Make Games NYC

Monthly 2 Hr GameJam Club: ZZT
2025-09-13 13:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | NY
This month we are using ZZT to make action adventure games in under 2 hours. Bring a computer and come out! Good for beginners and experts.
Bring a computer and come out!
Good for beginners and experts.
1:00 PM Doors
1:30 PM Workshop
2:00 PM Game Jam Starts!
4:00 PM Jam Ends, Presentations Start!
5:00 PM
The arcade opens for regular use. This event will be streamed online, so people across the world can participate. This event is free to attend but donations are welcome and help pay for your instructor!

Official GDoCExpo 2025 Watch Party
2025-09-19 12:00 - 22:00 | NY
Expect GDoCExpo conference sessions broadcast live to the big screen, game stations, and dedicated space available for attendees to mingle and network in-person. We’ve partnered with OS NYC, the home for gamers and streamers in New York City, fitted with a huge screen for GDoCExpo, top of the line PCs, Xboxes, PS5s, Switches, streaming booths, and bar. TADA, a local Korean Fried Chicken restaurant, is the food provider of OS NYC (no outside food or drink permitted), and there are plenty of local places to eat.
Admission to our Watch Party grants a wristband that’s also an OS NYC day pass for access to all their PCs, consoles, and games!
Please note that this is a pass to attend the in-person screening of only Friday’s sessions of the online GDoCExpo conference. For full access to all of the online Game Devs of Color Expo, including live chat, speaker Q&A, online networking, industry AMAs, job board, and all 4 days of talks, panels, and interviews (Tuesday through Friday, September 16-19), please purchase a full ticket here: https://ti.to/GDoCExpo/2025

Playtest Thursday at NYU Game Center
2025-09-25 17:30 - 19:00 | NYU Game Center, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
NOTE: THIS PLAYTEST THURSDAY ENDS EARLY AT 7:00PM DUE TO AN EVENT DIRECTLY FOLLOWING PLAYTEST THURSDAY!
If you’re making a game, you need to playtest! Bring your work-in-progress game and get feedback from fellow game makers. No game is too early in development for Playtest Thursday, and all types of games are welcome. Bring your board game, digital game, VR project, new sport, anything!
Here’s how to attend Playtest Thursday in person this Fall:

Fill out this Playtest Thursday Visitor Request Form
Once you fill out the form, you will be permanently added to the guest list for every Playtest Thursday occurring this semester. No further confirmation is needed, and you only need to fill it out once!
When you arrive at 370 Jay Street, check in with a Game Center Librarian in the front lobby to gain access to the building.

How to Play the Sondheim Way - A Lecture & Workshop with Barry Joseph
2025-09-25 19:00 - 20:30 | NYU Game Center, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
Join us for How to Play the Sondheim Way: A Parlor Game Workshop, a 90-minute lecture/workshop designed for game designers to discover how the playful approach to parlor games of the famed lyricist/composer Stephen Sondheim can inspire our own creative practices. Based on the new book Matching Minds with Sondheim: The Games and Puzzles of the Broadway Legend, the gathering will open with an exploration of how Sondheim designed puzzles (like treasure hunts and cryptic crosswords) to create moments of clarity and designed games (like parlor and board games) to create moments of connection. Then, in a hands-on workshop, participants will experience and analyze Sondheim-style parlor games, identify the design values embedded within, and work in small groups to remix familiar parlor games through the lens of these values: playfulness, generosity, and mentorship.

Barry Joseph is a games-based educator, game designer, and founder of the Games For Change Festival. After learning that famed composer & lyricist Stephen Sondheim once considered leaving the world of musical theater for video game design, Barry began research to uncover this wholly original way to use games and puzzles design to understand the mind that transformed musical theater. Barry worked at the American Museum of Natural History and the Girl Scouts of the USA. He is now the founder of Barry Joseph Consulting, dedicated to innovating solutions for learning in a digital age, and the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum. He also teaches Digital Design for Museum-based Learning at New York University, based on his book Dancing with Dinosaurs: A Toolkit for Digital Design in Museums. His latest book is Matching Minds with Sondheim: The Games and Puzzles of the Broadway Legend. Learn more at MatchingMindswithSondheim.com, on his podcast of the same name, or on Instagram @MatchingMindswithSondheim.

