Stanley W. Baxton
Stanwixbuster
Stanley Baxton is a Northern English narrative games dev and writer creating experiences that are satirical, horrifying, or queer, and sometimes all at once. He makes games for exactly three people to lose their minds. Currently he's a PhD student at the University of Salford, researching non-commercial game dev communities, and is part of BAFTA Breakthrough 2025.
Stanley W. Baxton is speaking at the following session/s
How to Make Whatever You Want and Still Get Attention
In absence of any sort of studio backing, funding grants, publishers, or doing anything the industry tells him to do, Stanley Baxton has managed to develop several award-winning narrative games, and went on to be part of BAFTA Breakthrough 2025 with his game LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST. In this talk, he’s going to break down how he did it, making a case for abandoning the “normal” way to develop games, and how the industry is ignoring vital talent at the fringes.
Session Takeaway
- Why we need to look beyond “getting into” the industry as a means to make meaningful games, and how this makes the entire field stronger.
- Why making “hyper-local” game for very specific “audiences” should be pursued by more developers, and can be as culturally impactful as it is artistically fulfilling.
- How someone can start striking out into making “non-commercial” games in “not real” game tools, why they should, and why I believe this needs to become more common advice to newcomers and students.
- Why, despite the fact that I’ve been able to do this, that I am still in several positions of economic privilege, and that we need more systems to support artists on the fringes.
Session speakers
