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This year I did something I’ve never done before. I went to a game jam. A game jam is a meet-up at which a group of programmers, designers, artists, and sound engineers band together to make a video game. The catch is that the group must complete the game by the end of the jam, which only lasts one or two days. While the concept is straightforward, the execution thereof is… daunting. For those who don’t make games with frequency, it’s difficult to understand how labor-intensive it is to create even the smallest and simplest games. As such, making a functional, playable, and enjoyable game so quickly is really, really hard. Which, of course, is what makes it fun.
It was a long weekend, but I found Global Game Jam 2013 (my first jam of choice) to be a lot of fun. In the beginning, I was extremely nervous, since I had never participated in a jam before, much less made a game. Nevertheless, when my initial discomfort dissipated, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Planning what kind of game to make, meeting the people who were interested in game creation, and seeing the products that emerged at the end of the weekend was a engaging learning experience.
So I’m going to tell you about the whole thing.
Walking into my first game jam was a lot like walking into my first day of high school: nerve-wracking, doubt-instilling, and lecture-ridden. It’s true: the first event at Global Game Jam 2013 was a spiel on creating simple, educational games by one of MIT’s GameLab professors. However, this man was far more charismatic and animated than your average high school teacher, making the lesson far more pleasant. While I couldn’t hear the whole speech, the parts I caught were fascinating. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better way to start a weekend of game development.
After the lecture, the real jam began, so I should mention that while I’m a programmer by trade, I don’t think I’m a very good programmer. I can think logically, I’m good at reading and interpreting code, and I’m proficient at understanding and translating for programmers, but I’m not sure that programming is one of my stronger skills. Also, I mostly program in Java, which is one of the less frequently used languages in game creation. As such, I went to this event with my brain, my love of games, and sub-par programming skills in a language I didn’t think would be used. This was not encouraging. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go. But I did anyways. So there.
Following the talk was an “administrator encouraged” meet-and-greet with the Game Jam participants in the lecture hall. While randomly introducing myself to people has never been one of my strong suits, it turns out that “Why are you here?” is an easy way to start a conversation. Sure enough, I discovered some cool and surprising things about my jamming colleagues. First off, it was awesome to see many ethnicities, nationalities, and gender identities represented at the jam, especially considering A) we were in Boston (not the world’s most diverse city) and B) we were at a game jam (game development isn’t the most diverse occupation either, see #onereasonwhy). It was pretty damn wonderful to have such a wide cast of characters; after all, it was a global game jam. Secondly, the attendees weren’t just programmers, artists, and other typical “game development” types. I met a psychologist, a graphic designer, and a preschool teacher, all interested in game creation, despite knowing little about it overall. Finally, and most surprisingly, not everyone who came were gamers. Several members of my eventual team, in fact, didn’t play “traditional” games at all, but were professionally involved with them (though not in the games industry) and wanted to learn more. This was fascinating to me: as an avid gamer, it’s hard for me to understand a motivation for making games when you’re not interested in playing them. Needless to say, the crowd with whom I watched the Jam’s opening ceremony was far different from what I had expected.
I don’t know if all game jams have opening ceremonies or not, but it was a great part of the Global Game Jam. Along with the inspirational (and practical) advice, the initial videos emphasized that your site was one of dozens, all making games at the same time. Which was amazing. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that games are made all over the world, but GGJ reminded me (in spectacular fashion) that gaming is a worldwide hobby. Yet the most important part of the opening ceremony was the theme of the jam. Most game jams give their developers a theme to include in their game, though how it’s included is entirely up to the developing team’s creativity. The theme is an exercise in discovering what kinds of developmental diversity can emerge from a single source, and the results are usually awesome. There are also optional constraints for additional challenges (the achievements of game development, if you will). The theme of GGJ13 was the sound of a heartbeat. “Put your hand to your chest and you’ll hear it,” they told us. That’s all. Then we grabbed some dinner and were off to the races.
Giving birth to a game concept was step one. Armed with falafel, shawarma, and potato chips, the jamming masses split into smaller rooms to brainstorm heartbeat-related game ideas and share them with the group for feedback and (hopefully) approval. Then, they’d be submitted to the entire jam to see if anyone was interesting in making it. As expected, the various answers to “How do you make a game about a heartbeat?” were as dissimilar as they were intriguing. The first proposal I heard was a game which spurred the player’s avatar to frighten NPCs, attempting to fill a heart rate meter by scaring them witless. The intent of the game was to subvert the player’s understanding of the game’s “objective,” illustrating that avatar’s horrible behavior is a precursor to assault, discrimination, and sexual violence. Regardless of your opinion on the game’s conceit, it was certainly not the first thing that I considered, proving immediately how vareigated these game designs could become. Other concepts discussed were a tower-defense style game in which a heart fought off the destructive effects of butter and sugar, a strategic Civ-style game in which the player acted through the policy decisions of the last two decades to try and sway public opinion in their favor (“winning hearts and minds”), and a maze game in which the player was required to ignore their eyes in favor of following a heartbeat. My own submission was an AR-style mobile game where the player stalked the sound of a heartbeat through the real world, eventually requiring you to look through the camera to “find and eat” it (you are a zombie). Our room brought nine game ideas to the group when we reconvened, nine concepts waiting to be born.
Step two of the jam was an idea auction: you pitch your idea to the whole group and convince them that it is the game they want to make. Each presenter was given a minute to explain what their game was, why it was cool, and why you should want to make it a reality. Once again, I was impressed and entertained by all of the possibilities concocted by the jammers. There was the occasional conceptual overlap, but when the speeches were concluded, nearly 40 distinct ideas to choose from had been pinned to the lecture room’s chalkboard. Then came one of the more complex parts of the jam: staffing the projects in such a way that people were working on projects they were interested in, but each project had resources enough to actually create the game. After all, a project with two designers and no programmers isn’t going very far (and we had twelve sound engineers, making everything even more interesting). Since only 100-150 people attended the jam, not all of the games could be made, but when all was said and done, everyone was part of a project in which they were at least slightly interested. Then it was back to the classrooms to begin planning the game.
After seeing all the presentations, I didn’t intend to do my own (tentatively called NOM because… you know, zombies). When the jammers began assigning themselves to projects, I assumed mine wasn’t going to attract much attention because it wasn’t as intriguing (even to me) as some of the concepts presented by others. However, when the first wave of interested parties stepped away from the board, someone had chosen my idea. I was stoked, but didn’t expect much to come of it. But then the person (a designer) that picked my game idea was asked to defend it in an attempt to attract additional interest. The defense was mediocre overall (“I think it would end up being pretty interesting…”), but it lured in a programmer with experience in smartphone GPS technology, the backing architecture for a location-based cellphone game. I was so flattered and intrigued by this that I convinced myself and NOM‘s co-creator to jump back on the NOM bandwagon. When everyone was finally assigned to a project, our team was comprised of (according to the labels given to us at the beginning) three programmers, two designers, and one sound engineer. I was excited: this game that I helped to dream up was going to be made!
To be continued in Part II.
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