About Train Jam
Our Mission
Train Jam’s goal is to take developers beyond their comfort zone and push for creative inspiration outside of a regular office environment. Train Jam strives to meet this goal by fostering an adventurous and inspiring environment where developers from diverse backgrounds and cultures are able to pursue new ideas in a safe, accessible, and empowering way.
History
Train Jam, as an idea, began after independent developer Adriel Wallick rode a train across the United States from Boston to Seattle in 2013. During the three day train ride, Adriel spent many hours admiring the views, playing games, and working through a few of her current projects. Upon arriving in Seattle and attending a number of developer events that were occurring in the area, she noticed that many of her peers expressed interest in experiencing a similar trip. Thus, the idea of placing a number of developers on a lengthy train ride to jam on games was born.
Train Jam had its inaugural event in 2014 immediately preceding the Game Developer’s Conference that was taking place in San Francisco, CA. This event had more than 60 participants, two film crews, and resulted in over eighteen games being created.
For Train Jam’s second year, John Lindvay joined the Train Jam team to assist Adriel with the organizing and heading up the Student Ambassador program. The student ambassador program is an outreach program specifically tailored to provide students with opportunity to attend Train Jam as well as the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. With John’s help, Train Jam doubled in size with 124 participants, one film crew and over 40 games! Read more about our second year here.
For the third year of Train Jam, we had nearly 200 participants with over 20 countries represented around the world, and 63 submitted games!
Our fourth year was our largest yet, and marked the first time that we were able to rent out the entire California Zephyr! We had 300 participants, with every inhabited continent on the world represented, and managed to create 80 games.
For the fifth year of Train Jam, we were able to expand and increase our number of attendees to 342! We managed to have participants from every inhabited continent on the world (again!), and were excited to see our diversity initiatives expand even further than any year previously. By the end of the journey, we created *another* 80 games.
Train Jam’s sixth year was our wildest yet. We rented out the entire train again, had over 350 participants, and once again represented every inhabited continent on the world! Due to many weather mishaps, this very special Train Jam resulted in an entire extra day for participants work on their games, and resulted in an ASTONISHING 108 game submissions!
Unfortunately, Train Jam 2020 had to be cancelled at the last moment because of the growing concerns of Covid-19 and has been on hiatus ever since. We’re hoping to return as soon as it is safe for participants, so please make sure you check back here often, or follow us on twitter to get any updates about our return!
Sponsorship
Interested?
Train Jam would not be possible without the generosity of our sponsors. If your company is interested in helping Train Jam be the best that it can be, please contact us at info@trainjam.com.
