Game jam

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Participants in Free Knowledge Game Jam 2015 Game jammers 5.jpg
Participants in Free Knowledge Game Jam 2015

A game jam is an event where participants try to make a video game from scratch. [1] Depending on the format, participants might work independently, or in teams. The event duration usually ranges from 24 to 72 hours. Participants are generally programmers, game designers, artists, writers, and others in game development-related fields. [2] While many game jams are run purely as a game-making exercise, some game jams are contests that offer prizes.

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Also, many games get their start as projects for game jams. One notable example was ninjamuffin99's Friday Night Funkin. [3] At first, it was only a submission for the 2020 Ludum Dare. [4] but has gathered a well sized community, for an indie game. Another example is BABA IS YOU, made by Arvi Teikari, made for the 2017 Nordic Jam. [5] Applying for a game jam could be a great way to start out as an indie developer.

Traditionally, game jams focus on video games; [6] however, board games have also been the subject of game jams. [7]

History

The term game jam is a composition of the words game and jam session. A jam session describes the musical act of producing music with little to no prior preparation in an effort to develop new material or simply to practice. In the same way, game jams are events in which game developers prototype experimental ideas into playable games. [8]

The earliest known game jam is SpeedHack, which began in 1999 and ran until 2015. SizeHack 2000 is another early jam.

In March 2002, [1] video game developers Chris Hecker and Sean Barrett, interested in the capability of modern hardware in rendering a large number of sprites, worked with Doug Church, Jonathan Blow, and Casey Muratori in developing a specialized game engine capable of rendering a massive number of sprites. Hecker and Barrett invited a small group of video game developers to meet in Hecker's office in Oakland, California for the purpose of creating innovative video games using this newly built engine. Hecker and Barrett named this gathering the 0th Indie Game Jam, a game design and programming event "designed to encourage experimentation and innovation in the game industry". [9] [10]

Format

Location

A finished game being presented at Global Game Jam 2014, Jyvaskyla, Finland Gamejam2014jkl 035.jpg
A finished game being presented at Global Game Jam 2014, Jyväskylä, Finland

Some game jams are local events, taking place in universities, conference halls, or other private spaces. [11] The Global Game Jam takes place at the end of January of every year, with over 800 locations in 100+ countries around the world. [12] The Ludum Dare is an example of a virtual game jam, an event where participants largely remain at home, but present their efforts at the conclusion of the jam. [10]

Time constraint

Game jams typically have restrictive time limits, ranging from a few hours to several days. This time constraint is meant to simulate the pressure of a deadline and to encourage creativity among ideas produced by game jam teams. [7] [8]

Theme

A game jam may be centered on a theme, which all games developed within the jam must adhere to. The theme is usually announced shortly before the event begins, in order to discourage participants from planning for the event beforehand and from using previously-developed material. [8] In addition, themes are meant to place restrictions on developers, which encourages creativity. [13]

Ludum Dare 24, a competitive game jam event, featured the theme of "Evolution". As stated by the Ludum Dare rules, all participants in the competition were recommended to create a game based on this theme. However, the rules also stated that participants were not required to use the theme, which allowed for games to be made outside of the theme. [14] [15]

Technology

The type of technology can vary depending on the type of game being developed, and among the different disciplines involved.

In a video game jam, teams are generally made up of at least a programmer and an artist. [8] A programmer would work in a development environment such as Microsoft Visual Studio for development in a .NET Framework application or Eclipse for a Java-based application. An artist may use tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Blender 3D or Autodesk Maya. Other tools used by developers include videogame frameworks such as the Unreal Engine, CryEngine, Unity, Godot, and Microsoft XNA Framework. If in a team, developers might use communication services such as Discord, and source control services such as GitHub.

See also

Related Research Articles

A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term "software engine" used more widely in the software industry.

Video game development is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more specialized skills; art includes 3D modeling of objects, character modeling, animation, visual effects, and so on. Development is supported by project management, production, and quality assurance. Teams can be many hundreds of people, a small group, or even a single person.

The Indie Game Jam (IGJ) was an effort to rapidly prototype video game designs and inject new ideas into the game industry. Started in 2002 by a group of game designer-programmers, the event featured a shared game engine technology and worked on by other designer-programmers for a single long weekend. The games resulting from that weekend were then published, open-source, on the IGJ web page.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Hecker</span>

Christopher Bryan Hecker is an American video game programmer and commentator. He is the founder of the gaming company Definition Six and best known for his engineering work on Will Wright's 2008 game Spore. Hecker is an advocate for indie game development and co-founder of the Indie Game Jam. He has written a number of influential articles on programming and has been an editor for Game Developer Magazine and the Journal of Graphics Tools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indie game</span> Class of video game, generally independently published

An indie video game or indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to a lack of publisher support. The term is analogous to independent music or independent film in those respective mediums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global Game Jam</span> Non-profit organization

The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is an annual distributed game jam. Inspired by the Nordic Game Jam, and created by Susan Gold, Ian Schreiber, Gorm Lai and Foaad Khosmood, originally developed under the International Game Developers Association Education SIG to bring together the elements of creativity, collaboration and experimentation. At each site, participants gather to develop ideas, form small groups, create new, creative, innovative games, and present them to their peers and the global community, all in a limited time span. As of 2013, GGJ is managed by Global Game Jam Incorporated. Current and past board directors include the founders Elonka Dunin, Lindsay Grace and Zuraida Buter. 2022 staff members are Executive Director Tim Cullings, Director of Operations Charly Harbord, and Senior Director of Communications Tarja Porkka-Kontturi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Markus Persson</span> Swedish video game programmer (born 1979)

Markus Alexej Persson, also known as "Notch", is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of the video game Minecraft, which since its release has become the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009.

