The Wikimedia community has a long history of community-built games powered by Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The Wiki Arcade website showcases many of these games, from WikiAsteroids (arcade space-shooter powered by Wikipedia’s recent changes) to Redactle (guess the article from hidden words) to Catfishing (guess the Wikipedia articles based on categories).
There’s a lot of untapped creative energy around wiki-based games, both from people already building playful experiments on top of Wikipedia, as teaching projects and from the broader game dev community. To channel that, we launched WikiGameJam: an event and space for people to turn that playful spirit into new and exciting wiki games. The goal is to build on the ways people already engage with Wikipedia, as a trivia trove, a creative rabbit hole, or a challenge to race from one article to another.
Introducing WikiGameJam in New York City
We hosted the first-ever WikiGameJam on October 3–5, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York City. The weekend hackathon brought together developers, designers, and Wikipedia enthusiasts to collaborate and build new games powered by Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other Wikimedia projects.
The event was organized by WikiHaus, a group of Wikimedians building new spaces for free knowledge and creativity. The collective got its start at SXSW 2025, where it hosted a house featuring Wikipedia panels, discussions, and a WikiPortraits studio. WikiGameJam took place at Hex House, an artist-run studio in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with support from the Wikimedia Foundation and Jam City, and additional backing from Wikimedia NYC and AfroCROWD.
The weekend kicked off with talks from inspiring speakers, including Josh Yguado of Jam City, Elliott Etzkorn of the Wikimedia Foundation, and a slate of local game developers and artists. They shared how open data and creative collaboration can drive new forms of storytelling, visualization, and play.
By Sunday, 27 individuals and teams presented their creations, each earning its own quirky award. A few highlights:
- Grand Prize Winner: Daydream—Walk through a maze of Wikipedia articles. A series of dreams. Can you guess where you’ve been?
- Funniest Game: Horses & Divorces—A “personal life”-powered game testing your knowledge of famous peoples’ spouse histories.
- The One That Haunts Me (In a Good Way)—WikiMystery—A Wikipedia detective game where you figure out the cause of death for a victim.
Physical Games in San Francisco
The first WikiGameJam focused on digital online games. But what happens when you take that same idea off the screen and into the real world? What does a physical Wikipedia-powered game look like?
In November 2025, the Bay Area Wikipedians User Group and Double Union co-hosted a mini WikiGameJam event focused on building physical games. Participants worked on several board and card games and came up with working prototypes.
Three teams explored the potential for multi-players games making tangible the process of editing and the complex interactions between editors. One team explored the possibility of a wiki-themed social deduction game, where editors and admins have to uncover a vandal. Another sought to demonstrate how editors’ reach consensus and work with claims, building on previous examples like Wikeys.
This workshop demonstrated the potential of game-making itself to explain how Wiki projects work, and the potential of physical games to center multi-players dynamics generally absent from digital games – so far!
WikiGameJam 2026 in San Francisco
Building on these experiences, WikiHaus was back in San Francisco for GDC – Festival of Gaming, the largest video games conference in the world. In collaboration with Gray Area and the Bay Area Wikipedians (with sponsorship by JamCity and the Wikimedia Foundation), we hosted a three days WikiGameJam on March 13-15 2026. An evening of games demos, networking and talks by local and visiting developers, Wikipedians, and game maker Azmath was followed by two days of hacking supported by delicious food.
By Sunday, participants had made 18 games, further exploring the potential focus and mechanics of Wiki games. Some highlights:
- Grand Prize winner: Fathom, by Anirudh Rao. Explore the universe through wikidata. Start Q1 (universe) and click through bouncing balls to discover what everything is made of.
- WikiSim, by Christian Brickhouse. An incremental clicker game where you manage a wiki community from 0 to a billion edits.
- WikiRace is a beautiful implementation of WikiRacing by Paige Bailey, with a daily challenge, a leaderboard and the ability to create your own.
- WikiFortune by Aurora Hone. Do you find yourself scrolling article, trying to learn more on Wikipedia, but cant stop your mind from wandering to all of life’s problems? Whether it be love, career, or spirit related, those issues get in the way of learning more. WikiFortune can help! This interactive fortune teller solves lifes biggest issues with a wiki article and a bit of magic.
That same weekend, WikiGacha went viral, showing once more the potential of Wiki games to feed the love for Wikipedia. Let’s make and play some games!
Connect with WikiGameJam!
- You can explore all the projects and event details at wikigamejam.org.
- We are working on a toolkit and set of resources for all to host their own WikiGameJams. We presented the first version at Wikimania 2026. Watch our talk here!
- And for a broader look at the world of wiki-powered play, check out the Wiki Arcade at playwiki.games.
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