIG, Brazilian game devs issued an open letter listing a number of concerns they had about the festival. They cited issues like a lack of transparency about the event’s award ceremony, meager funds to help Brazilian devs fly to São Paulo, and the inaccessibility of many of the event’s panels for students, since these are hosted during working hours. BIG released a statement in response, and the two groups gathered at a town hall meeting shortly afterwards to discuss the community’s needs.