From a Game Changer Game Jam participant:
So. I went to a gamejam.
I’ve been wanting to try a gamejam for some time now. While I was development director at Unity Studios we did a couple of game jams, but I’ve never tried a gamejam where the other participants were people I hadn’t worked with before. Gamejams seems to be becoming something like a movement by now. A sort of sub-sub culture of the sub culture of Indie game devs.
The particular game jam I attended, was Game changer game jam right here in Århus. In fact, right in Filmby århus where we incidentally headquartered during the Runestone game development days. The game jam was organised by a couple of local guys, Robin Sverd and Jonas Klemmensen, both of them Kaospilots. The philosophy of the game changer game jam is to make games that change the world. So, no pressure there :-).
The jam kicked of with presentations from Christian Fonnesbech about cloud chamber which I assume you, dear reader, know about. Otherwise, check it out: It’s a cool project. After Christian, Adriel Wallick and Rami Ismail gave us a very informal but highly informative presentation about why they both love game jamming, and why game jamming is something all game devs should do frequently.
Both of them also very much live what they preach: Adriel is working on her “one game per week” project, and has been working on it for 30+ weeks. She told us that she at the current time spends most of her time basically travelling from gamejam to gamejam. And making one game pr. week. on top of that. Crazy stuff. Rami seemed to be travelling at least as much, maybe more than Adriel. After Rami and Adriels presentation, Ryan Green floored the audience with his extremely personal tale about his game “That dragon: Cancer”.
The game is an autobiographical story documenting Ryans family against, as he put it, “the monster we found in my son Joels brain”. Joel Green was declared terminal at the age of two, and died very recently at the age of five. Hearing Ryans story was inspirational and emotional on a completely different level deeper than I had thought, and for me, this was where the ante was upped quite seriously. This was where I realised that this gamejam was not going to be about making a “fun” game, but be about making a game that wanted something more than entertain for a few minutes.
Read more at Lars’s blog
