Indie Game Development takes time. It’s a process. Like any other creative medium you look at what you can do and you then create, tinker and work on what you have. When you’re working on a game’s design every single piece from the art to the level design to the sound effects all need to be in place. But what do you do when you don’t have that time? You make your game anyway. Ben Salter wrote a great article earlier today and in it he said that he envies those who created the game in 48 hours and I could not agree more.
Yes, both as a symbol of speed-based creativity and a representation of how a Uni student works when you totally forgot it was due on Monday, GameJam’s are essentially people working around the clock with little sleep and a lot of caffeine, making games to ultimately be submitted and judged worldwide. I somehow got the easy job and decided to do what I do best and write about the experience…and send almost a thousand tweets during the entire forty-eight hour period. Some of which I was sadly absent from at times.
Whether you’re in a team of eight, four, two, one or something that isn’t even remotely binary. The Global Game Jam which happened over the past forty-eight hours is one of the most tiring, exciting and interesting looks into game design, creation and development I’ve ever seen. The teams working the entire time with nothing but creativity and working from one image.
The ever-eating snake, Ouroboros. A frightening mythological image of gluttony in an infinite loop or the inspiration for over 1500 games worldwide? The theme is often just a word, but this year it was this classical image which a lot of people took in many different ways. In previous years the theme was often just announced as a word. In 2010 the word was deception and last year it was extinction.
The themes are not intentionally depressing as one may think on initial inspection, but the image of Ouroboros, sparked a million ideas and this is where day one truly began. To put it in comparison with other global creative events, novelists have NaNoWriMo. Poets have NaPoWriMo and game teams have Game Jams. It’s just shorter, tighter and a lot more well-documented. This is a 48 hour period of unbridled creativity in a team. Communication is key and after the keynote talks which included Jon Romero (Doom) and Will Wright (The Sims) creation was underway!
These men of inspiration talked about game creation and design and it was truly amazing seeing them helping out the future of game development. Strong designers who have made games in the past, scraping things at the eleventh hour, first-time developers who burn through the night code and design some of the coolest looking things I’ve seen. White-boards filled with dried text that shimmers in the morning sunlight while others curse and wish not to look at anything that isn’t a warm, comforting digital glow. I should also mention that the work of Rebecca Fernandez from Convict Interacive must go with large amounts of applause. To set all of this up and to get the GameJam going was intense, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I think I need to start at the beginning.
Day One
I had just arrived a short time after the keynote talks and people were already in teams and ready to make some games. To set the scene there were two large rooms, screens being projected on a gigantic countdown and a constantly running livestream of international jammers. A whiteboard in the second room at the back, white board to the side in the first room and then me in the first room sitting in a corner consistently writing and tweeting my night away. We all started at 5pm and we all had two days to go before we could all properly rest.
The first team I saw get under way in the first room was a team closest to the door who had taken up the whiteboard and several pieces of butcher paper to scrawl incessantly on. Words had started to fly about the topic, several tabs open on their computers looking into what Ourboros really meant. I should also point out that all the computers that were being worked on were all personal laptops and PC’s brought from home, dorm rooms and borrowed from friends and relatives. No Uni computers, no sponsorships, all their own work, on their own personal computers.
The first team, who would later be known as Tangle, were all just random people, excluding two friends, who had just come to the GameJam in hopes of making a game. There were two coders, a sound designer, an artist, who would eventually all come together to make the game Growth in GameMaker, but we’ll get to them later.
The topic of Ouroboros had so much interpretation. In the corner closest to mine a strong and well-formed team known as Black Wolf Games, a team of five, had taken a quite literal approach with their game and started forming ideas for something which would eventually be known as Snake Eater. They had actually disappeared for some time to different parts of the University’s building, a three story, beautifully designed section of the University with a big open air section in the middle with couches and tables. Those couches would later be a great comfort to the more tired developers during the 40-plus hours remaining.
In the second room I saw a two-man team, one of them with a Chewbacca Bobble-Head blue-tacked to his monitor. A strong figure with a big head that stood out in the sea of monitors and computer towers. This was Jarrad and Scott who would eventually make the game Toob Racer. Their first concepts I saw was a very large ring made in Maya. A constantly looping tube of many colours and a design that would make anyone with an obsession of Onion Rings smile greatly.
Jarrad and Scott began to both work on the concept and the designs for what they were going to do. Their project didn’t have a name or anything critical at this point but they had the tube and it was a part of the process and that’s all that mattered. Headphones blaring metal and Chewie standing tall, Jarrad had a great sense of humour and a love for death metal, which while the game seemed simple, Jarad’s interests seem to exceed what he wanted to do in the 48 hours. I can definitely see something amazing coming from these two one day, but right now I wasn’t sure. Maybe Chewie knew better than I did.
Actually Chewie became a little mascot for the jam as it was stolen, returned, stolen again, put on the Facebook page of some and eventually returned. He was representation for the big-headed ideas but strong actions that these guys were about to undertake…well for me anyway. I’m sure LucasFilm would say otherwise.
Also in the second room was a group of four in the corner, all working on a single table and a filling a whiteboard with hundreds of ideas. Text scribbled all over the place with keywords and already scrapped ideas rubbed out by their hands as the marks on their hands proved. Their work on the game had come from a very strong image and eventually the title Ouroboros would solidify where they wanted to go.
Plans were already being drawn up to make the game in Unity 3D. One of the members sneezed slightly while crafting a large circle and explaining how the snake would turn in the game and already there was something forming. Another team member grabbed the marker and began to make more lines and eventually started working on the idea of setting up blocks in a world that would eventually have the snake catching up to itself.
I decided to take a small break and go wandering through the hallways of the three story facility when I came across another team working on a whiteboard in the hall. The words “Arcade”, “space” and what looked like “infinity” was splashed on a white board and all of them were discussing old games such as Galaga and Space Invaders before finally agreeing together in their team of five that they should work on it a bit more.
Upon returning some time later, I had met up with a friend of mine, Howard, who was waiting on his brother Matt and after a short discussion I was told he needed some time to think about the game he wanted to work on and both of us being writers I understood that having someone jabber on only hinders the creative process.
The game ideas, teamwork and creativity I saw on day one were a mesh of time-constraint but also how quickly people can work together when they have a deadline or time limit. The night of day one had an amazing feast where everyone got to know one another over a dinner of greasy food, soft drink and a respect for everyone’s talents.
I left just shy of midnight to return for a fairly undeserved rest, I was considering the hard work that was taking place around me and was astounded that these guys had forty hours left. I had spoke to another two teams, the guys from Doppler Interactive and LimeRocket both of whom had spent most of the time crafting graphics and working on ideas. The one-man, one-woman team of Doppler Interactive was quite strict on being talked to. The guy of the group, Josh was quite in a zone and refused to talk on camera, which I completely understood. His teammate Jess filled me in on the project as she brushed water colours on a digital canvas. They hadn’t really specified what they were making but I could see a large monocled man walking down a big road and that was good enough for me.
The real process with GameJam is progress. Working towards something and being set on it is incredibly difficult, especially in just 48 hours. The hardest part I think is locking down an idea as a team. A set of rules, a style, gameplay and what the game is meant to mean is fine if you’re just a one person dev team, but when you’re working together, you need to make sure everyone’s voice is heard or one or two people will probably find the work futile, even when you’re all working towards the same goal: making a game.
My first seven hours whet my appetite for what would come in the remaining day and a half. I slept, not soundly, but with anticipation on what would happen on day two…
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