My experience with game jams

When I was a student working for my bachelor’s degree I participated in game jam events a few times. It all started when a classmate suggested checking out presentations by industry veterans at C-Mine in Genk. These talks were part of the Global Game Jam event, where teams create a game in just 48 hours.

Global Game Jam 2014

I went for the presentations and stayed for the jam, it was decided in the spur of the moment. The atmosphere was infectious, filled with camaraderie and creativity, making it an easy choice for me to jump in.

As the event kicked off, a theme is revealed, around which participants make their game. On our jamsite, teams are divided by first letting everyone brainstorm game ideas around the theme, then everyone decides which idea they like the best, at which point participants are grouped by their preferred idea. Around the theme "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are", someone at our jamsite came up with the idea: “the protagonist is an evil entity that has grown remorseful and wants to kill themselves, this is not easy however, them being very powerful”, I wonder what that person was going through at the time. Many participants liked the idea, so much that two groups were formed from that idea, one of which I was a member, and there were about 6 groups in total. Each group had about 5-6 members.

And so began the jam, we started coordinating our efforts, took breaks by playing some games (the jamsite featured a PS2 where you could play Simpsons: Hit and Run, and a PS4 where you could play Don’t Starve), we helped ourselves to complimentary soda and water, we were jamming alright.

When the first day came to an end some people retired to the sleeping area, but not me, I decided to work through the night along with one or two other team members. This was a regretful decision, I was almost completely useless the next day, at least I got most of the work done during nighttime.

Then came the conclusion of the jam, the time had run out, and now it was time to present our game to the on-site judges. Our game was OK considering the team consisted of only beginners, I’m not sure exactly what place we ended up in, I think we were second to last out of the six on-site teams. We learned and had fun at least.

My team for Global Game Jam 2014

https://v3.globalgamejam.org/2014/games/demons-remorse

Ludum Dare 30

Global Game Jam 2014 was such a nice experience I decided to also participate in that year’s Ludum Dare in August 2014 as well. This event is a little different, participation isn’t on-site but through their web portal, you could enter in the 72 hour ‘jam’ with a team, or the 48 hour ‘compo’ as a solo developer. I decided to enter the compo as a solo developer. What wasn’t different is the usage of a theme that is revealed at the start of the event, the theme for this jam was “connected worlds”.

When participating solo there is much less coordination involved, you just start working on your game. It also didn’t take very long to come up with an idea for a game that would fit the theme. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that you also have to make the game look decent by yourself, I was only a programmer at that point so it was a challenge to say the least. I realised this early on and decided to focus on the gameplay, my reasoning being that spending time on making the game look decent would drain too much time and there was no guarantee I would even succeed.

After toiling on my game for 48 hours, “Danger Zones” had been manifested. I was proud of the result, the game wasn’t much to look at, but the gameplay was decent, which is also generally what fellow participants posted as their feedback. And as you might already know, I continued working on “Danger Zones” after the event, so LD30 helped me start on an actual game that I would later release. You can find out more about the status of “Danger Zones” on its website: https://dangerzonesgame.com.

A while ago I went to find the entry page for “Danger Zones” because I wanted to see it again, I managed to find it and also wrote a blogpost about it on the “Danger Zones” website, go ahead and take a look: Screenshot of Danger Zones’ entry page on the old Ludum Dare website

https://dangerzonesgame.com/2024/04/12/danger-zones-entry-page-of-ld30/

Global Game Jam 2015

Round 2 baby! I was excited to participate in another Global Game Jam, last year’s edition was a good time. So you know the drill, when the theme is revealed, ideas are brainstormed and groups are formed. This year the theme was “What do we do now?”, my group was formed around the idea: “A defunct family’s internet connection goes down, so now they have to interact with each other somehow”. The working title was quickly decided upon: “Fucking Telenet” (Telenet is a Belgian telecom provider).

And off we went, the jam was on. Things went more smoothly this time around, my team members weren’t beginners in the field of game design, and I was a half decent programmer with some Unity experience, albeit the only programmer in the team. What soon became apparent is that this team operated on a higher level than last year’s team, I was stoked.

One problem we had was that our idea was too open ended “they (the family) have to interact with each other somehow”, it took some time to figure out what that actually meant. Eventually we decided to let the player find specific objects to bring to family members around the family’s house.

Concept art of my team’s game:"Connection lost" AKA "Fucking Telenet"

Aside from that things went pretty well, the site coordinators took notice that we were further along with our game than other groups and asked if we could record some gameplay for the local news, we happily obliged. I can still find some articles about our GGJ 2015 jamsite, but not the news broadcast, I did however find the video that we submitted (for some reason it stutters a bit).

Limburgs spel over internetverslaving wint Global Game Jam - Het Laatste Nieuws (dutch)

Global Game Jam 2015 leverde meer dan 5000 games op - 4Gamers (dutch)

This time I made sure to get a good night’s sleep in order to still be useful the second day, last year I stayed up all night thinking I would get more work done, but being sleep deprived while still having to develop part of a game sucks. Needless to say that getting some sleep yielded a much better experience.

My team working hard during the Global Game Jam 2015 session

https://v3.globalgamejam.org/2015/games/connection-lost

The jam ran its course and now it’s judgement time. We were happy with our result, except the 3D environment modeler, his PC had crashed while rendering the static lighting for the scene, and now we had to use the low resolution static lighting texture which looked pixelated (the render would’ve taken at least half a day). But it didn’t matter, the judges were enamoured with our combination of 2D characters and 3D environment and crowned “Connection Lost” the winner of our jamsite! Winner winner chicken dinner 🏆, there were some challenges but things worked out, we had a blast.

In conclusion

All three jams I participated in were a fun and rewarding experience, I highly recommend participating if you are passionate about game development, no matter what aspect. The in-person on-site events are the best in my opinion, you can rely on team members for the stuff you can’t do yourself, maybe even contact them later on to work together on something else. This is what I did, but not much came of it because my game development journey got sidetracked in favour of my programming career, but that’s a story for another time.

Many years later…

Game development will always be something I like doing, in the meantime I have been learning how to make my own game assets as well, and I have been applying that skill to work on my debut game “Danger Zones”, it currently looks much better since its creation during LD30. Participating in game jams might not always start a dedicated game developer career, but it will lower the threshold for anything game dev related you will do later.