RSVP HERE

Playframes - How Do We Know We Are Playing? A Lunchtime Talk with Celia Pearce
2025-09-30 12:30 - 14:00 | NYU Game Center, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
Playframes (MIT Press) builds on the work of Gregory Bateson and Erving Goffman to take a deep dive into Bateson’s primary question: How do we know we’re playing? In this book, Celia Pearce addresses this question by building a comprehensive theory of the specific mechanisms that meta-communicate the message “this is play.” Join us for a book talk and discussion about Playframes with author, award-winning game designer, researcher, and professor Celia Pearce!
RSVP HERE

NYU Game Center Lecture Series Presents Zeke Virant
2025-10-02 19:00 - 20:30 | NYU Game Center, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
Picking Up Things in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Join us for a talk on how MachineGames developed a first-person game focused on simulating hands-on experiences and adventure over action. This talk goes through the design process for developing the GRIP system (grab, reach out, interact, push), the hurdles of encouraging hand-to-hand combat over gun combat, and the never-ending pursuit of creating authentic Indiana Jones interactions.
Zeke Virant (MFA ’14) is the lead game designer at MachineGames and a graduate of NYU Game Center’s MFA program. With over 10 years of experience in game development, he has designed and contributed to indie games, as well as AA and AAA titles. Before games, Zeke wrote and directed experimental operas and cleaned people’s apartments.
RSVP HERE

(This talk will also be live streamed at twitch.tv/nyugamecenter at 7:00pm EST)

The State of NYC Indie: Developing a Better Games Community
2025-10-09 19:00 - 20:30 | NYU Games Center, 370 Jay St, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
New York City has become a hotbed for pioneering independent game developers whose unique artistic expression rarely gets the spotlight it deserves. We can change this by finding new ways to work together, creating a more cohesive and inclusive community in the process.
Our panel of four community leaders are passionate about this goal. Each has long-standing roots in the NYC game development scene yet brings a diverse set of perspectives that cover both the professional and academic realms. This meeting of the minds will discuss why NYC is a great place to make games, how we can work together to better support NYC game developers, and more.
Our Panelists:
Yiyi Zhang (GUMBO)
Kyra Wills-Umdenstock (EGD Collective)
Jess Haskins (NYC Indie Games Social)
Mattia Sicuro (IGDA NYC)
The panel is moderated by Tim Rattray, a writer and documentarian creating a docuseries on the NYC game development scene. A teaser for his team’s ongoing work will be shown here.
We thank the NYU Game Center for graciously hosting this independently run event. Come early to check out their Playtest Thursday event!
Event Details:
Date: Thursday, October 9th, 2025
Time: 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Place: NYU Game Center Theater — Lecture Hall 202 (370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY)
Price: Donation (Recommmended: $10 | For a free ticket, use the code GAFREE)
After paying off the expenses for running this event independently [note: we’ve achieved this goal, thank you!], the remaining profits will be split among the organizations of our panelists represent (25%/per).
Following the panel, we’ll move to Evil Twin’s DUMBO taproom (43 Main St.) to socialize and network. All ages are welcome.
For any questions and inquiries, email Tim Rattray (tim.rattray@me.com).
Also, a huge thank you to Krysti Pryde (Playcrafting) for creating the poster and banner art!
Our Partners:
NYU Game Center
Playcrafting
Game Devs of Color Expo
Wonderville
Produced By:
Tim Rattray, Nicole Papadopoulos, & PolyMedia Productions

Game-A-Palooza
2025-10-18 12:00 - 17:00 | Hana House, 345 Adams St, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
UPDATE: 10/14/25 – For A Limited Time Only – buy a ticket for Game-A-Palooza and get one to bring a friend along for free!
NYC’s biggest indie game showcase is here—and it’s your chance to play games before anyone else in the world. On Saturday, October 18, 2025, IGDA NYC takes over Hana House for Game-A-Palooza, a one-day festival built to celebrate and spotlight local game developers. Proudly sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, this event puts the city’s creative talent front and center.
🕹️ Play 50+ New and Unreleased Games
From 12–5 p.m., get hands-on with over 50 brand-new and unreleased games from NYC’s most inventive developers. This is your chance to discover the next big thing before it hits Steam, consoles, or anywhere else.
Don’t just play games. Play them first.

[rect*]] repair x boshi's place: Shanghai New York game portal
2025-10-18 20:00 - 23:00 | Boshi’s Place, 1002 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11211, United States
join us on saturday 10/18 @ 8pm for an international crossover event with our friends from [[rect*]]repair in shanghai! at the same time they will be showing our games in new york, we’ll have a curation of chinese games, a portal to interact with the attendees in shanghai, and a fax machine(?!!)

