Welcome to a new era of game development in St. Louis!

St. Louis has had a thriving Game Development community in some capacity for over 14 years. Around 9 years ago it evolved into a nonprofit organization, the St. Louis Game Developer Co-op.

Last month leadership of the Co-op announced they would be stepping down and dissolving the non-profit organization. This came as a bit of a shock to some long-time community members and a small group of us banded together to make sure that the community would still have support from people who care. The Co-op leadership transferred over as many of the existing community accounts and assets as possible, and our new group began working on plans to rebuild.

There has been a lot of discussion and work going on in secret, and we are excited to finally update everyone on what we have planned for the future.

What has changed?

First, the big one: The decision was made early on to drop the Co-op moniker and start a new organization, simply called STLGameDev. We will use the same social media accounts but with new branding, and we have built this new snazzy website. We are hoping to be much more active with these going forward.

Our goal is to maintain the spirit and values of the nonprofit. As always, we want the game development community to be a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for anyone and everyone. We hope to make this group even more community-led than before; making it easier to contribute ideas and talents in ways that bring the community together.

Since we are no longer a nonprofit organization, we are not currently planning on re-starting membership fees, but we are still dedicated to having events that are free for everyone. If you are already a member of our Discord server, you may not notice too much of a change at this time, although we are making efforts to do more and be more active!

What about events?

• GameDev DrinkUps

  There are no plans to stop or change the DrinkUps at this time. We will continue to have them every month, except December when…

• 2024 Holiday Party

  We are actively planning the Annual Holiday Party this year. Things can still change, but the current plan is December 5th at Earthbound Beer! We hope everyone can make it, and if you’ve made a game since last year please let us know when you RSVP!

• 2025 Global Game Jam

  GGJ is one of our highest priority items for the new organization. We’ve been working with UMSL to have the event there again for the first time since 2018. This is still in planning and things may change, but for now add January 24-26, 2025 to your calendar and get ready to JAM! More details soon.

• Other events and game jams

  Although we are focused on ensuring GGJ and the Holiday Party will happen, we absolutely want to have more events throughout the year! We hope to have more game jams, educational talks/events, and quarterly demo opportunities; but these are all still in the early planning stages. Expect more information early next year if not sooner!

Who’s in charge?

Currently we have 5 members of the administrative team:

• Wes Ehrlichman — SuperWes, SuperWes, SuperWes, wesleyte

  Wes, or SuperWes, has been a consistent presence in leadership of the community since the meetup began in 2010. He has a passion for collaborative problem solving through software. Wes has worked at Riot Games, BradyGames, The Gamer’s Quarter, Pelaaja, and countless video game stores. He currently manages a mobile development team at World Wide Technology and spends most of his game development time designing board games.

• Dan Eichling — kinglord, dan@callsigngames

  Dan is a game industry veteran, agile enthusiast and AI harbinger. An OG community member and speaker that has his 2009 GGJ pin somewhere. Still enjoys making and playing games of all shapes and flavors, except eggplant.

• Tim I Hely — seifertim, seifertim, axolstudio

  Tim has been a member of the St. Louis Game Development community since his first Game Jam in April 2014. He is the Founder of Axol Studio game company.

• TimConceivable — timconceivable, timconceivable

  TimConceivable! is a 2D artist, game developer, and musical dabbler. He has been an active member of the community since 2010 when he started his game dev journey. In the following years he has participated in over 40 game jams and completed zero games. He was also a Co-op board member from 2018 to 2019.

• Chris Taylor — shredder2500 shredder2500, shredderct

  Chris is a seasoned software engineer with a passion for solving complex problems and bringing ideas to life through code. With over a decade of experience in game development, he has built custom game engines, contributed to various game jams—including one where he worked on four games simultaneously—and actively supports the game development community. Chris thrives in both collaborative environments and individual projects, always looking for ways to improve his skills. In addition to his technical expertise, he enjoys mentoring others, sharing his knowledge at meetups, and helping developers unlock their potential. His contributions since 2014 reflect a commitment to fostering creativity and innovation within the industry.

How can YOU help?

We have created a feedback survey in order to get a better sense of how we can best support you and the community. Please take a moment to fill it out. We would appreciate responses before the end of November so that we can use the data to guide our efforts.

If you have any feedback or suggestions beyond the survey, please start a discussion in the #suggestions channel on Discord.

In the near future, we are hoping to be able to enlist members of the community to speak, demo, help run events, and improve our social media presence. Be on the lookout in #community-building on Discord.

For now, something anyone can do is get the word out! Bring friends to our events and get new people involved by sharing the group!

Thank you!

Before we go we want to thank all the St. Louis Game Dev Co-op members and leaders who kept the community thriving for so many years. Without your efforts we wouldn’t have a community worth saving. We’d like to give a special shout out to Rob, Kess, and Kirby for being so supportive of the transition and guiding the organization through the complexities of the Covid years without dropping the ball on the Global Game Jam and other key events.

We encourage everyone to come out and talk to us at the next DrinkUp or share your thoughts on Discord. We are going to do the best we can for the community going forward, and we hope you all are just as pumped about this new era of the St. Louis game development community as we are!