Creative buzz was in full force during the final weekend in January as a group from Niagara College gathered virtually to race against the clock in the world’s largest game creation event.
About 50 students and alumni from the College’s Game programs participated in the 2022 Global Game Jam. They joined participants from around the world in the game development challenge to collaborate, innovate and experiment, with less than 48 hours to create their own games around a specified theme – Duality – which was announced as the Game Jam began. From the time NC’s participants began on January 28 at 7 p.m. until they wrapped up on January 30 at 5 p.m.,12 new games from NC were uploaded to the Global Game Jam site – including Blinded, Dream Defender, Cylinder, Dreamer’s Crossing, Twist, Phantom Photographers, Trials of Orion and more.
“The Game Jams every year seem to amaze me with how much people can do over a small period of time,” said Professor Tom Brown, who has been organizing the Global Game Jam for NC since 2016. “We had a ton of completed games this year and, even with the short time frame, they were done incredibly well.”
This was the seventh consecutive year that NC was an official ‘site’ for the Global Game Jam, which takes place annually at hundreds of locations around the world. It was the second year that NC hosted the event virtually.
The annual event is an opportunity to bring students from all of the College’s game programs together – including NC’s Game Development program as well as joint NC-Brock programs: Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Game Design and Bachelor of Science (Honours) Game Programming
Brown, who is also a Game Development alumnus, noted that the students benefit from the Global Game Jam experience with the opportunity to try new things, learn about what they can do, and figure out the time it takes to complete the work.
“Project scope is key here and from testing it time and time again, people get better at it,” he said. “I’m excited to see how well the first-year team does moving forward with just a little bit more of experience under their belt than their peers.”
First-year Game Development student Parker Heil joined the Global Game Jam for the first time this year, interested in building connections that will help in his career. By the end, he and classmate Willow Laresn had created Dream Defender: a game where the player is a teddy bear that goes through nightmarish worlds creating dreams in their place. While they had time to implement movement, platforms, and portals to and from the dream and nightmare worlds, they didn’t have time to include elements like collectibles, enemies, and a way to convert nightmares to dreams.
“While we only made a framework for a game, we learned so much in the process,” said Heil.
Heil’s favourite part of the experience: “crunch time.”
“Although it was filled with a lot of fast-paced decision-making, getting to see all of the other creators working on such fantastic projects to meet a deadline was exhilarating to see,” said Heil. “I also really enjoyed the feedback portion of the event … it really helped me get a grasp on what I was doing well, and what I was doing poorly.”
Denis Nguyen, who graduated from Game Development in 2021, was among a large group of alumni who joined NC’s Global Game Jam virtually for 2022.
“I’ve actually been participating in the GGJ every year since I first enrolled in Game Development at Niagara College,” said Nguyen, who has been working as a junior programmer at Moonray Studios since he graduated. “I had a good time participating in previous years, so I was looking forward to being involved again this year.”
Nguyen signed up as a volunteer this year and put his experience to work in assisting new students as well as those who were new to the Global Game Jam. In addition to volunteering, he also participated in the event by creating a game called Twist over the course of the weekend.
“I went into the game jam with a singular idea, and used it to create a neat little puzzle-platformer,” he said. “I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.”
There are no winners announced for the Global Game Jam. The event is held in the spirit of collaboration, rather than competition.
View games created by NC participants on the Global Game Jam site at: globalgamejam.org/2022/jam-sites/niagara-college-global-game-jam-2022/games
Global Game Jam
Global Game Jam, Inc. was founded in July 2008 as a project of the International Game Developers Association’s Game Education Special Interest Group and has since grown into its own nonprofit organization. The first Global Game Jam was held in January 2009 with 1,600 people jamming in 23 countries. By 2020, the event had grown to 934 sites in 118 countries with more than 48,000 jammers who collectively made more than 9,600 games. Visit globalgamejam.org.
