Global Game Jam

The Global Game jam is an annual event in which participants design and create digital and non-digital games over a continuous 48 hour period. Global Game Jam is designed to foster innovation rather than competition. At each site, participants gather to develop ideas, form small groups, create new, creative, innovative games, and present them to their peers, all in a limited time span. The event is organized by the International Game Developers Association Education Special Interest Group community, and patterned off the Nordic Game Jam.

Participants

Participants in the Global Game Jam are of all skill levels and in various fields. Everyone from professional game developers to educators to artists and designers is welcome to participate. Once the jam begins, participants are given only a few minutes to come up with game ideas, before pitching those ideas to each other and forming teams to work together on a project.

Event organization

Groups wishing to host a jam site must provide fulfill certain requirements. Their location must have Internet access for everyone involved, access to development resources such as an IDE, possibly preinstalled at the location, an event coordinator, free beverages and nearby food access, round-the-clock availability of the location, and security for belongings.

At each site, the Global Game Jam runs continuously for 48 hours in each time zone, beginning at 5:00 PM on the start date, and ending at 5:00 PM two days later. The recommended schedule includes a short planning and team creation period, followed by development time until 3:00 PM on the final day. The last few hours are set aside for teams to present their creation to each other. However, sites are not required to follow this schedule.

At the beginning of the event participants are given a theme, such as “Extinction” in the 2011 Jam. Participants are asked to create a game that in some way relates to this theme. Additionally, participants are given a list of “achievements”, also referred to as diversifiers. These are designed to drive creative development by adding a unique or limiting factor to their a game’s design. Examples include “Both Hands Tied Behind My Back”, in which a game should be designed to be played without the player’s hands, or “Picasso Lives”, in which game art must be cubist in style.

Past events

The first Global Game Jam was held from January 30 – February 1, 2009, at 53 locations across the globe. During the jam, 1650 participants created 370 games.

The second Jam expanded further in 2010, increasing to 138 sites and resulting in 900 games made by 4300 creators.

The 2011 Game Jam, which ran January 28-30, was the largest yet, gathering 6500 participants at 169 sites who created over 1500 games total.

Intellectual property

All games produced are created under the [[Wikipedia:Creative Commons licences|Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 license], and while they remain the Wikipedia:intellectual property of their creators, the Global Game Jam retains the ability to use any game as promotional material. As a part of this and as part of the license, every game is archived, along with source code for many digital games, on Global Game Jam’s website.

Sponsorship

The 2010 and 2011 events were externally sponsored, by entities including Intel, Wikipedia:GameSpy, Wikipedia:Autodesk, XNA Game Studio, the Wikipedia:Imagine Cup, and Torque.

This article contains content from Wikipedia. Current versions of the GNU FDL article Global Game Jam on WP may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

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See Also

• Indie Game Jam Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indie Game Jam