Reimagining the Creative Sprint
Game jams are intense, time-limited events where developers create a game from scratch, often around a theme. Traditionally, they are framed as competitions, with winners, prizes, and rankings. This injects a capitalist, zero-sum logic into what should be a collaborative, experimental space. The focus shifts from learning and sharing to beating others. Similarly, gaming festivals and expos are often trade shows dominated by corporate marketing, ticket sales, and exclusive reveals, reinforcing the industry's power hierarchies.
The Institute organizes and participates in events that subvert this model. Our jams and festivals are built on principles of mutual aid, open sharing, and collective celebration. The goal is not to crown a single 'best' game, but to expand the toolbox of post-capitalist design and strengthen the community of practitioners. We create a temporary autonomous zone for imagining play beyond capital.
Structures for Collaborative Creation
Our flagship event is the **Post-Capitalist Game Jam**. The theme is always a challenge to capitalist design: e.g., 'Economies of Care,' 'Governance as Play,' or 'Abundant Worlds.' Crucially, there are no individual winners. Instead, we use a collaborative judging process where all participants provide feedback, and 'awards' are given in non-competitive categories like 'Most Generative Cooperative Mechanic,' 'Best Implementation of a Commons,' or 'Most Accessible Design.' All source code and assets are released under open licenses at the jam's conclusion, creating a permanent commons of ideas and code for the community.
The jam structure itself encourages cooperation. We provide a discord server with channels for forming teams not around skillsets, but around shared interests in specific post-capitalist concepts. We host daily 'salons' where jammers can discuss their struggles and breakthroughs with game mechanics modeling mutual aid or democratic decision-making. Mentors from previous jams are available to help.
Beyond jams, we host the **Festival of the Commons**, an online and sometimes IRL event. This is a celebration, not a marketplace. Developers show games in progress, run participatory design workshops, and host talks and panels about the theory and practice of post-capitalist design. There is no vendor hall. Instead, there is a 'Tool Share' where developers demo and give away open-source tools, and a 'Collaboration Corner' for announcing new cooperative projects. The festival is funded by a sliding-scale donation model, ensuring no one is turned away for lack of funds.
These events serve multiple purposes: they generate a wealth of innovative prototypes that push the boundaries of what's possible; they create a strong, supportive network of developers who share a vision; and they act as a visible beacon, attracting new people to the movement.
- Thematic, Non-Competitive Jams: Focused sprints on post-capitalist themes, with collaborative judging and open-source outcomes.
- Commons-Based Resource Sharing: Events where the primary currency is knowledge, tools, and collaborative energy, not money or accolades.
- Participatory Salons & Workshops: Spaces for deep discussion and hands-on learning about cooperative design principles.
- The Festival of the Commons: A celebration and showcase free from commercial pressure, focused on community and shared learning.
- Network Weaving: Intentional facilitation to connect developers, artists, writers, and theorists into lasting collaborative relationships.
Community is the lifeblood of any movement. By building events that model the world we want to see—cooperative, generous, and focused on shared creation—we do more than just talk about post-capitalist gaming; we actively practice it. In the compressed time and space of a jam or festival, we create a microcosm of the future. The prototypes made here might be rough, but the relationships and ideas forged are polished and lasting. Together, in these temporary autonomous zones of play, we are building the foundation for a permanent transformation of how games are made and why.