WOMEN GAME JAM 2020 is coming

From August 21 to 30, the second edition of the Women Game Jam (WGJ) will be held in Colombia, a meeting that encourages the participation of women within the video game industry and that this year will be in digital format responding to the pandemic. The event is convened by organizations from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

The Women Game Jam is a video game development hackathon, it is a space in which participants meet in a limited time to develop ideas, form teams, create innovative and creative games around the same theme and present them to the other participants already in the global community.

Usually the event lasts only 48 hours, however, and in the interest of fostering initiative and the work of women's groups, this digital edition will be a week-long game development festival. Participants will know the theme of the Jam on August 21 and can submit their games until August 30.

The jam is an event that stands out for generating prior learning spaces in order to promote the development of video games and the strengthening of local communities, inviting developers of any level of expertise to contribute by sharing their knowledge and experiences in the industry. Men and women are part of the more than 20 volunteers and mentors who make this Jam a reality.

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“Although due to the confinement we must celebrate it digitally, for us it is a great relief and joy that this event continues to be carried out through new technologies. There is no pandemic to stop this transformative force! Let's hope that next year we can embrace and empower more women in these spaces that we support for them ”, says Catalina Quijano Silva, Coordinator of TadeoLAB.

"Women are the owners of their own stories, this jam is just an excuse for them to express what they feel, think and have lived, games are just a means of communication, and they can choose if they want to make a video game , or other types of games. This is an excellent opportunity to create. " said Sandra Castro Pinzón, Director of Tan Grande y Jugando, the official organizer of the Women Game Jam for Colombia.

This event is held with the support of seven national and international sponsors (Huawei, Indie Game Business, JamCity, Blazing Soft, Ludopium, Latinx in Gaming and Herrera Díaz Abogados) in addition to the support of 27 partner organizations, more than 20 mentors and 22 volunteers , this is a sign that this initiative is in the interest of the entire videogame development community.

Registration is already open in Colombia https://bit.ly/WGJ20-Col . and at the international level https://womengamejam.org/ .

Women in the video game industry

Teravision Games is a video game development studio based in Bogotá, in the heart of Colombia . The company has been creating games since 2006 and has been fortunate to work with some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Namco, Atari, Disney, and Nickelodeon.

In their first 10 years of working in the world of video games, they have already created more than 80 games in a multitude of styles for many different platforms.

In 2016, they redesigned their studio based on their team's passion for PC / console gaming, and that has been the organization's focus ever since.

They chose Unreal Engine as the "weapon of choice" to create incredible experiences for their customers. Since then, they have been rewarded for working with great partners like InXile and Gun Media on some of their amazing AAA games, and they have been busy creating our own game: Neon Fury.

For this Colombian company dedicated to video games, the participation of women is low. “Less than 10% of the resumes we receive at Teravision Games are from women, and we know that it is a fairly similar situation in the rest of the video game companies in Colombia, however, we accept this as the reality of our industry and waiting for it to change is simply ignoring the problem, " says Cyndi Ordoñez, Studio Manager at Teravision Games.

Since the first Women Game Jam, we have seen an increase in the participation of women in the mixed events organized by the community of video game developers, an objective promoted by Colombian Women In Games, a community also led by Sandra Castro Pinzón.

“It is very moving to see the great support and efforts that our entire community generates and their concern for allowing women to be part of the industry. A year ago we said that in our research we saw that there was little interest and participation of women in the activities of the industry, even within job offers. This is a very early moment for us to celebrate the breaking of the gap, but we are already seeing the fruits of our work by finding more women participating in the mixed activities that we already do, such as Tan Grande and Jugando ”, explained Castro.

WOMEN GAME JAM was an Initiative that was born in 2018 in Brazil with the intention of promoting the development of video games by women. In its third edition, it was expanded for the first time to more Latin American countries and finally it was held in Peru, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia. This year Bolivia and Canada also join the list.