While we won’t be meeting together this summer for CGDC 2021, we’ve got a number of resources and activities lined up for this next year leading into CGDC 2022 that we’d love to share with you, including CGDC: Virtual on February 5th and 6th!

Website

We shared at the end of CGDC: Virtual 2020 about the new website we’re developing, and we’ve continued to work on it this past year to add content and improve performance. Beyond being the go-to place to find out information about CGDC and its activities, we will be consolidating a number of our community features from Facebook, Discord, and LinkedIn into the website, such as focused discussion groups, finding Local Groups near you, enrolling in SAGE groups, and viewing and posting job and volunteer positions (don’t worry, our Facebook, Discord, and LinkedIn community spaces won’t be going away for those who prefer to connect in those spaces as well).

There still is a bit of work to be done before we switch over, but we’re getting closer and will roll out the website and its community features iteratively over time. We’re also on the lookout for seasoned WordPress developers, so reach out if you’d like to help!

Community Game

It’s been an amazing experience seeing 75+ developers, artists, musicians, and more come together to build a free Christian multiplayer game over this past year, both as a video game and tabletop game (grab some friends and play together on Steam and Tabletopia!). This summer we will be kicking off the next Community Game, so if you’re interested in donating your time towards building a Christian game alongside others in our community and gaining valuable experience as part of an active game development team, keep your eye out for the Community Game kickoff for information on how to get involved. All experience levels and disciplines are welcome to participate!

SAGE Groups

If you haven’t been in a SAGE group before, we highly encourage you to get plugged into one. SAGE groups (stands for “Support, Accountability, Growth, and Encouragement”) are tailored towards helping you build meaningful relationships with other Christians who develop games and sustainably make progress and grow in your game development journey. These groups bring around five people together through a video conference to encourage, support, and hold each other accountable to their game development goals, while growing together as game developers through reading or watching a curriculum throughout the season related to game development.

The official 2021-2022 SAGE group season will kick off later this summer to begin forming groups and then begin officially meeting in the fall, but one of the other changes we’re working on is to use the new website to facilitate forming new SAGE groups at any time for those who are not able to join one in the fall or who discover them mid-season.

Speedgames

Speedgames challenge the CGDC community to build a game over three weeks based on a scriptural prompt. This past year, in addition to our classic speedgame style, we expanded on this to include a hard mode, 72-hour speedgame based on the theme “broken, yet beautiful.”

Looking towards this year, we are thinking of combining both styles of speedgames with the same scriptural prompt so that participants can choose to create a game based on the selected scripture in the fast-paced 72-hour timeframe or take their time to go deeper over the three-week period. We also are planning to introduce a tabletop game version of the speedgame so more of our community can participate!

We’ll be having our next Speedgame: Hardmode in August, and the following Speedgame, both Classic and Hardmode, will be kicking off in January!

CGDC: Virtual Nights

While it’s always great to have a multi-day conference, sometimes it’s nice to sync up together as a community even for an evening. We are investigating putting together one-off talks and game nights every few weeks so we have a chance for the community to come together to be equipped and have time to play together!

CGDC: Virtual 2022

After our first virtual CGDC last year, we received a lot of positive feedback saying it was a great way for those unable to attend in-person gatherings to meet and build relationships with others in the CGDC community, and our attendees included a significant number of people who had never attended a CGDC before. While this virtual conference originated out of necessity, we want to make this part of CGDC’s yearly schedule, with an in-person CGDC occurring around July as usual and with a virtual CGDC occurring January or February, so that about every six months we have an opportunity to come together as a community, learn from each other, and celebrate what God is doing in the games industry!

Mark your calendars for February 5th and 6th for CGDC: Virtual 2022!

CGDC 2022

While we won’t have a CGDC in 2021, we will be getting right into planning for CGDC 2022 so that we have a full year to prepare. We will be looking into implementing the amazing new conference features designed by the CGDC 2020 conference planning committee that will breathe new life into our yearly gatherings. Also, now that we’re getting settled in our new normal, the CGDC board will make sure to let the community know the conference milestone dates we’ll set for securing a venue, reaching out to speakers and other key roles, finalizing the program, and opening registration, and where we stand regarding those milestones throughout the year.

Thank you again for your grace and understanding with this past year, and we hope that this next will be the best yet for our CGDC community!