Gaming Like It's 1925: The Public Domain Game Jam Has Begun!
from the get-going dept
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Today’s the day:works published in 1925 have run out of copyright protection and the public domain has gotten bigger, and our game jam celebrating it has begun! Gaming Like It’s 1925 runs from now until the end of the month, and it’s the perfect chance to start digging into of all the amazing material that’s finally free for everyone to use.
The premise of the jam is simple: build a digital or analog game that incorporates, in some way or another, one or more works from 1925. You don’t need to be an experienced game designer to participate — entries can be as simple as a few instructions in a PDF, or as robust as an entire board or video game, and you can make use of all sorts of easy development tools (a few of which are listed on the jam page). And there are so, so many great works to choose from, a few of which are listed on Duke University’s annual round-up, which is a great place to start looking.
As in the past two public domain game jams, we’ll be awarding prizes in six categories (the winners of the 2020 jam are linked below, and you can read our judges’ thoughts on them here):
- Best Analog Game (Previous Winner: The 24th Kandinsky)
- Best Digital Game (Previous Winner: You Are The Rats In The Walls)
- Best adaptation of a 1925 work (Previous Winner: The Hounds Follow All Things Down)
- Best remixing of multiple sources (Previous Winner: 192X)
- Best ?Deep Cut? from a work not listed on any of the round up articles (Previous Winner: Legends of Charlemagne)
- Best Visuals (Previous Winner: Hot Water)
We’ve also got another great panel of new and returning judges this year:
- Anil Dash
- Clio Yun-su Davis
- Jim Greer
- James Mendez Hodes
- Carolyn Homer
- Kathryn Hymes
- Albert Kong
- Randy Lubin
- Katherine Maher
- Mike Masnick
- Jason Morningstar
- Jamila R. Nedjadi
- Hakan Seyalioglu
- Lizzy Stark
- April Kit Walsh
You can sign up to participate and find all the remaining details, the full rules, the list of prizes, and lots of helpful links over on itch.io. Don’t delay — a month might seem like a long time, but it goes by fast, especially when faced with the immense and finally-growing public domain!
Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io »
Comments on “Gaming Like It's 1925: The Public Domain Game Jam Has Begun!”
A competing/similar game jam:
As it turns out, there’s a similar public domain game jam out based on works made in 1925, but it’s only one work: The Great Gatsby!
https://itch.io/jam/greatgatsby
Not a game, but we at Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders are certainly getting our hands dirty on the works newly elevated to the Public Domain. Some of the obvious classics (such as The Great Gatsby) were already available outside the US, with our Australian friends, but plenty of works are now PD anywhere in the world for the first time. Help is always welcome!