As you’ve by now probably heard, JUEGOS RANCHEROS is now an Austin Creative Alliance sponsored group, meaning that we can now accept cash & in-kind donations via ACA that are tax-deductible for you.

And while we haven’t yet pulled together anything as formal as the membership drive currently being put together by our friends at Babycastles, all of our internal discussions keep coming back to one thing: all we want for Xmas is one Windows laptop.

As Adam mentioned in his post, every public event we put on results in a mad scramble to beg/borrow/steal hardware from friends & family for you to play games on, and having the freedom to know that we had official, reliable JUEGOS hardware would be an unbelievable first step for us.

We don’t exactly have a dream machine, but something along the lines of this Lenovo laptop is a good start — quad-core, pretty future-proof & able to handle whatever we throw at it.

That’s a big “ask” though, but we also know that local studios frequently upgrade their own desktop/laptop hardware at the end of the year, and would like to remind everyone that you can get an additional tax writeoff by giving JUEGOS your last-year’s models — everything helps!

We’re also always in need of additional hardware like wired Xbox 360 controllers for Windows, 25″+ HDMI widescreen monitors, non-powered 4-8 port USB hubs & USB extension cables, over-the-ear headphones, wired mice, powerstrips & more!

If you or someone you know might be able to help us reach our goal of a single, nice, reliable Windows laptop by the end of the year — or any other donations that can help us better serve Austin’s indie community! — please let us know by emailing juegosrancheros@gmail.com & we can help guide you through the donation process!

Since May of 2011, JUEGOS RANCHEROS has been putting on some pretty ok events here in Austin: games inside planetariums at the ND, intense JS Joust battles at The Highball (when The Highball still existed), the Nation of Indies workshop, curation and volunteering for Fantastic Arcade, school presentations, bringing TEXATRONS both to SXSW & a permanent home at Guzu Gallery, and more.

It’s been challenging, sure, but it’s also been our complete pleasure to help bring the most amazing and inspiring new independent games to the public every month for absolutely free. And it almost goes without saying that we couldn’t do it without our volunteers or our awesome venue partners, like the Alamo Drafthouse, the North Door, and SXSW Gaming.

Over the course of the last couple years though, some rough patterns have emerged. The main thing we’ve noticed is that our preparation process and display equipment leave a lot to be desired. We are really happy with how our events have all come together, but that’s only been possible through a lot of last-minute panic and mountains of emails every month as we collect whatever laptops and desktops and monitors we can get our hands on the week before. It’s gotten to the point where having some dedicated equipment, especially some laptops and game controllers, would actually make a huge difference, in the quality of our monthly events especially.

However, buying a handful of laptops out of pocket is a bit rough. Becoming a full nonprofit organization would allow us to accept donations more easily, but there’s a ton of overhead involved. This is why we are so happy to announce that JUEGOS RANCHEROS is now an Austin Creative Alliance sponsored organization. In a nutshell, this means that we can now accept both cash and in-kind donations, via ACA, with negligible extra overhead for us as a group.

By accepting donations of equipment we can streamline the preparation and execution of our monthly events, which in turn gives us the flexibility to put on even more and better free events throughout the year. Even cash donations can be a huge help: we can purchase new equipment ourselves, or put the funds toward covering venue rental fees for our longer workshops. Our ACA sponsorship will make it easier to work with local school and art venues without losing or overcomplicating that special JUEGOS RANCHEROS sauce.

We’ll be updating again soon with more specifics about how you or your organization can help us with technology needs, but in the meantime, you can make a tax-deductible cash donation via the Austin Creative Alliance site (be sure to select JUEGOS RANCHEROS in the “to which organization” dropdown!), and you can email us at juegosrancheros@gmail.com to talk more about other donations!

So, with this news, what does JR look like going forward? Basically the same, only better, and more of it, with a bit less stress for us organizers. More workshops, more fostering of Austin’s independent and artful games culture, more TEXATRONs, and more FREE monthly events. With your help, and the support of the Austin Creative Alliance, JR’s third year is looking like the best ever.

Hey everyone! JUEGOS co-founder Adam Saltsman here. It is with a potent mixture of relief and regret that we post this reminder that we are SKIPPING the regularly scheduled JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetup ND during October.

We are all taking a much-needed break after this year’s uber-successful Fantastic Arcade event (seen above), and will be returning with a great JR meetup at the usual time and place at the ND, Thursday, November 7th. We’ll post more details about that in a few weeks!

