2016 Global Game Jam Recap
Last weekend, IGDA Sacramento teamed up with the UC Davis Game Development Club to co-host the 2016 Sacramento area Global Game Jam. The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world's largest game jam event (game creation) taking place around the world at physical locations. Think of it as a hackathon focused on game development. It is the growth of an idea that in today’s heavily connected world, we could come together, be creative, share experiences and express ourselves in a multitude of ways using video games – it is very universal.
Over the course of 48 hours, we had a total of 56 game developers, musicians, coders and artists participate at this year's event. Experience varied between industry veterans and college students. Friday night we kicked off the game jam with light refreshments, a presentation with helpful success tips and finally the theme reveal!
After the theme was revealed, we started the pitch process. Within a half hour, ideas were narrowed down and people broke out into teams. At around 10 pm, participants disbursed for the night agreeing to start fresh on Saturday morning.
Saturday was the main day for teams to get their work done. This was the general timeline that was suggested. Due to such tight time constraints we also kept the site open for developers to work throughout the night and into Sunday morning. The late night and early morning hours certainly fostered some healthy game development discussions and camaraderie among participants.
On Sunday, teams had until 3 pm to put the final touches on their game. As a few trickled in we learned that although most didn't stay on-site, they did end up working through the night at home to ensure their game was in order. We even had a surprise drop-in from our local CBS news affiliate.
At the end of the weekend, 13 games were uploaded to our Global Game Jam site. Here are videos from the final presentations.
To view more pictures from this event, visit our Meetup page and follow @SacGameJam on Twitter.
