Hey all — it turns out the first Sunday of February happens to be Super Bowl Sunday, so our next JUEGOS will be taking place the following SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12th, at the usual 4:00PM time, at the usual Highball place!

We’ve got a pretty wicked one planned for February, so clear off your calendar now!

It seems like only four weeks ago that JUEGOS RANCHEROS graced the pages of the Austin Chronicle (oh, it was? oh, we were named part of 2011’s Best of Austin?), but now we’re back!

Grab a copy of the Chronicle between now and next Thursday, flip to page 44, and there we are: five whole column width’s worth of Wiley & Adam & I talking about the birth and future of the collective.

Or, you can just click here and get the full skinny (and the full color version of our goofy mugs) right now:

Even as attendance grows each month, Juegos’ goals are loftier than just regular drinks with kindred spirits. “We’ve been able to get people from big studios and people from tiny studios sitting down together eating burritos and talking about stuff, and that just seems good in the long term,” says Saltsman. “I don’t know if we’ve been able to get as many non-video-game people to come as we’d hoped initially, but we’re still working on that.”

One particularly successful meeting included playing an as-yet-unreleased game called Johann Sebastian Joust that isn’t technically a video game since no screen is necessary to play. The game is simple: Grab your motion-sensing controller, pull the trigger to signify that you are ready to play, and keep your “jousting” hand from moving too quickly or you’ll be out. Of course you will be encouraging your opponents to jostle their controllers and get eliminated. “Joust is kind of the poster child for introducing people to indie games,” Wiggins says to explain its allure. “You can see the whole game right there physically, and it immediately makes sense.” As Juegos attendees played, Joust managed to entice the tastemaking and often difficult-to-impress waitstaff at the HighBall, who were soon lining up to show their skills. Getting Austin to rethink the definition of a video game is step one in an ongoing attempt to encourage the local nongaming population to consider interactive media as something within their artistic purview.

Thanks to James Renovitch and the Chronicle for paying attention, and for helping to get the word out to hopefully at least a handful more people that haven’t yet made it out!

The next meeting of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS will be at the Highball Saturday, December 10th before returning to its regular Sunday service. Mark your calendars now!

Hey all — just a quick update that because of a charity event happening at the Highball on the first Sunday of December, we’ve moved the next JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetup to take place on SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10th.

More details and time-slot information will be coming soon, but mark your calendars now! We think this one’s going to be pretty rad.

For a name that I did not at all intend to actually catch on, it seems it’s not only just here to stay, but winning Major Awards: our own Austin Chronicle has just given JUEGOS RANCHEROS its prestigious & highly coveted ‘Best Video-Game Collective Name’ award in its annual Best of Austin issue!

Says the Chronicle:

Oh yeah, the group itself is pretty cool, too. Founded by the poster boys of the local indie gaming scene, Brandon Boyer, Adam Saltsman, and Wiley Wiggins, the group has monthly open meetings at the HighBall bringing game developers from Austin and elsewhere around the globe to share their visions and expertise. Don’t expect a tech-laden wonkfest though; Juegos welcomes and accommodates anyone and everyone who wants to see (and often play) the cutting edge of interactive arts. The schmoozing is top-notch, but, more importantly, the gabbing and flesh-pressing is getting results such as the under-construction Texatron indie video-gaming cabinet. Expect that chunk of solid awesome to be staring back at Austin very soon.

You’ve got until Thursday to get the issue itself, if you’d like to clip the article (page 46) & send it to your mom to have her hang it from the fridge. Thanks to the Chronicle for putting us in such amazing company!

JUEGOS RANCHEROS will be returning to the Highball after a post-Fantastic-Arcade hiatus Sunday, November 6th at 4:30pm. Mark your calendars now!

Hey everybody — finally it can be told! Our friends over at Alamo Drafthouse have just announced the full lineup for this year’s Fantastic Arcade — the sister games festival presented as part of their yearly week-long genre film blowout Fantastic Fest. And it’s in just two weeks! And it’s free and open to the general public, every day!

Not only are there going to be a ton of good games on display at the Highball — there are going to be a ton of good indies in town hanging out, showing stuff off and in general carousing pretty heavily from Thursday, September 22nd through Sunday, September 25th!

Block those days off on your calendar now, and come spend the whole weekend at the Highball — events open a bit after noon and continue on until well past midnight!

Below the fold is the full press Fantastic Fest press release, and I’ve added videos of each of the games that’ll be shown throughout the fest!

(more…)

Couldn’t make it to our last meeting of JUEGOS RANCHEROS, Austin’s independent game developer collective? Here’s what you’ve been waiting for: the full, hour-long recording of ADVENTURE TIME creator Pendleton Ward (@buenothebear) talking with Capy‘s Kris Piotrowski (@krispiotrowski) and Superbrothers‘ Craig Adams (@the1console) — two of the team behind the brilliant iOS adventure game SWORD & SWORCERY EP — about games, animation and all of the cross-over in between.

The chat is hosted and moderated by Austin’s own Adam ‘Atomic‘ Saltsman (@adamatomic), creator of CANABALT and the Flixel game-creation library, with a few additional questions & comments by yr humble blog post author, Brandon Boyer (@brandonnn).

Anyway, we hope you enjoy what will likely be just the first in a long series of chats by amazing artists and game creators — and hopefully by then we can work out a few of the video kinks and get you something a little more HD and a little less echo-y.

Spread the word (the Vimeo embed code can be found here), and subscribe to JUEGOS RANCHEROS updates either here or via Facebook and Twitter!