Young developers make video games in 48 hours at the Phoenix Global Game Jam

by Christopher Silavong, Arizona Republic | azcentral.com, Feb. 1, 2016

The anxious crowd waited and listened, eager to fast-forward the presentation to the end so they could begin their grueling task: to make a working video game in just 48 hours.

Participants at the Phoenix Global Game Jam, some as young as 15, formed teams, working long hours to collaborate and create.

This year’s event, or jam, at the University of Advancing Technology campus in Tempe, was part of a worldwide endeavor encouraging technological innovation, creativity and teamwork.

“I thought it would be easy,” said Joshua Perez, 15, a student at Desert Ridge High School in Mesa. “I thought it was going to be a piece of cake."

Perez’s casual attitude quickly changed as the weekend continued.

“It’s a lot harder than you actually think it is,” he said with a smile. “The one thing that I realized was that I really appreciate the programming and all of the hard work that goes into making the game functional.”

Perez’s team created a game in which the player must feed a demon by sacrificing a peasant.

The jammers, as they were called, formed 16 teams. Some came to the event together; some met for the first time at the site. Some had never made a video game in their life but joined nearly 100 other participants to see what they could do.

Arizona State freshman Vatricia Edgar, 18, was one of those jammers. She was told about the jam at a club meeting at ASU's Polytechnic campus only one week before.

“Some people who had done game jam last year invited me,” Edgar said. “We were in the robotics club together. They announced it to the whole club, then I walked up to them and said I wanted to do this also.”

She expected it to be difficult and tiresome and that she wouldn’t get to do much because she lacked the experience. But Edgar was surprised and ended up doing a lot of work.

Her team made a game called “Morning Ritual” in which the player is a woman who expects to drink her morning coffee only to find that she has none. Her morning ritual is broken and she rampages through the streets, knocking down anyone in her way to find the nearest coffee shop.

“It wasn’t actually that difficult because a lot of it was learn as you go,” she said. “There were tutorials online, a lot of help online and I was able to do a large portion of the coding and animation without stumbling too much.”

Why organize a game jam?

The Phoenix jam was organized by Ben Reichert, CEO of Game CoLab, a game developer advocate who leads an incubation hub assisting independent developers around metro Phoenix.

“The game jam is really instrumental in bringing developers together,” Reichert said. “The nice thing about the Global Game Jam in particular … is that you build constraints around your creativity and really focus.”

There have been past game jams organized by a different group, but Reichert has grown the number of participants since he started organizing it in 2013.

The event also offered sponsorship opportunities for companies, local and global, to show off new technology and services. GoDaddy pitched its cloud service.

The Swedish company Tobii handed out its Eye Tracker device to any team that created a game based around its product. The tracker senses a user's eye motions, which translates into an action within the game.

Tristan Parrish Moore, co-founder of Broken Window Studios in Tempe, promoted the Eye Tracker on Tobii’s behalf. He also participated in the game jam.

“I’m trying to come up with a game that inverts the idea of looking at something and instead tells you not to look at something,” Moore said. “It’s meant to be really comical, so I’m hoping people will have fun failing at the game.”

Moore said all the new technology being developed makes it an exciting time to be in the video game industry.

“We’re doing virtual reality games, eye-tracking games, we’re doing console and PC games,” he said. “I think that more than ever there are tons of ways for people who want to be game developers, to actually find a niche that works for them and do something that’s unique, … (something) most people couldn’t even imagine doing 10 years ago.”

Making games is getting easier (kind of)

Making a video game is a daunting task, but it has been made easier because of software development kits such as Unity, one of the global sponsors. What the kit does is provide developers with prewritten design tools so they can skip directly to making a game rather than typing a thousand lines of code.

It’s like a furnished apartment: You don’t have to buy any furniture because it's provided, but you can rearrange everything however you like.

Because of development kits, jammers like Edgar and Perez can work alongside experienced programmers.

Edgar had such a great time at the jam that she wants to take along her 10-year-old brother next year. With her mother’s permission, of course.

“If you are new to gaming, never made any game ever in your life, never worked with the languages you plan on using, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “You don’t need to know anything. You can come in completely blank.”

Perez, in his team, did mostly design work, including the menu screen and part of the game’s map.

“The best thing about it is, not the fact that you win,” he said. “But you get to enjoy yourself with people and you get to experience and learn all these things you didn’t know.”

The parent organization expected 5,000 games to be developed by 30,000 jammers in more than 600 locations worldwide during Global Game Jam weekend Jan. 29-31.

Prizes and recognition

Participants in the Phoenix game jam could win a cash prize; a free download of “Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)” courtesy of E-line Media; a copy of Axosoft, a project management software; and a copy of “Game Loading: Rise of the Indies,” a documentary about independent game developers. The companies and documentary were among the sponsors.

Phoenix Vice Mayor Daniel Valenzuela handed out awards alongside Reichert.

First ($300), second ($100) and third ($50) place went to “Deco Racing,” “Space Diplomat” and “Foxfire,” respectively.

Reichert said he has a genuine passion for game jams. He transitioned from a background in international relations to the gaming industry during his first game jam overseas in Belgium. He said he “literally came in to just help bring coffee to the table so that the developers could keep going.”

“In the end, I wrote a little bit of the story,” he said. “I did a little bit of the art. I did a lot of the organizational aspects of it.”

Game development was demystified for Reichert right then and he wanted to let others experience the same thing he felt.

“I guess that’s why I like hosting them,” he said.

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