Global Game Jam

What will New York, London and Sydney have in common with Thurles on the last weekend of January 2012? They all host Global Game Jam events! The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world’s largest game jam event and takes place in January each year, with the Thurles event being hosted by LIT-Tipperary. GGJ brings together thousands of game creation enthusiasts around the world, all with a common purpose of building computer games in forty eight hours.

Managing the event for the fourth time, LIT-Tipperary’s TippSoc Computer Society will host students from other colleges around Ireland in this computer game creation marathon. Games created as part of the Global Game Jam will be exhibited to games design professionals visiting LIT-Tipperary for the annual celebration of all things computer games related; at the renowned Games Fleadh in March. Philip Bourke, Games Design and Development Course Coordinator for LIT-Tipperary Institute said, “its amasing to witness the ingenuity and creativity of students when faced with the challenge of creating games in such a short time span. The games created were amusing casual games that can be enjoyed by gamers, academics and games professionals”. Mr. Bourke went on to say “we were delighted that international GGJ organising committee choose to profile one of our games Petals which is a Windows Phone 7 title”.

In a Game Jam, participants come together to make video games. Each participant works in a small team on a complete game project over the course of a limited time period over a weekend. With such a small time frame, the games tend to be innovative and experimental. The GGJ takes place in the same 48 hours all over the world. Like new year celebrations sites in Austrialia and New Zealand start their jams at 5:00pm on Friday through to 5.00pm on Sunday, gradually other sites join in across global timezones. At 5.00pm GMT on Friday, January 27th LIT-Tipperary’s site will join fellow jammers and start the process of designing and building their games, non-stop until 5.00pm GMT on Sunday January 27th. All participants are constrained by the same theme, rules and limitations, with each time zone having its own distinct design requirements.

Promotional offers for participants

http://globalgamejam.org/sponsors/promotions

Game development marathon results in innovative games

Every year, the last weekend in January is the calendar highlight for computer game developers across the world. 7500 developers, worldwide, worked through last weekend, during 48 hours, creating computer games based on a common theme. Global Games Jam hosts LIT-Tipperary rose to the challenge of organising a game coding marathon for students. This is a unique opportunity for them to work in parallel with the very best game developer talent globally. Student game designers created games which were viewed live, during development and release, by international gaming enthusiasts and industry leaders.

All participants get involved to perfect their skills as game developers and designers. On Friday evening they were given the brief to build games based on “Extinction”. Philip Bourke, Course Coordinator for LIT-Tipperary’s Games Design and Development course said “this is as real as it gets, the sandbox nature of these projects allow students to experiment with games design, development and game-play in collaboration with their peers”. He went on to say “The need to quickly and efficiently produce the code, art and audio assets for fun games in a fantastic way to develop innovation skills”

When presented with the theme jammers brainstormed games concepts and then pitched those ideas to attract developers, artists and designers to join their team. In all twenty two concepts were pitched and these were eventually narrowed down to just four, Petals, What We Do Now, Human Kind and Petri Paridice. Teams were formed with games programmers, artists, musicians and audio technicians, all of whom are essential in any games development team. All games produced during Global Game Jam are available from the globalgamejam.org website.

Lead Programmer, Conor O’ Neill and final year student of Games Development IT Carlow was part of the team that produced “Petals” said “This being my first jam, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I imagined it would be extremely challenging to get our ideas into a playable game in just 48 hours. We were delighted to find everyone so helpful in both LIT-Tipperary and from other countries, everybody participated with an ethos of fun”.

A number of the participants were Global Game Jam veterans. Leo Flaherty, who is a second year student at LIT-Tipperary and studies Games Design and Development, while only in second year, a game jam veteran. His team created a game that allows gamers to pre-program their character with Artificial Intelligence to ensure its survival in a hostile jungle. The game stood out in many respects, both from the point of view of games play and art and proved to a fun way to interact with complex algorithms. Leo Flaherty said “I am so proud to be involved in a project like this, and to have worked alongside so many talented people. It iss a great privilege to do this in LIT-Tipperary and the quality of work here stands to these students, and puts LIT on the world map.”

All Games Produced will be showcased during the annual computer and console game programming festival Games Fleadh next March 9th & 10th at LIT-Tipperary. This years participants are already making plans to taking on the game creation marathon in 2012. For more information www.gamesfleadh.ie