Over the winter break, I decided to take part in this year’s Global Game Jam. If you have never heard of Global Game Jam, it’s a competition held all over the world; where current and pass students in the game design industry, get together and create a game! The kickoff event was held at USG, and it started on a Monday. I got to listen to Bruce Nesmith, retired Senior Designer, and Lead Designer for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which I thought was really cool! After his speech, we then mingled and formed our teams.

Upon forming our teams, we have a week to create a playable game. It can be either a computer game, or a tabletop game, that must pertain to this year’s theme. The theme of 2024 was “Make Me Laugh!”, so for the next week my team and I got to work, grinding away to make our game. I was lucky enough to be on a team with some other first-time jammers, so we went through all the trials and tribulations of the jam together. We pushed ourselves and pulled a lot of all-nighters, and through our blood, sweat, and my tears of exhaustion (LOL), BAM! Just like that our game “Cranky” was coming together.

Now I’m not going to lie, we did hit a few bumps along the way through our design process. We did a lot of trouble shooting together as a team. Having this type of support on certain topics I have yet to learn, was really beneficial I thought. Overall, this project was a great experience in my opinion, I learned A LOT along the way and made some new friends too. I think if you are on the game design track whether you’re on the technical art, or coding side, this is a must try! It’s a great experience and helped me certainly envision what group work might be like, being a game dev.

The week was finally coming to a close, and it was time for everyone to present their games for judging. I really liked seeing what everyone came up with, and how they interpreted what makes people laugh. The winners were then chosen, and I thought who won did a rather nice job. Fantastic work to everyone who competed this year! Shout out to my team of Louis, Amir, Shamarke, “Quote”, and our fellow blogger Gogo! You guys’ rock and I cannot wait to compete again in 2025! If you want more information on Global Game Jam, or want to see all the games that were made, you can check them out here: https://globalgamejam.org/group/116/games

I hope everyone is having a great semester so far, stay safe, and happy my friends. 🙂