The CGDC Winter Retreat has been cancelled. There may be a one day get-together on Feb. 27th, let us know if you are interested.

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Our 8th annual Summer Conference was a success. It occured July 30-Aug 1 at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. The weather cooperated as Wednesday was over 100 degrees but it was pleasant by Saturday. Many Americans came and we hosted several Canadians (and even a German visitor by way of Canada).

Some Highlights included:

• Best iPhone Game was G from Soma Games
• Best Card Game was Messiah from Heaven's Blessings Tiny Zoo
• Best PC Game was Interactive Bible: James from GraceWorks Interactive
• Persistent Developer! Katie Van Meter advanced last year's design doc contest into a full game! Wow!
• Farthest travelled was Rebecca Long!

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The Winter Retreat was awesome, thanks to organizer Laurene Wells of Heaven's Blessings Tiny Zoo! Some details and pictures are below. We also want to profusely thank two of our sponsors - Game Streamer and Intel Software Partner.

The first ever CGDC Winter Retreat, was held February 5-6-7 in the mountain lodge at 5 Rock Ranch in Yamhill, Oregon. The theme for the Winter Retreat was "ENCOURAGEMENT."

What is the CGDC?
The Christian Game Developers Conference is the only gathering with the purpose of encouraging game developers, in both software and traditional mediums, to apply Christian principles to their industry. Some developers are involved in creating games made specifically to glorify God. Others work for secular companies and are Godly influences at their place of employment. But wherever they are, they need encouragement to stand up for morality and truth in an industry that can often be fighting these ideals - and the CGDC is a great place to get that encouragement.

In addition to the inspirational messages, there are also talks and workshops on topics from game design to business marketing to QA processes. At no other conference in the world can you walk out from a message on integrating Christian concepts with games and into a workshop on particle physics, discuss optimizing a website for visibility on search engines, and then hear a debate on interactive storytelling that hinges on the issues of freewill vs. predestination, or find yourself philosophizing late at night with five different Christian game designers from three different countries. And you certainly can't find anything else like it for the price.

Join the Community!
To interact with the Christian developer community in between conferences, come find us in the Game ACE forums!