GAMERella is the world’s longest running game jam focusing on supporting aspiring and emerging marginalized game creators and on of TAG’s flagship projects. Our latest initiative is to find similar, alternative game jams, share knowledge, and build a supportive community for the generous, but sometimes overlooked and undervalued organizers.
The first season of The GAMERella Podcast features interviews with a selection of alternative game jam founders and organizers from around the world. These 60-minute recorded conversations will present listeners with behind-the-scenes, narrative accounts of challenging, inspirational, and ordinary experiences that ensued during the process of game jam organizing. Interviewees will share their paths to innovative game-making and offer practical tips for emerging and experienced organizers. Desirée de Jesus, media scholar and previous GAMERella co-organizer, will conduct the interviews.
In this episode Desirée talks with 2D/UI artist and Game Jam das Minas co-organizer, Meela dos Anjos about organizing the first game jam in Brazil for women-identified folks and building supports for women in Brazil’s gaming industry.
You can download the transcript of this episode as a PDF from here.
The episode is available on Spotify, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spreaker, and Google Podcast.
Meela dos Anjos is a 2D/UI artist and co-founder of Game Jam das Minas, the first game jam for female-identified folks in Brazil.
Raised by a single mother, Camila (Meela) dos Anjos spent most of her life in the suburb of Olinda, a city located in the northeast of Brazil where she dedicated herself to studies to achieve the dream of working with her drawings. Graduated in 2017 at UFPE, Meela became a designer who went on to work in the field of digital games as a UI Artist. After participating in two game jams, she was hired by a game outsourcing company from Pernambuco, where she began her career. With the desire to help other women enter the gaming market, together with Catarina Macena she co-created Game Jam das Minas that proudly helps new women and minority groups to get to know the gaming market and increase these people’s entry into the Brazilian market.
Personal: LinkedIn
Game Jam das Minas
Website: https://itch.io/jam/jdm2021
Instagram: @jamdasminas
LinkTree: @jamdasminas
Desirée de Jesus is a video essayist and moving images curator whose digital projects concentrate on girls, women, and folks of colour. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at York University. Her research uses experimental animation to reimagine Black girls’ critical resistance strategies and participatory filmmaking to explore racialized girls’ experiences of COVID-19 inequalities. Her experience with game jam organizing includes working as a GAMERella co-organizer and co-developer of GAMERella’s Game Jam Guide.
Produced by Gina Hara
Edited by Marc Lajeunesse
Music by Lyne Dwyer