As the year churns along, we’ve been quietly working behind the scenes to figure out what we can do, what makes sense to do, in these strange times. In the wake of deciding to cancel an in-person event for the year, we put a lot of discussion and some planning toward hosting events online this year. As we went through that process, we realized we needed to do some substantial work to better support the safety and accessibility needs for online games, as well as increase the diversity of our attendees—and that work applies to in-person events as well. We were also mindful that both the pandemic and participation in the protest movement against police brutality may make it difficult for our community to participate. Consequently, we decided to poll our members via Twitter and Discord to see whether people felt that the best use of our time and effort was to continue planning some kind of online events, or to redirect that effort into improving the organization overall and preparing for (hopefully) holding an in-person event next year.
The results of that poll were largely in favor of focusing our efforts toward next year, and so that is what we are now doing. While we’re sad not to host any kind of event this year—our first break after 13 years, since starting in 2007—we believe it’s important to provide the best experience we can, and worthwhile to take advantage of these disruptive times and step back to see what we can improve for future events. We appreciate your feedback and support as we go through this process.
We apologize for being largely silent here on the website; do follow us on Twitter @GoPlayNW, where we’re more likely to post. We also have a Discord server, which we invite you to join.
We love you all, and we hope to be able to see you in person at Go Play NW in 2021! Thanks for being part of Go Play NW with us.