I noticed that we have lots of gaming content submitted for Nest with Fedora this year. That’s awesome. However, it’s not all going to make it past the difficult process of selecting what will fit into the time. For Nest, we prioritize talks that focus on improving Fedora as a project or Fedora Linux as a distro. Many of the gaming talks are aimed at end users or developers.
This made me have a crazy idea… what if we planned a mini-event (one or two days?) focused specifically on gaming?
Hey Matt,
I like this idea 
and it could also attract younger talent?!
Hey Matt,
I really love the idea and support it:)
+1
v/r
Andi
Are you envisioning this as part of Nest or a separate event later in the year? In either case, I’m for it. Speaking at conferences has been part of my attempt to spread the word about open source games. I can post on FreeGameDev.net and gamingonlinux.com to try to get speakers if you want. Debian did a mini conference on Gaming in 2020.
Fedora Linux has been garnering attention from the media as being the mainstream distribution for casual users who use their computers for internet browsing and word processing, and even from users who would like to use Fedora Linux as a platform for playing/developing videogames. Being involved in writing about this in Fedora Magazine[1][2] and talking about it at the Fedora Linux release parties[3] and Fedora Hatch events[4], I would love to help make this event happen.
We would want to retain back the contributors who proposed a videogaming-related talk, whom we could not provide a slot in this iteration of Nest With Fedora and ensure that they would be available/willing to do so whenever we plan on having this event. Once we have enough talks/workshops/activities, we can use them to garner contributors like @jbley mentioned. We could also use some of that positive media coverage around multiple forums as @dulsi said.
Index
[1] Fedora Workstation's State of Gaming - A Case Study of Far Cry 5 (2018) - Fedora Magazine
[2] Fedora Workstation's State of Gaming - A Case Study of Control (2019) - Fedora Magazine
[3] F36 Release Party: Fedora's Workstation State of Gaming - YouTube
[4] Hatch Pune India 2022 - Fedora Project Wiki - Fedora Workstation’s State of Gaming
A separate event. Nest is too soon to really organize and promote it properly.
Other than that, I haven’t really thought of any details, so… your ideas here. 
A couple of ideas:
It could be cool if there was at least one talk about gaming because there is clearly interest and we wouldn’t want to ignore that. Then that talk could serve as marketing for this separate gamer-focused event and we try to ride those coattails.
Other thought, if we can get the maintainer of Nobara for either event, I think that would be super cool.
I also understand the idea of wanting to make commits upstream when possible instead of spinning off a new distro.A gaming-specific event sounds cool… but there is one issue to quickly address:
For Nest, we prioritize talks that focus on improving Fedora as a project or Fedora Linux as a distro. Many of the gaming talks are aimed at end users or developers.
Gamers and developers don’t mix well in events. I’ve been there myself, having worked in the video-game industry for some time. You can also expect the same to be true for a “Gaming with Fedora”-event: Those that make it work will likely have limited interest in playing the latest titles and the other way around.
There are of cause game niches that like to tinker with mods and source ports, but I do think you should first get a clear target audience before you can even consider hosting such an event.
I love the idea of a dedicated event. Is a great oportunity to bring help to the table. Here are some topics that might be addressed:
That’s an interesting point. I wonder if things might be somewhat different in our case because there are games which are open source projects which kind of cross the lines in a way a commercial game wouldn’t.
What if we did a two-day thing with gamer-focused content one day and game-dev content the next?
I’ve been to few events that did it like that; The first day was the trade-show and the second day was the consumer-exhibit. The pricing difference wasn’t even that outlandish, but the trade-show was on a Friday so there were some hurdles to get over.
What you mention though on FLOSS, does give me an idea; What if the ‘developer’-day focused on modding and source ports, and the ‘consumer’-day on Wine, emulation and similar. The dev-day could be about using XDG standards or Flatpaks for better integration and distribution, while the consumer-day could compare the best tools to run Minecraft or the latest achievements of Proton and Lutris.
Mmh. That does sound promising. I can still imagine that with Linux, those groups will overlap quite a bit but it’s a start.
Maybe have an free software/open source trailer reel. Have games submit their trailers to play together as a session.
Okay, so… next steps! Who would be interested in helping organize and run this? We could use the same Hopin platform we use for Nest and Release Parties…
I’ve never been involved in planning one of these things, but as an opportunity to learn with a lower risk event, I’m down to help. 
I’m willing to help plan it. Like Joseph, I have no experience on the planning side.
Just throwing a not-so-random idea I just had before going to bed around, but this could also be the Beefy Miracle’s miraculous return as the Fedora Gaming logo first “official” (not so sure if this would count or not) usage by the project.
Maybe a slight variation either from my version or from Jess’ version to spell the “Gaming with Fedora Linux” event instead of the “Fedora Gaming” branding.
I would be down with that! I feel like we have to keep Beefy for this!
I forget where I heard it mentioned (maybe Reddit? either way definitely wasn’t my idea) but there’s also the interesting idea of overlapping those ‘sides’ - FLOSS game developers and ‘typical’ game consumers - by propagating the idea of “Windows-native with perfect Proton compatibility” being a realistic target for the wider gaming industry, as opposed to pushing for fully Linux-native ports.
Hades runs slightly more smoothly on my Fedora 37 Wayland session than it did on the same laptop running Windows 11. It’s the exact same published product from the game dev, but they got two platforms (Win + Linux) for the price of developing for one. Are there development practices that can make that easier or harder to achieve? Is this the kind of thing that would come up in a developer session with player input, like in a potentially good crossover way?
(And if this conversation is going on another discussion platform, is there anything that a relative novice like me could contribute to or at least observe on there?)
Thanks!
I don’t think there has been any more discussion yet. I keep meaning to post some ideas but haven’t had the chance.
In addition to the good topic ideas folks brought, there may be some specific speakers who would be interesting across multiple topics if they are willing - thinking folks from Valve if they would be willing, or like @gloriouseggroll who (just based on job and experience) might have a ton of interesting perspective?
I know the intersection of folks who are super involved and folks who want to present might not be perfect, but in whatever form it takes it might be worth thinking about some of the "who"s in addition to the "what"s?