Welcome to a brand new weekend of videogames and learning, presented by Toronto Games Week! Explore a game showcase at the AGO on Friday, delve into indie dev talks on Saturday and dive into game development workshops on Sunday!
When we were creating the That’s My Jam! white paper, most of the jam organizers mentioned that they wished they were able to offer more support to the jammers needing advice on what to do next. So we created an interactive resource to guide them on their post-jam journey.
We’re back with a fresh edition of GAIN’s annual roundup newsletter, first launched in 2016 to annually spotlight and celebrate game art events from around the globe!
This year, we’re thrilled to share highlights from 22 events across 14 countries, featuring everything from trailblazing pioneers to emerging voices, and from grand festivals to intimate pop-up gatherings. María Luján Oulton returns as editor, reaching out to friends, colleagues, and like-minded communities to collect their favorite snapshots from the game art events and projects of 2024.
We are thrilled to announce the open call for the fifth edition of GAIA, taking place in Barcelona in 2025. GAIA (Game Arts International Assembly) is an international symposium and gathering dedicated to exploring the intersections of games, play, and art through critical and creative perspectives. For years, GAIA has provided a unique platform for curators, artists, game designers, scholars, and cultural practitioners from around the world to engage in meaningful conversations, share pioneering projects, and foster a global network within game arts.
For over two decades, game developers have turned to game jams as sites of training, experimentation, and community-building. That’s My Jam is a new project we’re starting that studies the importance of jams for both emerging and established game makers.
GAIA 2024 Online Edition was a unique and exciting event that emerged in response to the remarkable growth of the GAIA community. While originally occurring in-person every other year, it’s become clear that we need a space to stay connected, share ideas, and engage in the discussions that inspire us. This special two-day event allowed us to come together virtually, with 33 speakers from 19 countries participating across 10 sessions, creating a rich and diverse program.
The Game Arts International Assembly will happen ONLINE on Tuesday Sept. 10th and Thursday Sept. 19th.
This time GAIA will feature 11 sessions distributed in 2 days with over 20 curators, community organizers and cultural producers from 12 countries from around the world. We will cover a wide range of topics such as online curation and community caring to innovative editorial approaches. In addition to talks sharing personal experiences, playful workshops, and practical sessions, GAIA will include an online artgames showcase.
Join us! Let us know your interest in the sessions via this form and we’ll send you a calendar invite with a link and the correct time zone information.
Our tenth and final stop is next week at A MAZE. Berlin, where Marie will be doing a workshop and a panel about alternative modes of videogame production like unions and co-ops. (GAIA will also be doing a series of microtalks about building creative communities.)
Since we first launched the project at Toronto Games Week 2023, we have traveled the world facilitating discussions and giving out thousands of free comic books. Most recently we were in San Francisco at GDC, the largest game developer conference in the world, doing a packed panel…
The online version is not merely a warm up to the in-person edition (which will take place in September 2025 in Barcelona) but a highly-accessible version of GAIA, for anyone around the globe who might not be able to attend the in-person meetups, and a way to gather larger parts of our growing community.
We are now working on a program to share knowledge between game arts organizers and curators and would love to have your input. If you feel like being an active part of these online sessions this is your opportunity to propose a talk or activity! You can fill in now the Open Call Form. For inspiration check out the programming at our previous online edition.
We welcome established as well as emergent game culture producers, curators, community organizers, art curators and museum professionals, streamers, critics, academics and all professionals who are working, or intend to work, with videogames as cultural objects.
This year GAIA is being produced by Luján Oulton (Now Play This), Jim Munroe and Marie LeBlanc Flanagan (Game Arts International Network), and Shalev Moran. Visit our newly updated GAIA website for more info.
From special guest editor, María Luján Oulton… We are bringing back to life GAIN’s annual roundup newsletter, an inspirational collection of game arts related photos from events around the globe.
For the first time since 2019 we reached out to friends, colleagues and like-minded groups asking to share their favorite pictures from the videogame arts event or project they worked on in 2023. The result is events from 23 cities covering five continents. The game arts community is coming back in a big way!
If you like it, please spread the link (or retweet) and let us know about any events or people that have not been named here so we can include them in future roundups.
Unionisation efforts have made big headlines in the news lately, but how much do game developers really know about unions? This is one of many questions we asked for If You Don’t Like the Game, Change the Rules, a comic and white paper that discuss unions, worker co-ops, and labour issues in the Canadian game industry. Over the next few months we’ll be posting little excerpts while we’re touring the project.
Marie LeBlanc Flanagan will be in Japan with free copies of the comic in the coming weeks. Mon. Dec. 11 she’ll be in Tokyo (details here, including livestreaming info) launching the comic as part of Gæmz and Sat. Dec. 16 she’ll be in Kyoto (details here) doing a comic launch and zine workshop. (For further tour stops and to invite us to your community, see the bottom of the post!)
What do game developers know about worker co-operatives and their possibility to reimagine how labour is structured? This is one of many questions we asked for If You Don’t Like the Game, Change the Rules, a comic and white paper that discuss unions, worker co-ops, and labour issues in the Canadian game industry. Over the next few months we’ll be posting little excerpts while we’re touring the project.
Join Marie LeBlanc Flanagan in Vancouver on Saturday, November 18 to pick up your free copy of the comic! Marie is speaking as a keynote speaker for Creative Campfire and will be hosting a conversation about exploring alternative labour structures like co-ops and unions to encourage radical change in the industry! Register for Creative Campfire tickets here. (For further tour stops and to invite us to your community, see the bottom of the post!)
The first ever Toronto Games Week had an incredible response, with over a thousand attendees over the 15 events! It kicked off with a Dirty Rectangles social in the sci-fi punk rock bar, See-scape.
photo by Jooyoung Oh
Most of the events were free to the public and three were outdoors, like this pop-up arcade in Trinity Bellwoods Park after dark.
The third Game Arts International Assembly will be happening June 5-7th, 2023 in Toronto, Canada. With a participant cap of 20, GAIA is an intimate symposium for game art curators and game community organizers to level up their professional development and connect with their international peers. In addition to on site talks sharing personal experiences, playful workshops, and practical sessions, GAIA will include field trips to different locations in the city.
In GAIA’s fallow year we want to plant some seeds for our 2023 (hopefully in-person) symposium with a casual open discussion series. We asked some folks in the game arts community what questions they’re wrestling with these days…
Shalev wondered How do you find your people once you immigrate to a new place? Louie inquired How do you create a sustainable workshop or communal space? Gwen mulled over How do you get other cultural workers into games? Jim struggled with How do you work collaboratively in a fractured community?
Come and chime in! These are not GAIA sessions — they will be very informal 1 hour online hangs where our hosts will be asking a question they don’t know the answer to. We’ll do them every last Saturday of the month for as long as people have questions to play with. (You can suggest one here for later in the year!)
The first one will be Saturday Jan 29th at 11AM EST. (Subscribe to the gcal here for this and future months as the exact time will change to accommodate different time zones).
This series is a project of the Game Arts International Assembly, organized by Luján Oulton (Game on! El arte en juego), Jim Munroe and Marie Claire LeBlanc Flanagan (Game Arts International Network). Illustration: Marie Claire LeBlanc Flanagan.
