Get Ready To Enter A New Decade With The Next Public Domain Game Jam: Gaming Like It’s 1930!
from the gaming-like-it's-1930 dept
The new year is approaching fast, and you know what that means: new material is entering the public domain in the US, and we’ll be celebrating it with the eighth installment of our public domain game jam. What’s more, this is an extra special year because the ever-growing public domain is hitting a new decade: it’s time for Gaming Like It’s 1930!
As in past years, we’re calling on designers of all stripes to create both analog and digital games that build on works entering the public domain. There are plenty of interesting works to draw on, including:
- Written works by Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes, Olaf Stapledon, Sigmund Freud, William Faulkner
- Art by Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Grant Wood, M. C. Escher, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian
- Films All Quiet on the Western Front, Animal Crackers, Hell’s Angels, and the first Looney Toons
- Music by Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, the Gershwins, and Son House
- Other characters including Nancy Drew and The Little Engine That Could
The jam will begin on January 1st and run through the end of the month, accepting submissions of both analog and digital games based on works from 1930. Whether you’ve participated before or not, we encourage everyone to get involved!
Even if you don’t have any experience, it’s never been easier to try your hand at game design. There are lots of great tools available that let anyone build a simple digital game, like interactive fiction engine Twine and the storytelling platform Story Synth from Randy Lubin, our game design partner and co-host of this jam (check out his guide to building a Story Synth game in an hour here on BestNetTech). And an analog game can be as simple as a single page of rules. For inspiration, you can have a look at last year’s winners and our series of winner spotlight posts that take a look at each year’s winning entries in more detail.
At the end of the jam we’ll be choosing winners in six categories, and awarding a choice of prizes from BestNetTech and Diegetic Games. You can read the full rules and other details, and sign up to participate, on the game jam page over on Itch.io. We’ll be back with more reminder posts as the jam draws nearer, including a look at one card game submission from last year that has since been released for purchase and is getting great reviews (so stay tuned for that!)
Filed Under: copyright, game jam, gaming, gaming like it's 1930, public domain
Comments on “Get Ready To Enter A New Decade With The Next Public Domain Game Jam: Gaming Like It’s 1930!”
I’d be real careful about using Bosko and Honey.
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Maybe a game where Bosko and Honey teach you about racist depictions in media.
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Yeah, like, I think somebody could subvert the tropes and make something really interesting out of them, but…like, I wouldn’t do that project by myself as a white dude.
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I feel like it’s more important that it comes from a white person, preferably a relative of the original creators or a historian who has insight into the culture that spawned it. So many people of color I’ve spoken to are exhausted from feeling like the world expects them to educate others about racism like it’s their job just because they experience it.
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It can be done.
Fagin the Jew is Will Eisner addressing his own use of anti-Black stereotypes by comparing it to hurtful literary stereotypes about his own people.
But, pointedly, his work was by analogy — he didn’t feel it was his place to talk about the Black experience, but he knew there were similarities to his experiences as a Jew and he was more comfortable examining that history.
He was also an incredibly talented and respected cartoonist and storyteller with big ideas and the skill to execute them, so there’s that.
And that’s an example of someone taking an earnest approach. If you’re trying to be funny or satirical, that’s a bigger challenge. I don’t buy the line that you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today, but the key thing is that Mel Brooks would have never been able to make it then if he hadn’t had Richard Pryor’s name on it as a co-writer. There’s still cutting satire about anti-Black racism, whether that’s Aaron McGruder, Boots Riley, or Jordan Peele, but there’s a pretty big difference between those guys making jokes about racism and a white guy doing it.
You make a good point that it’s unfair for white guys to expect POC to shoulder the burden of talking about racism. But on the other hand, Chris Rock can make jokes about racism that I can’t. Or at least really, really shouldn’t.
Shit is so weird here in Bizarro World / Mondo Beyondo that i had totally forgotten that the Game Jam was a thing.
You know you’re getting old when you grew up with original copies of works that are now entering the public domain.
Jam On!