In the meantime, we are also working on a bunch of administrative and organizational tasks within JR itself that will enable us to do more and better events going forward, and we’ll be posting a bunch of information about that very soon too.

That’s all for now! Have a great October. We’ll have some cool good news and new plans to share very soon!

Hello everyone! With the closing of the Highball until sometime in 2013, we’ll have some big changes coming over the next couple months, so here’s the full run down of what’ll be happening through December and into the new year!

First & foremost, as you might have seen at our last meetup, even though the Highball will temporarily be gone, that doesn’t mean our meetings will end! Instead, we’ll be moving to a new day, and a new venue: specifically, starting on January 3rd, we’ll be relocating to the amazing ND Austin, located at E 5th & Brushy, for regular meetups on the first Thursday of every month.

This means that no longer will you have to drag your tired bones out of bed on the middle of a Sunday afternoon: these will be night-time meetups starting around 7:30PM and running for as long as you’re happy to stay there! If you haven’t already visited ND for a Nerd Nite / Dorkbot meetup or a show, you’re in for a treat: the space not only has a stage, but a massive two-story screen that will be fantastic for projecting games. They also have good drinks, and (speaking from experience!) great tamales and queso at their bar around back. We’re super grateful for the ND for taking us in!

What this also means is that our originally scheduled December 5th meetup will be delayed to January 3rd, BUT! We’ll still be getting together this month as a part of Make Watch Love Austin, an all-night expo and preview of the new space that’s being opened by our friends at the Austin Film Society. The event will be taking place Saturday, December 8th, from 5-9PM, and, as JUEGOS, we’ll be bringing back local-favorite JOHANN SEBASTIAN JOUST to spread the love to Austin’s wider creative community.

Tickets and more information are available from the Austin Film Society event page!

Finally, if you’d like a more direct way to stay on top of what’s happening with JUEGOS than our Twitter / Facebook page / this here site, we’re setting up a new email distribution list with Google Groups. For now, it’ll be ‘announcement-only’ so we can directly contact you about upcoming events, but we’re looking into eventually expanding the list to help solidify and grow Austin’s community of videogame creators and lovers.

If you’d like to join the group, just visit this Google Groups page and click the ‘Join group’ button!

We’ll have even more exciting JUEGOS announcements as we roll into the new year, so stay tuned for those, and looking forward to seeing you all at one of our events soon!

In our continued effort to do a better job documenting our regular monthly meetups, above you’ll find the team at White Whale Games — from L to R: Adrian Lopez-Mobilia, Jason Rosenstock, Jo Lammert & George Royer (seated in front) — introducing themselves and their debut game, GOD OF BLADES.

Like our similar self-intro video for PARTY TIME! HEXCELLENT, it’s a bit quiet and a bit jittery, but turn it up & stick with it for a look at the amazing art, concepts and thoughts behind the new mode of the game they revealed for the first time, SLAYERS (more on that here). For more on White Whale & GOD OF BLADES, visit their website here!

Two updates to our announcement of this coming Sunday’s GOD OF BLADES edition meetup: the first, above, is the amazing alternate poster created by our own Dale Austin. We’re incredibly happy with how both turned out, as usual.

More directly, though, yesterday I mentioned that our playable tournament would revolve around GOD OF BLADES co-op mode, but things have changed overnight. Instead, what we’ll be showing is a brand new, previously unseen mode, henceforth to be known as SLAYERS.

Here’s White Whale‘s George Royer to explain what SLAYERS mode is, and why you should be excited for it:

One night the ghost of Robert E. Howard, Football, and Bushido Blade all got really drunk and went home together. Nine months later, SLAYERS was born.

In the SLAYERS feature of God of Blades (PC and Mac versions), two players take on the roles of the enemies from the main campaign mode, to duel one another on a desolate bridge for the favor of their blasphemous gods. The match begins with each player selecting their champion. In addition to the champion, each player begins with a bank of 25 foot-soldiers, and every time one of these soldiers is cut down, another rushes to join the fray.

Champions are far stronger than foot-soldiers and enter the struggle when a player’s reinforcements are depleted or when one player successfully battles their way to their opponents end of the bridge. Players gain ground by defeating their opponents without losing their soldier. Victory is achieved when one player bests the other’s champion.

Matches of SLAYERS are fast, brutal, and gorgeous.

As a reminder, this meeting of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS will take place Sunday, July 1st, promptly at 4PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704 — hope to see you there!