The non-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is hosting a three-day "game jam" starting on June 8 in Needham, Massachusetts seeking for software coders to develop free, open-source educational computer games for the XO laptop. Among the features of the XO the organization is hoping developers to take advantage of are its mesh networking capabilities between nearby users, integrated video camera, and a tablet mode for mobile gaming.
"There aren't too many games right now that take advantage of mesh style networking," said Klein, referring to the XO's ability to use Wi-Fi to communicate with other users up to a kilometer away, and display them as icons on its Sugar interface. "There are networked games, sure, but they aren't sensitive to the ability to display the presence of other users depending on where they are in relation to you, or to pop up on the screen when they are close enough."
Any games created at the event will be released under the open-source GNU General Public License, and posted to the SourceForge website. The OLPC project hopes to encourage governments of developing countries to order more laptops boosting sales enough to order bulk computer parts and stick to the September launch date.