OFFICIAL GameMaker Around The World

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Hello everybody! We know that GameMaker users are an international bunch that are spread out across globe, and as such we'd love to hear from you if you participate in any small, local, GameMaker communities in your country. We are considering an article about these GameMaker user groups and such we'd love to hear from you if you are a part (or founder) of one of these groups and would be interested in helping us out and participating in the article. If so, then please leave the details of your group here in this topic, or drop YoYo Games a line with the information via [email protected].
 

dawidM

Member
Hello, I am from Poland, and in our country we have a great GameMaker community : Gmclan.org . It works since 2002 ( 17 Years ! ), so some users remember very early years of GameMaker ( when it was developed by Marc Overmars)

I am only a regular user, the great founder is Ranmus, but he recently abdicated, and now our admin is @gnysek , who once was even a part of YoYo team ( a couple of years ago). A very good and supportive admin, and thanks to him and some other noble users, our community has survived for so many years, and the future of Gmclan is very promising :)

We have also some successful GM developers, the most precious one is TeeGee - the founder of MoaCube and the author of Cinders - bestsellier game on Steam, and also we have Buziol, the famous creator of Mario Forever.
 

ceaselessly

Member
I'm not currently involved in anything like this, but if such a group exists in the US, especially in the northeast, I'd love to get involved.
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
I really hope YoYo pays attention not just to where local GM clubs exist, but also where the local GM clubs don't exist.

I live in Toronto, Canada, and I have never seen a single dedicated GM club where I live. In contrast, there are several active Unity and Unreal meetups, and many more generalist game development meetups.

On a historical note, I used to be part of a local game development networking group called Hand Eye Society. In late 2011, they started an initiative teaching women and minorities how to program games with easy-to-use visual tools. My schedule didn't allow me to help in person, but I offered to help prepare GM materials for any lead instructors teaching it. In the end, there weren't any others and I didn't get the gig. And mind you, Toronto was a city over 2 million strong by then.

I did get some time in later years and offered to take the lead on GM, but by then GMS 1.x is already mainstream and the ship has already sailed. As time went by, GM became more and more distant as a choice, and not once in those later years did GM even come close to making the cut. GM's inability to run on Macs until GMS 2, community and support marginalization of drag-and-drop, a relatively high investment at the outset (compared to free and cheaper alternatives), and an increasing price tag for post-novice development all contributed to this result.

With next to zero D&D support to compete with other D&D tools and poor text rendering support in CJK/CTL text to attract international audiences, I think YoYo should take a cold, hard look at why it is only somewhat effective at retaining existing users, but not all that effective at attracting new ones.
 
B

Baukereg

Guest
Not a local but a global community instead. Last week was the 2nd Git Together jam, with people from the US, Canada, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UAE joining hands to collaborate on one single game. Different time zones, different skills and different opinions, it was quite a ride and could be interesting for an article as well.

If anyone is interested, this is the game we created.
https://leo-zacharias-jansson.itch.io/ed-it
 
Get GameMaker taught more in universities and colleges. Colleges are great for raising communities as everyone is actually there. Until then it's more about filing into local game development communities.
 

Filkata

Member
There used to be a lively Bulgarian forum but it died a few years ago, it is in archive mode now. I have had the idea of making a new community, any Bulgarians reading this, message me if interested.
P.S This is a new account, otherwise, I've been using GM back since version 6, so I am not just any overexcited newcomer, I think I will be able to manage a community.
 

Bart

WiseBart
I'm not aware of a Belgian GameMaker community but I'd like to join it if one exists.
Also always in to help create one it if doesn't :)
 
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XanthorXIII

Member
Yeah I mentioned this before, I attend a group called Omaha Game Devlopers that meets once a month here in Omaha Nebraska. Aside from one guy who uses MonoGame, and I who use GameMaker, the Group is 99% Unity. I'm not sure what I could do to get more folks to switch to GameMaker. And I've been tempted many many many times to switch to Unity just because of how big and strong that community is. I agree with FrostyCat. Someone at YoYo needs to take a really hard look at what they can do to improve the situation. Probably part of it is that GameMaker is 2D only while you have Unity that does both 2D and 3D. Godot is also on the rise as well and very well may surpass GameMaker as well since it's Free and is gaining on a lot of features that GameMaker has.
 
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