GDC: It Takes a Village: Growing Vibrant Game Developer Communities

In case you missed GDC 2016, and you are interested what makes a vibrant game developer community, check out the GDC Vault release of the all star panel Elliott Mitchell assembled: It Takes a Village: Growing Vibrant Game Developer Communities!

GDC---It-takes-a-village-01

The panel, comprised of key organizers from the Boston and Austin communities, offers the audience valuable insights into organizing events, meet-ups and co-working collectives which in turn fuel local industry growth for the future. Speakers include Elliott Mitchell (Vermont Digital Arts), Adri Mills (Independent), Dawn Rivers (Harmonix Music Systems), Michael Carriere (Zapdot), Jono Forbes (Defective Studios) & Andrew Eiche (Owlchemy Labs).

Top 25 Game Developer Related Meetups In The Boston Area – March 2014 Edition

Beers For Indies

Beers For Indies!

We are often asked “What game developer meetups do you regularly attend?”. Unfortunately for us in Southern Vermont, most of the “local” meetups are in the Boston, MA area with the exception of a couple non-game specific events in Western MA. Fortunately for Vermont Digital Arts, we also work in Cambridge, MA at the Indie Game Collective and thus attend a lot of game development events out there.

Our personal top 5  Boston area game developer meetups are (in alphabetical order):

Boston Post Mortem http://www.bostonpostmortem.org/
Boston Indies http://www.bostonindies.com/
Boston Unity Group http://www.meetup.com/B-U-G-Boston-Unity-Group/
New England Game Circle http://gamescircle.org/
Mass DiGI http://www.massdigi.org/category/events/

Our general top 25 Boston area game developer meetups are (in alphabetical order):

AAUGA Boston http://www.aaugaboston.com/
Boston Art and Code http://www.meetup.com/BostonArtCode/
Boston Blender Users Group http://www.meetup.com/BostonBlender/
Boston Games Forum http://gmsfrm.com/
Boston HTML 5 Game Development http://www.meetup.com/Boston-HTML5-Game-Development/
Boston Indies http://www.bostonindies.com/
Boston Post Mortem http://www.bostonpostmortem.org/
Boston Unity Group http://www.meetup.com/B-U-G-Boston-Unity-Group/
Boston Virtual Reality http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Virtual-Reality/
Boston Windows App and Game Developers http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Windows-App-Developers/
Cambridge Hack Space http://www.meetup.com/Cambridge-Hackspace/
Drinks on Tap http://www.meetup.com/DrinksOnTap/
Game Makers Guild http://www.meetup.com/Game-Makers-Guild/
Game Over Boston https://www.facebook.com/GameOverBoston
HTML 5 Boston http://www.meetup.com/html5boston/
Mass DiGI http://www.massdigi.org/category/events/
Mass Innovation Nights http://mass.innovationnights.com/
Mass TLC http://www.masstlc.org/
MassMobile – Mobile Developer’s Meetup http://www.meetup.com/massmobile/
Mobile Monday http://www.momoboston.com/
New England Game Circle http://gamescircle.org/
StoryCode Boston http://www.meetup.com/StoryCode-Boston/
Women in Games Boston http://wigboston.wordpress.com/

Please let us know if you have any favorite game developer meetups in the Boston area that we may have missed. I’d be great to have a giant comprehensive list to share online perhaps as a wiki.

We hope there will be more going on in the Vermont / Western MA area to populate a list half this long in a few years! VERMONT / Western MA -> Let’s make it happen!

Steam Developers Unite

Steam Dev Days

Valve’s first Steam Developer’s Conference, Steam Dev Days, is set to kick off January 15 in Seattle, WA. Vermont Digital Arts is very excited to be attending this historic game developer event! We just happen to be developing a few games for Steam and Steam + Oculus Rift  and Unity for the win. What is particularly amazing is Valve’s decision to launch SteamVR Beta one day ahead of Steam Dev Days! This is going to be good!

Hope to see you at Steam Dev Days! Tweet to Elliott Mitchell, our Co-Founder, on Twitter @mrt3d if you’d like to connect at the conference.