Level Up Tuesdays with Coexist! Featuring Elaine Gómez
2025-10-21 18:00 - 21:00 | CoExist, 325 W 38th St, New York, NY, 11435, United States
Elaine Gómez is a Borikua (Puerto Rican) and Kiskeyan (Dominican) game designer with nearly a decade of experience in game design and development. Her talk will focus on the initiatives, collaboration and advocacy work Latinx in Gaming has launched to best support and uplift Latine developers and creatives, regardless of where they are in the world.
Echograph by Sach and The Coldest Winter by Vibe XP will be part of our featured showcase!

Unreal NYC | October Event - Sponsored by Epic Games
2025-10-22 18:00 - 20:00 | B&H Photo Video, 420 9th Ave, New York, NY, 10001, United States
Join us for our sort-of 😉 monthly Unreal NYC Meetup, where we dive into all the latest features of Unreal Engine and network with other professionals in games, animation, film, broadcast, live events, and more.

GUMBO Board Game / Tabletop Playtest Night
2025-10-23 18:30 - 20:30 | GUMBO
Come meet some board game designers, play some unreleased games, and maybe even make some new friends!

Zohran Games Gallery at Boshi’s Place
2025-10-23 18:30 - 21:30 | Boshi’s Place, 1002 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11211, United States
Join us for a night of Zohran themed games as we get hyped to vote! During this happy hour, you can play and win Zohran themed prizes!!
Know a Zohran game you’d like to submit? Let us know!!
Enter the building by using this link and typing ‘ding’ in the bell chat: https://discord.gg/VY9ydwtW6

NYU Game Center Lecture Series Presents Dimma Davidoff
2025-10-23 19:00 - 20:30 | NYU Game Center, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
Join us for a conversation with Dimma Davidoff, creator of the Mafia game. We will talk about the psychological roots of the game (why was it not created before?), ways to look at it from different perspectives (how come it is not about lying?) and lessons opening the new worlds of play (what games would zombies like to play?).
Dimma Davidoff is a psychologist who studies and sometimes makes games. He graduated from the Psychology Department of Moscow State University in 1989. He designed the Contact word game and the Mafia game (which became popular worldwide and led to the creation of the Social Deduction games genre). His current quest is to make cross-species games.
(This event will also be live streaming at twitch.tv/nyugamecenter!)
RSVP Here

Brooklyn Experimental Electronic Music Group
2025-10-23 19:00 - 23:00 | Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY, 11221, United States
Join the local electronic music community for our showcase featuring an eclectic mix of New York City artists working in a variety of styles.
Organized by Metamyther

XR Motion Meetup!
2025-10-23 20:00 - 23:00 | Crystal Lake Brooklyn, 647 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY, 11211, United States
XR Motion is a mograph, VR, AR, 3D, AI, Metaverse meetup that gathers enthusiasts, professionals, and experts in the field!

GameMaker Game Jam 2025 @ Gumbo!
2025-10-24 23:00 - 2025-10-26 01:00 | GUMBO
GameMaker, Gumbo NYC, and Shattered Journal Games are teaming up to host another game jam at Gumbo. The jam will run for 48 hours from October 24th 6pm to October 26th 6pm.

Open Tables: A playtesting space for tabletop game designers
2025-10-25 13:00 - 16:30 | Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY, 11221, United States
Come and play games during the fall (costumes not required)!
This event will only be running from 1-4:30 PM so it is recommended that designers and playtesters come right at the beginning for maximum testing potential.

Wonderville's Last Tuesday of the month PLAYTEST
2025-10-28 19:00 - 22:00 | Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY, 11221, United States
Playtest Night is EVERY last Tuesday of EVERY month at Wonderville!
Come to Wonderville to playtest in production games!
If you’re a developer, bring your game! No signups required.

Video Games: The Great Connector
2025-11-03 15:00 - 2025-11-05 18:00 | City College of New York, 160 Convent Ave, New York, NY, 10031, United States
The Harlem Gallery of Science is excited to announce that Video Games: The Great Connector is returning for 2 days only — Monday, November 3rd and Wednesday November 5th — at the City College of New York.Doors are open to local middle and high school groups for free, interactive field trips that explore the educational power of video games and digital storytelling.

