GCAP 2025: Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost
- Lis Moberly
- Oct 19, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
This year I was honored and privileged to speak at GCAP as a keynote speaker during Australia Games Week. It was my first visit to Melbourne and I fell in love with the city, the country's devs, and the indie scene I found there. In a time where the game industry can feel like it is cratering from the inside out, I found myself leaving Australia filled with a small but persistent beam of hope. I saw imagination, community support, and government funding swirl together to create a robust game dev scene that I haven't seen anything quite like before.
As for the talk itself, over the last year I've been studying institutional memory, a topic which I also discussed at D.I.C.E. Europe in Edinburgh last month. I gave GCAP a number of topics that I felt were applicable to its audience, and this was the one they felt would most benefit their community.
A photo of me delivering the keynote at GCAP 2025 in Australia. Photo credit: Blake Mizzi.
In this keynote I spoke extensively about institutional memory, why it matters, and how it applies to the game industry. I also discussed what I felt the game industry had forgotten, what should remain abandoned, and what should be remembered–especially now in this period where the dev community is struggling to recover.
While I don't have all the answers as to how the industry can right the ship, I hope that some of what I proposed in Melbourne this year can help push the conversation in the right direction. Below are the slides from the keynote available to download:
GCAP Slide Deck: Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost: Why the Game Industry Forgot How to Make Video Games
By Lis Moberly
Thanks and appreciation is due to GCAP and Sav Emmett Wolfe in particular for inviting me to speak, arranging my travel and accommodation, and connecting me with so many of Melbourne's developers.
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