I wanna talk about making games with python. This is going to be a sprawling one, but please bear with me because if you care about programming, game making, or python, i want to convince you that this is a really important subject!

Python and game development have something really big in common: they both attract a disproportionate number of new programmers! Python because of its accessibility and game development *also* because its such an accessible entry texh project!

So we have this easy language and this type of enticing project and doesn't that just feel like a match made in heaven?

Twenty years ago, i was 100% positive that python's growth would see the lockstep growth of a big community and ecosystem of game development!

I was wrong...

There are definently game developers in python, but lets talk about what isn't and what should have been but didn't materialize.

1) There are no well known games built in python. Neither commercially or free. We cant point to examples of what we're capable of!

2) there are not broad game development tools in the python ecosystem. There are the basic libraries, pygame and pyglet and other newer options. What we don't have are game development stacks, ecosystems, and tooling integration.

3) we don't have a game development *community*, either on its own or as a part of the wider python community, the way we have data science and web services contingents. Its very hard to see what gave development *does* exist in python.

What can we do? I think it's the right time for solutions. The solutions need to be people based more than technology based.

1) we need to catalog game successes, in each library and across python.
2) we need to split out reusable pieces from our games and build an ecosystem.

3) we need places to congregate and share and encourage, and not specific to pygame or any other library. We also need to be loud about our projects, share that it's on python even in other communities like TIGSource or SSS threads on Twitter.

This could have gone better. A larger, more vibrant game development community could have sprung up over the years. But, it can be built now, if we put in the work.

Python deserves a good game development community and game development deserves python. Lets make it happen! Lets make awesome python games and talk about them and share and encourage!

Let's build a community.