GAMESMASH Tabletop Game Design & Fabrication Challenge

Are you itching to participate in a unique game design hackathon? Do you want a chance to win an Ultimaker 2+ printer? And even better – would you love to see your winning game presented to the entire world at the World Maker Faire in New York? Then you have to check out GAMESMASH, the Game Design & Fabrication Challenge.

What is GAMESMASH?

Inspired by the rising popularity of game nights and the explosion of successfully self-published board, card, and tabletop games, GAMESMASH will combine desktop 3D printing with tabletop gaming at Fat Cat Fab Lab, a makerspace in the heart of New York City. We are co-presenting GAMESMASH alongside MakerOS, the cloud-based business management tool for makers.

Over the course of the Design Challenge weekend on August 13 - 14, teams of 3 to 6 will race against the clock to invent bold and original tabletop game designs, fabricating game pieces, tools, and 3D printed decorations on a fleet of Ultimaker desktop 3D printers and other digital fabrication equipment.

Will you create the next SEEJ, Zheng3's infinitely expandable open source tabletop wargame – which now shows up in high school physics lesson plans and even graduate courses in product design? Or maybe you have in mind something like GoldieBlox, a product line of construction games designed to inspire girls to become engineers and inventors. Or how about Creative Cove Game's Kickstarter darling The Depths of Durangrar, a game that used 3D printed prototypes to incorporate interlocking tiles, LEDs, and actual night vision goggles.

The opportunities are endless, and you have two full days to flesh out your game ideas into reality!

Why tabletop games?

Tabletop games have undergone a recent transformation. While many continue to associate tabletop games with "childhood" and "play time," the world surrounding the design and practice has experienced a Renaissance-level event, even branching into mainstream culture. Today, the median age of tabletop players is in the mid-thirties and is still climbing.

In fact, tabletop games raised twice as much as video games in the crowdfunding sphere in 2015 and are on track to raise six times as much this year. This is nearly unprecedented growth for a market which has been going along at the same pace quite some time. Instead of a steep uphill battle to convince publishers to even consider new product ideas, crowdfunding platforms provides offers a new route for independent game designers to share their freshest ideas with scores of backers eager to be the first to the table for novel experiences.

Now consider the countless models that our community has lovingly recreated and shared since the earliest days of desktop 3D printing: from the ancient and the classic to contemporary tabletop games. From Stewart T. Coffin's Puzzle Cube "Half Hour" that arrives on the SD card of every Ultimaker to Scott Kindall and Bruce Cera's painstaking replica of Duchamp's hand-carved chess set. The time, attention, and creativity the 3D printing community lavishes on tabletop-related activities demonstrates what might prove to be a fundamental design imperative for this emerging field. Is it inevitable that any developing 3D designer will end up recreating a chess piece, Catan tile or Candy Land pawn – just the way painting students tackle self-portraits, design students make chairs, architects make balsa wood bridges, and engineers make... 3D printers?

And in that creativity, innovation. One of the beauties of 3D printing is the fact that you can get precisely what you want out of a product, and that’s exactly what the tabletop game space needs right now. Why agonize over tiny sticker labels for yet another set of six-sided dice? At your fingertips are the means to produce entirely new, custom pieces for your game, and the power to add a new dimension in making your world come to life. Tabletop games and 3D printers are a match made to win.

What are the details?

To organize GAMESMASH, we partnered with MakerOS. We also teamed up with Fat Cat Fat Lab, a makerspace in the heart of New York City, to host the challenge on Saturday - Sunday, August 13 - 14. Participating teams will compete for titles in the Best Design, Best Mechanics, and Best in Play categories, with prizes including membership to Fat Cat Fab Lab and an Ultimaker 2+ 3D Printer.

Over the course of the weekend each team, consisting of 3 to 6 budding game designers, will use the many fabrication tools available at the Fat Cat Fat Lab to make their gaming dreams a reality. As an added challenge, teams will be assigned a theme and a set of constraints such as what tools or materials they are allowed to use.

The teams will present their final games to a panel of judges on Playtesting Night on Thursday, August 18. The judges will include industry professionals, game designers, and developers working across various mediums. The teams are not just competing for the prizes. In addition to winning a title or prize during the event, participants who complete their game design will be asked to exhibit their creations in a GAMESMASH-specific display within the Ultimaker booth at World Maker Faire, New York, October 1-2.

Playtesting Night is open to those who did not participate in the challenge, and tickets are available for $10 to be purchased online. The attendees will have the unique chance to playtest these never-before-seen games, so bring your friends!

You can sign up your team for GAMESMASH until August 11: