The Global game jam is taking place this weekend. This utterly insane event involves amateur developers, students, hobbyists and professional devs getting together to try and make a full, working game in a 48 hour period.
The number of actual competitions is staggering, but you can get an idea of how many events are taking place globally by going here.
CalmDownTom is based in Scotland so we will be attending the Scottish Game Jam where several site contributors will be competing. To be more specific, Samus, Gnarly Harley, Ealiom and Lapsed Gamer (BigBearScot) will all be taking part. This won’t even be Lapsed Gamer’s first effort, he’s competed a couple of time before so knows what he’s got himself into. I think they’re all insane in the best possible way.
Below is a slideshow from last years event:
The event is an enjoyable, stressful, coffee fuelled adventure and everyone who competes speaks highly of the experience afterwards. There’s not a lot of sleep and there might be some arguments, but at the end there’s some great ideas and even some good games to play.
The whole thing kicks off on Friday at 5pm local time in each area. Over the weekend CalmDownTom members will be taking videos and pictures which we’ll post to the site to keep you all updated. We also hope to follow the development of at least one teams game from inception to completion which should give all you readers an idea of what a Game Jam is like and some insight into the game development process. Finally, we’ll also be recording a podcast on location from the Scottish Game Jam which won’t be live exactly, but which I shall try and post as soon as it is done.
To all competing, I wish you the best of luck. Check back here regularly for more news as it happens.