Play NYC game festival’s Graffiti Games celebrates immigrant stories

This year’s Play NYC game festival will be at the Manhattan Center, a little over 10 miles from Ellis Island, where over 12 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. over the course of 62 years. Today, New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and Play NYC is celebrating that with its Graffiti Games installation, which will feature eight developers who are first-generation immigrants. The event will run from August 11 to August 12.

Five thousand people showed up to last year’s Play NYC, and this year the event expects 10,000. It has also picked up partnerships with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Foundation and the Bigglesworth Family Foundation, which seeks to fund nonprofits. The festival was started by Playcrafting, an organization that hosts game development classes and meetups in five cities around the U.S.