The first annual Frosty Games Fest, which aimed to showcase new and upcoming games from Australian and New Zealand-based developers, was a major success by all metrics. Taking to social media, organiser Amy Potter-Jarman noted significant reach for the showcase by numbers, and also by less tangible metrics.
Per Potter-Jarman, the show reached a whopping 270,000 people in 24 hours, many of whom tuned into the show via The Game Awards, IGN, and GameSpot social channels. The Frosty Games Fest Steam event page reportedly had more than 1 million unique impressions in 48 hours, with many viewers wishlisting games in response to their appearance during the show.
Several developers reported a significant boost to wishlists following Frosty Games Fest, with the showcase allowing them a global reach they wouldn’t have had otherwise. 54 games from across Australia and New Zealand were featured in proceedings, with the show giving them the boost they certainly deserved.
As we outlined in our highlight article, there were so many brilliant, worthy games on show during Frosty Games Fest, from spooky eldritch horror games, to wholesome dog chaos simulators. The full breadth of the Australia and New Zealand games industries was covered, with so many unique, wholesome, and compelling projects shown off.
‘If you tuned in to our first showcase over the weekend, we are so grateful,’ Potter-Jarman said on Bluesky. ‘We proudly featured 54 incredible games made in Australia and Aotearoa NZ, across 50 minutes, in a show which has been described as “all killer, no filler.” Thank you.’
Read: Frosty Games Fest: 13 major highlights from the showcase
‘We’re so grateful to the Summer Game Fest team for believing in our vision and supporting this region … And, most importantly, developers are confirming their wishlists have been positively impacted. If you’ve wishlisted something from any SGF showcase this week, thank YOU!’
Potter-Jarman went on to thank the Frosty Games Fest organising team, Kieron Verbrugge, Lucy Mutimer, and Pritika Sachdev, as well as Chad Toprak and the Screen Australia team, for ‘believing in the vision when all we had was a pencil sketch of an ice cream and a tweet.’
How Frosty Games Fest manifested
Speaking to ScreenHub, Potter-Jarman further expanded on this team effort, noting the Frosty Games Fest organising team worked for around eight months to make the showcase ‘the absolute best it could possibly be’ for all involved.
‘I really hope that hard work, and the amount we truly care about this market, came through in the show,’ Potter-Jarman said.
As noted, the idea for Frosty Games Fest formed during last year’s Summer Game Fest activities, inspired by a desire to see more representation for Australian and New Zealand-based game developers. With so much of Summer Game Fest representing the Northern Hemisphere – in name and release dates alike – it was high time for a new showcase, giving more love and attention to the Southern Hemisphere, and the many talented folks working in this region.
Given the success of Frosty Games Fest 2025, we do hope to see this showcase return in future. As Potter-Jarman explained, the team had a ‘really strong vision’ for what the minimum viable output for the showcase would be, and so many of these targets were hit.
‘We managed to land so many big swings that we weren’t expecting to in the first year, like the Summer Game Fest inclusion, but what we really needed to learn is if the global market would give a sh*t about the content,’ Potter-Jarman explained.
‘I think it’s true that average gamers don’t necessarily care where a game is made, but we also know it’s true that there are just too many games for people to wade through when browsing a platform like Steam, for example. I think showcases play an incredibly important role in curating shortlists that are more digestible, even in the landscape we’re in now, where there are a growing number of showcase events. They continue to prove to be an effective vehicle to funnel consumer interest.’
‘So the big question is always will we do it again next year. And the answer is we would love to, but even with the markets of viewership success, we still have a crucial developer feedback process to go through. That said, I have some really big ideas in the tank for how Frosty as an entity could grow, and for what it could do for the ANZ market, which I’m really excited about.’
While Potter-Jarman made clear that a high quality showcase is ‘an incredible amount of work’ which would be difficult to continue to fund in a sustainable way, particularly in the current games landscape, it’s clear the prospect remains exciting, and inspiring.
For now, the organisation team can certainly revel in the success of the first annual show, and the impact it’s already having on local game developers.
