The Northwest Games Festival (NWGF) is an annual one-day digital games event filled with showing off games, workshops, sessions, an expo, awards, and networking. The intent of the Festival is to give industry professionals and aspiring individuals an opportunity to exchange valuable resources and ideas free of cost. The participants mainly consist of industry developers, independent developers, scholars, and students interested in helping the growth of game development in the Northwest region. The Northwest region includes Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, northern California, and northern Nevada.

NWGF:06 took place Saturday, June 3, 2006 at Portland State University’s Native American Student and Community Center in Portland, Oregon. The Festival was undoubtedly successful with around 300 attendees from 1pm to 8pm. The day’s events were followed by a pub crawl and hitting up Ground Kontrol’s Live Show.

Door Prizes: Free Door Prizes included an Xbox 360 from Microsoft, tickets to Ground Kontrol’s Live Show, Torque Engine by GarageGames, Beyond Virtual Indie! Engine by Gekido Design Group Inc., 3 month subscriptions to SpiritWars from Kellogg Creek Software, and certificates to Backspace, the entertainment mecca of Portland.

Game Awards: NWGF:06 Audience Awards went to Facade for Third Place, The Adventures of Sam and Erik for Second Place, and Toblo for First Place. Cash prizes were provided by Co-Laboratory.

Expo: The expo included interactive gameplay brought by GameCrazy and booths by schools, companies, and groups, such as IGDA PAGDIG (Portland Area Game Developers Interest Group), SIGGRAPH Cascade, DigiPen Institute of Technology, The Guildhall at SMU, The Art Institute of Portland, Gekido Design Group Inc., and Kellogg Creek Software.

Keynote: Chris Crawford’s keynote stirred up discussion and debate about the state of the game industry. Chris Crawford is a noted computer game designer and writer, responsible for a number of important games in the 1980s, for founding The Journal of Computer Game Design and for founding what is now known as the Game Developers’ Conference. He is also author of several books, including most recently Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. He lives in Southern Oregon.

Sessions: Numerous sessions on varying aspects of game development were offered to attendees. Materials are available.
“How to Organize and Manage Your Project,” Michael Wells, Intel Corporation
“Introduction to Game Art,” Michael Groark, The Guildhall at SMU
“Game Development in Portland,” Moderated by Corwin Light-Williams
“Trials & Tribulations of Indie Game Development,” Mike Wuetherick, Gekido Design Group Inc
“Creating Waves: Everything You Wanted to Know About Game Audio,” Paul Ruskay, Studio X Labs
“Got MIPS? The Need for Speed in Online Games,” Wu-chang Feng, Portland State University
“Confessions of a Gaming Documentation Collector,” Garret Romaine, Portland State University
“Why You Need to Code: Practical Ways to Get Into Game Programming,” Andrew Stern, Procedural Arts
“Interactive Fiction,” Alexandre Owen Muniz

2006 sponsors included IGDA PAGDIG (Portland Area Game Developers Interest Group), AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society), Portland State University’s Departments of Computer Science and English, DigiPen Institute of Technology, The Guildhall at SMU, Microsoft, GarageGames, Co-Laboratory, Procedural Arts, Gekido Design Group Inc., Kellogg Creek Software, GameCrazy, Ground Kontrol, Backspace, and Portland Code Camp.

NWGF is affiliated with IGDA PAGDIG (Portland Area Game Developers Interest Group), iterationNation, and Canadian Game Studies Association.