Game Jammin'

I spent a couple hours yesterday at the Vancouver site of the Global Game Jam. This is the third game jam that I've been a part of, either as a participant or an organizer, and it definitely won't be the last. There is a fantastic energy that permeates a game jam, precipitated by what seems an impossible task: Develop a fully functioning and playable video game within 48 hours. There is enthusiasm, creativity, laughter, mistake and missteps, and an inevitable scramble to the deadline, yet the is both empowering and exhausting. If you have any interest at all in making games, I wholeheartedly endorse the experience.

This time around I wasn't participating; but being among the thirty or so odd game jammers I couldn't help but become somewhat nostalgic for a time less than a year ago when myself and five other students at my school were working on an experimental gameplay project. For three months straight all we did was develop (mostly) Flash and ActionScript3 based experimental video games. Each game was built by two or three people, ranging from 3 days to 2 weeks to complete; by the end of the project we had developed a total of 18 games. You can play some of them here.

Making games so quickly necessitates some sacrifices. Sometimes the 'polish' that a game needs to make a true 'experience' goes out the window; things like extra levels and bonus game play are not generally an option. The upside is that the sacrifices demand a focus on core mechanics - the fundamental actions the player performs to win the game. Since video games are first and foremost meant to be fun it follows that the core mechanic must be fun. This is not an easy problem to solve; fun is most often proved through iteration on the game's design and near-constant tweaks to gameplay - generally not a quick process.

When development is focused exclusively on making a single core mechanic fun, there is a certain purity in the work that I feel is lacking from commercial video game development. (Not to say that commercial video game development is inferior - it's just a different set of challenges.) This purity of focus means that the final product is a game that has no pretensions and no demands on the player other than to enjoy the gameplay; that evident enjoyment is the true reward of game development.