PRAXI 2026 Gifts
Just back home after five days in the Finnish forests, with a sketchbook full of ideas and a heart full of love—nourished by the care so freely given in Cabin 1A. Organising and hosting game jams is a significant act of care, and our host, Annakaisa Kultima, had thought of just about everything. Expecting her to extend her superpowers to slow time during the jam, however, would be entirely unreasonable.
We stayed up late under light-filled skies, sharing origin stories of reindeer, Coney Island, and beyond. There was just enough scaffolding to orient us: self-directed time for writing, game-making, or forest walking, alongside optional report-backs that accommodated diverse goals. There was something for everyone.
I had intended to write a paper—and others soon surpassed me in output—yet I left with far more than a citation. I did not write extensively, but for me, PRAXI 2026 became an idea jam. My notebook filled with sprawling, spider-like sketches, legible only to me: starting points to be nurtured into material form. They already spill from paper into lucid—a flight of ideas mapped toward digital play sketches. From early explorations of design metaphors and idiomatic language play to micro-game concepts whispering particular mechanics and aesthetics into being, I report here as a gesture of accountability—to make these early seeds material.
The creative fizz of game jams is seductive. They offer a third space: a place to set aside the demands of daily life and focus on the play at hand. The bounded, often brief, duration of these collective creative events can crystallise the mind in generative and delightful ways. Together, jammers co-author a liminal space—a pocket of time carved out for creation.
At PRAXI 2026, I began stuck and ended more creatively whole than I have felt in years. A core revelation: the ideas were already in me—long neglected, yet keenly awaiting form.
Like much play, the shared affordances of game jams unfold over time: the invitation to play, immersion (not the over-tired computational kind), human conversation, present-backs, and synthesis. These feel less like iteration and more like sprints—bursts of collective momentum.
I have organised over two dozen game jams and playshops over the past ten years alone—pandemic notwithstanding.
shenerd 