Global Game Jam 2014

The biggest collaboration in the gaming industry

A few weeks ago, Twitch Plays Pokémon made headlines when 75,000 fans came together to play a single game of Pokémon. The event not only cemented Pokémon’s status as a worldwide favorite, but also showed what a community of gamers from all over the world could accomplish in 390 hours. Although playing with strangers, using an unconventional UI, and battling the immaturity of trolls, Twitch successfully beat the Elite Four, showing that with hard work and perseverance, the gaming community can conquer all.

But it’s not only the players that have come together for a greater purpose. Just recently, the Global Game Jam 2014 was held, bringing together thousands of developers, designers, and producers in a push to create as many independent games as possible — all over the course of one weekend.

The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is an annual event that is simultaneously held in physical locations around the world. Exploring the process of game development, narrative exploration, and even visual design, the event calls upon all game developers and poses a challenge in the form of a secret theme, which developers will have to base a game on. The event takes off on Friday afternoon, and ends on Sunday afternoon, meaning developers have only two days to complete a fully-functional game.

This year’s secret theme was the quote, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” In the event’s opening keynote, Naughty Dog alumnus Richard Lemarchand challenged developers to create games that were experimental, and designer Kaho Abe called for games that reflected personal experiences, leading the way to these concepts being accepted into the mainstream.

Unsurprisingly, many developers and students poked fun at the hugely successful game “Candy Crush Saga”, and many others opted to focus on social games, following the trend that developers have now begun shifting to mobile and social gaming.

This would be enforced a few days later, with 20-year industry veteran Jim Veevaert leaving Zynga and console gaming to move to social gaming firm IGT. IGT, whose games are found on castlejackpot.com as well as in various land-based casinos, is one of the biggest developers in the world, and Veevaert says he’s never going back to console development. “The market here is so wide open, it’s amazing. And we see how fast games can grow… It’s incredible.”

GGJ also saw a host of other developers creating games for the mobile platform. Indie developer Exient, who worked on Angry Birds Go with Rovio, entered the provocatively-titled “Edge of Perception Saga: Crush the Candy Scrolls”, a perspective-shifting puzzle platformer. There was even a game designed to be played by licking your smart phone’s touch screen, and a game that used the concept of the “selfie” and turned it into an interactive experience with “extra bonuses for a duck face”.

All in all, GGJ brought together 23,198 developers from 488 locations in 72 countries, creating 4,290 games