Global Game Jam comes to Concordia

This week, for the first time ever, Concordia is hosting a site for the largest game jam event in the world: the Global Game Jam.

During a game jam, participants try to create video games or non-digital games, such as board games and card games, around a given theme within a given period of time — 48 hours in the case of the Global Game Jam.

As Concordia computer engineering student and site organizer Sagar Patel explains, the new games must be created from start to finish on site during the allotted amount of time. “You should come to the event empty,” he says. “You have 48 hours to go from conception to execution.”

Global Game Jam 2012 promo video:

To prevent teams from preparing games beforehand, the theme for the Global Game Jam is kept secret until the beginning of the event. Last year, the theme was extinction. Once the theme is announced, a brainstorming session takes place. Then participants break off into teams to design and develop games.

“You don’t have to work with a team,” Patel explains. You can work solo if you want. But most people end up partnering with somebody.”

Sometimes these new teams end up working well together and finishing their game within the allotted time, but in many cases things don’t go quite as smoothly.

At last year’s Montreal event, held at École de technologie supérieure (ETS), members of Patel’s team ended up disagreeing about what sort of game they wanted to develop. Some of them wanted to create a graphics-heavy, cowboys versus dinosaurs game. Others wanted to keep things simple by creating a two-dimensional sci-fi shooter game. In the end, they decided to compromise, and developed a game called Disco Duck.

Whatever ends up happening, Patel insists that participants gain invaluable experience working with new partners to develop a finished product. In his case, he got the chance to work alongside established professionals from Ubisoft. “It’s really exciting because for the most part you don’t know these people,” he says. “They’re complete strangers, and you just connect and just start working on stuff.”

Here's the video (made up of more than 1900 photos) of the Montreal Game Jam in 2011:

Stephanie Bouchard, a computational arts student at Concordia who is also helping to organize the Concordia site for global Game Jam’s Montreal event, agrees that the jam is a great place to connect with people in Montreal’s burgeoning game development scene.  “I’m taking part in this because I want to work with people I’ve never heard of,” she says. “You won’t necessarily get a job, but you’ll gain notoriety, and sometimes you’ll make super awesome discoveries.”

Earlier this year, Patel founded the student chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) at Concordia. The student club is co-organizing the Montreal event for the Global Game Jam with students from ETS and from the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT).

Registration is free, and people who register will either be assigned to the Concordia site, or to the UQAT or ETS sites (located in the same building on Notre-Dame Street). The sites will be open for the entire 48 hours of the jam.

All of the games developed during the Global Game Jam are made available on the event’s main website for free after the event. Also, there are no winners.

“It’s a non-profit event. We do it just for the fun of doing it,” Patel says. Even so, the Montreal organizers have spiced things up for local developers by assigning a judging panel to each of the city’s three sites. The judges will each pick a favourite game to be showcased at a later event.

Registration for the Montreal Game Jam is free, and Patel encourages anyone who is interested to sign up. No experience in game development is necessary. To sign up, visit the Montreal Game Jam site. 

When: Friday, January 27 at 3 p.m. until Sunday, January 29 at 7 p.m.
Where: Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Complex, EV, Room to be determined

Related links:
•  Montreal Game Jam
•  Global Game Jam
•  Concordia’s Research Centre in Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG)
•  Global Game Jam 2012 promo video
•  Montreal Game Jam video 2011