50 meet-ups across four cities: building Gamedev.House

Between 2015 and 2020 I co-founded and ran Gamedev.House, a community organisation for Russian game developers. By the time we wound it down at the end of 2020, we'd run 50-plus meet-ups across St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk and Perm, launched the first Game Studies track at DEVGAMM and the first gamedev track at GEEK PICNIC, and represented the Russian gamedev community at Gaming Istanbul.

Most of that is just counting events. The part that's harder to count is what it actually takes to keep something like this running for five years.

What the meet-ups were for

Not networking — at least not primarily. The talks were technical or craft-focused (game design, production, art, audio) and the audience came for those specifically. Networking happened, but it happened around something worth showing up for. That ratio matters.

Why the tracks at DEVGAMM and GEEK PICNIC mattered

Two very different venues:

• DEVGAMM (2020). A professional gamedev conference. Adding a Game Studies track put academic programming next to the industry track — two audiences whose paths didn't otherwise cross at the same event.
• GEEK PICNIC (2019). A mass-audience festival. Adding a gamedev track put the craft in front of people who weren't going to attend a gamedev conference.

Different problems, different solves. Both followed from the same community work.

Indie showcases at VK Fest

VK Fest in 2016 and 2017 gave us a large audience without much effort on our side — VK had the crowd, we had the indie lineup. Good trade.

What community organising actually costs

Three things, in decreasing order:

1. Time. Not money, not venues — time. Someone has to show up at the venue at 6pm to make sure the projector works. Multiply by 50+ meet-ups.
2. Credibility with speakers. You don't pay speakers at a community event; they come because it's this event. Protecting that feeling is a weekly job.
3. The boring logistical bits. Pizza. Badges. Somebody's microphone that stopped working. A reliable photographer. None of this is strategy, and all of it determines whether people come back.

Winding down

We closed the community work at the end of 2020, cleanly. It's possible to keep a community alive indefinitely if someone wants to keep doing the work; it's not a failure to close a good one when the moment to hand it off doesn't come. The events and the track launches are still on record — that's the lasting part.