A conversation with Casey Baltes, VP of Games at Tribeca Enterprises

When I sat down with Casey Baltes, I asked her the question I put to most institutional leaders working in game-based arts: what separates a program that takes root from one that disappears after a single budget cycle?

Her answer was unsparing — and it explains why Tribeca has become one of the few film festivals to build a sustained platform for game-based creative practice.

The one-champion problem

"Games can't exist within a company like this," Casey told me, "unless you have someone at the top who truly believes in it and who advocates for it every day."

This is not a platitude. It is a structural observation. At Tribeca, that person is Jane Rosenthal. Without executive conviction at the highest level, game-based programming collapses into what Casey described bluntly: "one person or one person's part-time job." And when that person doesn't come in, "no one's thinking about games."

I see this pattern across the cultural sector. An institution hires a passionate champion or identifies an enthusiastic internal voice—often someone genuinely excellent at the work—and then wonders why the program stalls. The champion is not the problem. The problem is that game-based practice has been treated as a side initiative rather than an organizational commitment. Programs that depend on one person rarely survive an org-chart change.

Define the lens before you program anything

The sharpest thing Casey said was about focus. "A cultural institution at the onset should identify its lens and its strengths and be very focused on that section of games that they want to nurture."

Tribeca's lens is storytelling. Not graphics. Not competitive play. Not technical novelty. Storytelling—which Casey defines expansively, to include "what happens to the player as they're playing the game and what happens when they put down the controller."

That clarity accomplishes two things. It signals to creators what kind of work Tribeca can genuinely serve. And it gives the internal team a decision-making framework: if a project doesn't align with the platform's strengths, it isn't selected—not because the project lacks merit, but because Tribeca can't serve it well.

Most institutions I advise skip this step. They try to be a venue for game-based arts in general, which usually means programming whatever their one champion happens to be excited about that year. A clear curatorial lens is not a limitation. It is what makes a program legible to creators, audiences, and internal stakeholders alike.

Exhibitions are not the only entry point

Casey mapped out three pathways cultural institutions can pursue in game-based arts beyond curation and commissioning:

Let games reshape the institution itself. Apply game design principles to audience interaction across the broader festival—not as a branded section, but as infrastructure. Use the theory, the applications, and the technology to inform how audiences move through the work.

Invest in interpretive content and critical discourse. "How we talk about games and how we write about them is of critical importance to changing people's minds about what games are and how seriously they can take them."

Bridge creative disciplines. Position the institution as a translation layer between game-based arts, film, television, and audio as transmedia practice accelerates.

This matters because exhibitions are the hardest, most expensive, most infrastructure-intensive entry point into game-based arts. If that door is closed—because the curatorial team isn't ready, because the budget isn't there yet, because leadership hasn't committed—other doors exist. Interpretive content, in particular, remains radically underused by institutions sitting on enormous cultural authority.

The thing no one wants to name

"A measure of success within a company like this is usually somewhat financial." Casey put the elephant on the table herself.

Even inside an organization built to celebrate artistic endeavor, game-based programs must move toward financial sustainability—strategic partners, financial partners, and a business case that sits alongside the curatorial one. This is as true in non-profit contexts as it is in for-profit ones. American cultural funding is tight and getting tighter. A game-based arts program that cannot articulate how it will sustain itself over a five-year horizon is one that gets cut during the next budget crunch.

What I'm taking from this

Casey's closing note was about the mission: changing where game-based work sits within the broader cultural conversation.

That is the work. Not launching a one-off. Not hosting a showcase. Building the institutional scaffolding that makes game-based arts legible as culture, year after year, whether or not one person shows up to work that day.

If your institution is exploring game-based programming, this is the conversation to have before you program anything.

Casey Baltes is VP of Games at Tribeca Enterprises. Listen to the full episode [here].