Chicago Game Lab
The lab is a co-working office space for professional, often independent, game developers to work on their commercial projects. We are a close community of Chicago-based artists working hard and supporting each other.
We just moved to a new, smaller office near the old place on Irving Park Rd. With less space and the fresh look we're excited to offer a few changes to our normal public facing efforts.
Open Work Day
Every first Thursday of the month we invite the larger Chicago game dev community to join us working for a day. In the past these have been largely unstructured but going forward we ask that guests come sometime before/around lunch for show-and-tell afterwards.
Open work days can fill up fairly fast, if you want to be notified as soon as the sign-up becomes available, join our mailing list. Otherwise, you can check our Eventbrite page out for signing up whenever.
Feedback Night
Over the years as a community we have found great benefit in holding in-person feedback sessions for our in-development projects. We’ve discussed early game ideas as well as priorities for titles ready to ship. Sometimes we focus on tricky game design issues, while other times we brainstorm ideas to improve visuals or appeal.
Since this has been very helpful for us, we thought it would be helpful to others. So we wanted to start a Feedback Night where we share our space and offer structured in-person discussions to interested game developers.
We would commit to playing your game a week in advance, and then have a serious, 1-2 hour discussion at the Game Lab about whatever would be most helpful.
Some examples include:- Pinpointing areas of biggest improvement in your game.
- Untangling a core game design issue.
- Making your demo convey the essence of your game quicker.
- Asking for general critique/feedback on your game as a whole.
- Feeling lost and in search of direction.
If this sounds like something that could benefit your project, apply here!
Join the Community
If you are a game developer in the area join our Discord and say hi to keep in touch that way.