Ludum Dare is a game jam competition. It was founded by Geoff Howland and was first held in April 2002. It is currently run by Mike Kasprzak, who has been part of the team since the beginning. Participants are required to create a video game that fits within a given theme in two or three days. Participants often release a time-lapse video of the development of their game.

<i>Minicraft</i> 2011 video game

Minicraft is a 2D top-down action game designed and programmed by Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, for the 22nd Ludum Dare, a 48-hour game programming competition. The game was released on December 19, 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simple and Fast Multimedia Library</span> Graphics and Multimedia Library written in C++

Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is a cross-platform software development library designed to provide a simple application programming interface (API) to various multimedia components in computers. It is written in C++ with bindings available for Ada, C, Crystal, D, Euphoria, Go, Java, Julia, .NET, Nim, OCaml, Python, Ruby, and Rust. Experimental mobile ports were made available for Android and iOS with the release of SFML 2.2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vox (video game)</span> 2012 video game

Vox is an independent voxel-based adventure and role-playing video game developed by Canadian studio AlwaysGeeky Games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordic Game Jam</span> Annual game jam

Nordic Game Jam is an annual game jam that takes place in Copenhagen, created in 2006 by Gorm Lai and the Danish chapter of the International Game Developers Association in collaboration with Jesper Juul and Henriette Moos. It is one of the biggest videogame-related events in Denmark and one of the largest game jams in the world, with 900 participants as of 2016. Participants are given a theme or series of restrictions at the beginning of the event and are then given around 40 hours to make a game around those. In 2009 it served as the flagship game jam and inspiration for Global Game Jam.

<i>Broforce</i> 2015 video game

Broforce is a side-scrolling run-and-gun platform video game developed by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital. The game has the player as one of several "bros", based on popular culture action movie icons, rescuing other "bros" through highly-destructible environments.

<i>Inside My Radio</i> 2015 video game

Inside My Radio is a rhythm platform game developed by French independent video game developer Seaven Studio and published by Iceberg Interactive. The prototype was made by TurboDindon during Ludum Dare #23, a video game development competition, where it won both the Overall and Audio prizes in the Jam category. Seaven Studio and TurboDindon have continued development in order to release Inside My Radio on Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. On 10 January 2019, the game was released for the Nintendo Switch.

itch.io Website for distributing games

itch.io is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 700,000 products as of April 2023.

<i>The Republia Times</i> 2012 video game

The Republia Times is a free-to-play indie browser video game created by Lucas Pope, released in April 2012. In the game, the player takes the role of the editor of a newspaper torn between personal opposition to the government and threats to the lives of the editor's wife and children if the editor does not generate loyalty among the population.

<i>Pretentious Game</i> 2012 video game

Pretentious Game is a puzzle-platform game designed by independent Filipino studio Keybol. It is a satirical take on puzzle games in which poetic hints guide players to unite two lovers. The first chapter was written for Ludum Dare's 2012 game jam, and the series of five chapters was subsequently released for PC and mobile devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Lives</span> South African video game developer

Free Lives (Pty) Ltd is an independent South African video game developer based in Cape Town. Founded in April 2012 and led by creative director Evan Greenwood, Free Lives is best known for creating the video game Broforce and has also developed the comedy game Genital Jousting and the virtual reality game Gorn. Free Lives is primarily published through the American publisher Devolver Digital.

LÖVE is a free, open-source, cross-platform framework released under the zlib license for developing video games. The framework is written in C++ and uses Lua as its scripting language and is still maintained by its original developers. The framework is cross-platform supporting the platforms Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

<i>Octogeddon</i> 2018 video game

Octogeddon is an action-strategy video game with elements of roguelike games developed by All Yes Good. It was released for Microsoft Windows in February 2018 and Nintendo Switch in 2019. The player controls an octopus who is seeking vengeance against humanity. It fights using tentacles that can be upgraded between each stage.

References

  1. 1 2 Parkin, Simon (2016-03-14). "Train Jam: Strangers on a Train, Creating Video Games". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-06-16.
  2. ↑ Korotaev, Stas (2015-11-23). "Why Should You Participate in Game Jams". Game Developer. Retrieved 2022-06-16.
  3. ↑ The (un)official FNF wiki page. https://fridaynightfunkin.wiki.gg/
  4. ↑ The official Ludum Dare website. https://ludumdare.com
  5. ↑ The official Nordic Game Jam website. https://nordicgamejam.com/
  6. ↑ Shin, Kaneko, Matsui, Mikami, Nagaku, Nakabayashi, Ono, Yamane, and lovesplayingslender.Localizing Global Game Jam. Retrieved February 21, 2013.
  7. 1 2 Global Game Jam. Retrieved February 21, 2013.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Jagnow, Rob. Game Jam Central, Retrieved February 4, 2013.
  9. ↑ Hecker, Chris. 0th Indie Game Jam. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
  10. 1 2 Chen, Sande (August 9, 2017). "A Brief History of Game Jams". Gamasutra . Retrieved August 11, 2017.
  11. ↑ TOJam Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  12. ↑ Khosmood, Foaad (13 September 2013). "Global Game Jam FAQ". globalgamejam.org. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
  13. ↑ STL Game Jam Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  14. ↑ Ludum Dare 24 - Evolution. Retrieved May 1, 2019.
  15. ↑ Ludum Dare Rules and Guide. Retrieved May 1, 2019.
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