Game Hack-A-Thon Attracts Teams At 500+ Sites Worldwide 31
BarbaraHudson writes: Video game enthusiasts around the world participated in the Global Game Jam this past weekend. The event is a worldwide 48-hour hack-a-thon dedicated to inspiring creativity and building a working game from scratch in one weekend. Sponsored by companies like Intel, Microsoft, and Facebook, it's the largest event of its kind.
All games entered for GGJ are released under a Creative Commons share, alter, no sell license. You can browse through the games and download their source files on the official website, and a couple of publications did quick hands-on playthroughs.
"Although the club is focused on game development, not everyone participating was a computer programmer. Artists and graphic designers were present to help create characters and models for the games. The goal of Global Game Jam is to a stir up a global creative buzz in games while at the same time exploring the process of development."
All games entered for GGJ are released under a Creative Commons share, alter, no sell license. You can browse through the games and download their source files on the official website, and a couple of publications did quick hands-on playthroughs.
"Although the club is focused on game development, not everyone participating was a computer programmer. Artists and graphic designers were present to help create characters and models for the games. The goal of Global Game Jam is to a stir up a global creative buzz in games while at the same time exploring the process of development."
Did they teach them about marketing/promotion? (Score:3)
Because developing an indie game is really the easiest part these days. Getting someone to notice it and pay for it--now THAT'S hard.
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This definitely was a learning experience, since it brought people together who didn't necessarily know how to code - artists, musicians, etc. The coders had to learn to cooperate with these non-programmers (something that's kind of hard to do for many programmers with a holier-than-thou attitude nowadays), and everyone had to put on their game face.
They were also allowed to use game engines and other tools, so the coding in some cases is no more than tweaking a pre-generated script and seeing how it rende
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You never learned anything by doing it with a group? Skills like cooperation, communication of abstract ideas, and getting to see how others in the group with different tasks handled them?
Unity? (Score:1)
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What, so reinvent the wheel? It is suppose to be about creativity. Programming an audio engine, or dynamic light engine for the umpteenth time is not being creative.
Most end users don't care what engine was used, they don't know difference between crytek engine, unity, frostbite, or some homebrew, they just see the end result.
Ive seen good games and bad games on pretty much every engine.
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Programming an audio engine, or dynamic light engine for the umpteenth time is not being creative.
I think it's *incredibly* creative. In fact it's the very essence of creativity: you know what you want to achieve but it is non-obvious how to get there.
Perhaps it is a different kind of creativity compared to other aspects of game design but the times when I've been deep into highly technical development have been some of the most creative periods of my life.
I actually agree that using a game engine should be OK for this, but creativity isn't one of the reasons.
Re:Unity? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the same time, engine design itself is certainly important, but it's a different kind of creativity. It won't appeal to everyone, but I've found that showing people a basic engine and discussing enhancements or improvements is a good way to get them more interested. If you have a simple engine and let them run into the limitations, they might feel compelled to put in the effort to poke around at the engine itself whereas if you had them start from scratch it might be overwhelming.
Part of the learning process is giving people education in manageable chunks. Obviously there are some who can handle more than others, but even the most brilliant and diligent of students can be overwhelmed.
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To kick off the global "hackathon" on Friday, a special Keynote presentation made by several game developers worldwide was shown in the auditorium of Communication Arts and Sciences Building. The same video was screened at nearly 500 locations worldwide to inspire creativity.
Or you could follow the second link and go to the top of the About page
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.
The big names in the industry who sponsored it have no problem with the term (click on the Sponsors link on the site).
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when I saw the word hack I thought the goal of tournament was to break into a game server and steal in-game money and items or fake personal details.
You're thinking of the media definition - the proper word for that is a "cracker", not a hacker.
why do I never hear about these things? (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot should have posted about it before it happened.
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I'm sorry. I guess I better dust of my crystal ball, ouija board, and cast some bones next time.
On the other hand, if you'e interested in next year, just go to their web site.
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why do I never hear about these things? (Score:1)
1 week? (Score:1)
Proved it cannot be done in 1 weekend (Score:1)
After looking through about 50 of these games, this hackathon proved to me that a game cannot be built in 1 weekend. It also proved that the effort missing is likely in years and not weekends