Philly Dev Night has a new home at Indy Hall

It was a strange time there for a while at Philly Dev Night after the closing of its habitual home, the Philly Game Forge. Just ask former organizers Will Stallwood and Dain Saint.

Philly’s game devs met up at parks, beer gardens and a Chinatown gaming lounge, until April, when the organization formally announced its new home. As luck would have it, the longstanding gathering of the Philly tech scene paired up with another local org that not too long ago overcame its own weird stage: coworking space Indy Hall.

Thank you @indyhall for hosting us again. Tonight was a blast and we've announced 3 game jams we are participating in. pic.twitter.com/aovUG0hsSg

— Philly Game Mechanics (@PhillyGameMechs) March 31, 2017

“Indy Hall celebrates a lot of the same stuff that we do: collaboration, community, sharing and building each other up,” said organizer Tabitha Arnold. “It’s people-oriented, not corporate. It feels like a natural home for us.”

Stallwood told Technical.ly that he “stepped down to make way for the next generation of awesome peeps” and was psyched to see Dev Night focusing on bridging community barriers by partnering with organizations like Drexel University and the Philadelphia Art Museum. Dev Night cofounder Shawn Pierre is still in the organizing committee, alongside devs Jake O’Brien and Kotaro Fujita.

Arnold said the new push inside Philly Dev Night includes plans like setting up grants to community members, partnering with nonprofits and including more events around the city in our calendar. “We are always experimenting with new ways to help people become the best game developer they can be,” said Arnold.

On that note of expanding to other communities, the next Philly Dev Night — happening on April 20 — will feature speaker Jameela Wahlgren tackling a subject not only useful to game devs:  “How To Make a Living as an Artist.”

“The more I heard them describe the Dev Night community the more I realized that our communities exist for the same reasons,” said Indy Hall founder Alex Hillman. “They didn’t need an event venue: they needed a reliable clubhouse for their club. That’s a very different kind of need, and it’s pretty rare that two communities have the potential to contribute to each other in the ways that Dev Night and Indy Hall do.”