Play Scrapeboard
2025-11-04 19:00 - 23:59 | Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY, 11221, United States
Hey slime bag! Scrapeboard is an arcade game played on a real skateboard deck and metal floor pads. Challenge a boss rush where the player performs combos using the skatedeck and metal floor pads to block sword attacks from Tony Hawk’s hardest hitters, including Kool Man, an alien, and a Nintendo Switch. Do you have the moves to skate through a gauntlet of goons all the way to Tony Hawk?

Monthly 2 Hr GameJam Club: Môsi
2025-11-08 13:00 - 17:00 | Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY, 11221, United States
This month we are using Môsi to make adventure games in under 2 hours. Bring a computer and come out! Good for beginners and experts.

GUMBO Playtest Monday
2025-11-10 19:00 - 21:00 | GUMBO
Come hang out, play some games, and maybe show off what you’ve been working on as well!
Details / RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/gumbo-collective/events/311775129/

Women in Games Monthly Chill: Astoria Edition
2025-11-12 18:00 - 20:00 | NY
Join us at Martha’s Bakery in Astoria, Queens. There will be yummy baked goods, board games, and art supplies.
This is our monthly, casual recurring event on Wednesdays! Come hang out 🤗

NYVR
2025-11-12 18:00 - 21:00 | Glimpse office, 15 West 38th, 2nd floor, New York, NY, 10018, United States
A community meetup with people interested in the development and application of virtual reality technology.

Unity NYC Playtest+Network Event
2025-11-12 18:00 - 21:00 | Urban Arts, 39 W 19th Street Fl #5, New York, NY, United States
The Unity NYC User group is hosting a playtesting event Nov 12th, 6-9pm at Urban Arts and we’re open for submissions!
Here’s the form to submit your game:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNNF_McOcI5F5hss0AcIt_zMQcKHuEZQUoDJAGb4vbwGZc-Q/viewform
Aren’t working on a game, but still use Unity? Just come hang out with all of us and Celebrate Unity’s 20th birthday 🎉 !
Rumor has it there will be merch and a surprise!

NYU Game Center Lecture Series Presents: Alumni Developers Panel
2025-11-13 19:00 - 20:30 | NYU Game Center, 370 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
Join us for an evening with Jenny Jiao Hsia & AP Thomson (of Beglitched and Consume Me), Julián Cordero (of despelote) & Gabe Cuzzillo (of APE OUT, despelote, Baby Steps). What do these NYC-area developers have in common? They’ve all released games this year, earned attention and awards for their efforts… and they’re all graduates of the NYU Game Center, where many of their projects and collaborations took root in the early days of development! Of course, releasing a game is a long and complex road, and all of their acclaimed works grew and evolved over years. What’s it like to release a game in 2025? How does your vision change in unexpected ways? And what’s on the horizon? We’ll discuss all this and more on a panel moderated by Naomi Clark, chair of the NYU Game Center.
RSVP HERE

NYU's Game Design Week Launch Party
2025-11-14 20:30 - 23:59 | Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY, 11221, United States
NYU Game Center Week launch party kicks off with chiptune musicians Ah Dek, Double XP Weekend, Business Pastel, Chillbrave, and Rockman, with visual art projections all night by artists Slime Bubble, datacats, Claire Kwong, and emdashi.

Pitch + Plate w/Women in Games NYC
2025-11-19 18:30 - 20:30 | NY
RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/women-in-games-nyc/events/311692473/
Join us for Pitch + Plate, an evening celebrating Women in Games, creativity, and community over dinner!
We’re bringing together women to share what they’re working on in a supportive, inspiring space. Everyone is welcome to step up and give a quick pitch about your game or creative project, and there will be time to mingle, eat, and connect.
Pitch time is 2-8 mins. You can present, chat or show a trailer of your game/product if you choose to. We will provide power and basic hdmi cables along with a big TV to present on.
We encourage you to show us your project even if it’s not the most polished one out there. Progress matters and we’re here to cheer you on!

3DNY: Sponsored by EPIC GAMES @ Lucky Jacks!
2025-11-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Luckey Jack’s
We are STOKED to be back LUCKY JACKS for our next 3DNY kindly sponsored once again by EPIC GAMES! We will have a FREE DRINK for the first 100 guests! Sending a huge thank you as always to Epic for the ongoing support of our program 🙂 So come early and stay to enjoy insights from industry leaders. NO TICKETS REQUIRED, open to walk ins and uncapped entry 🙂 Cheers!
