Here in New England we have one of the most broadly-talented and enthusiastic communities of developers in the world, and Boston is the de-facto hub of all that activity.
Boston has a fledgling and rapidly growing game development community, one that has grown and been bolstered thanks to events like the Boston Post Mortem (which doubles as the local chapter of the International Game Developers Association) and Boston Indies (which gathers local independent game developers together to share experiences and offer feedback on each others’ projects). I run Boston Game Jams, which similarly adds to this community.
What Are Game Jams?
Every two or three months an ad-hoc group of local artists, programmers, designers, and producers from the greater Boston area get together to make video games from start to finish in a single weekend. They’re not crazy; they’re “game jammers”.
The idea of a “game jam” began in 2002 by a group of designer-programmers who based the concept on musician jams. At a musicians “jam” each performer contributes organically to the entire group’s production, without pre-written music or any particular agenda as to what will be created.
A game jam is similar. Each participant comes to the jam with only one goal: to make a game, with a team, in one weekend. Instead of stifling creativity, this seemingly impossible goal in fact inspires creative thinking on all levels. Since you don’t have enough time to make another Halo or The Sims, teams are encouraged to attempt an innovative design to make their game interesting and worthwhile.
Boston Game Jams
I started Boston Game Jams in April of 2010 because I saw a tremendous amount of interest in these kinds of events in our local game development community here in Boston. My personal passion for game jams and a desire to inspire game developers new and old to try out new ideas and technologies and meet new people drove me to start Boston Game Jams.
We run a game jam roughly every two or three months. Each jam has its own theme. Last year included Immigration Jam and Lunar Jam. Sometimes we also focus on a particular technology to help develop our local expertise. For example, in January of this year we had an HTML5 Game Development Tools Jam where programmers and artists gathered to build and improve upon tools for making games that run on modern web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox without any additional add-ons or downloads.
The Games
What’s great about game jam games is that each one ends up being a unique composition based upon the skills, intersets, and backgrounds of the team members behind it. For example, at Immigration Jam in August 2010, Yilmaz Kiymaz and Alex Schwartz assembled a team to make a one-weekend game known as Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration. They picked this game because they’d recently learned a lot about the almost impossibly complex and convoluted process of legal U.S. immigration and wished to create a satire to expose the issue to people who are unaware of it.
Created at “Immigration Jam” – August 2010
Another game, Perchance to Dream, was created by a team assembled by Jonathon Myers and Arshan Gailus. Jon and Arshan came to Lunar Jam, our October 2010 jam, inspired to prototype an ambitious conversation-based adventure game. Perchance was dreamt up as part science fiction mystery and part psychological thriller with strong philosophical underpinnings. I’d never seen a game like this attempted at a game jam before, but the proof-of-concept demo they produced that weekend ended up being compelling and helped them gather more attention for their projects and long-term goals in the local development scene.
Created at “Lunar Jam” – October 2010
Supporting A Community
Game jams can inject new game ideas — in playable form, no less — into the development community and help avoid the stagnation of ideas that can result from local group-think. They also help keep the talent pool fresh as they allow latent game developers find their strengths and passions. What’s more, game jams end up being a great way for developers to meet and get to know one another. The extreme pressure of making an entire game within 48 hours creates a strong sense of camaraderie between jammers.
Game jams provide an opportunity for professionals and amateurs alike to work together as they explore new possibilities with games and learn valuable teamwork, creative thinking, and problem-solving skills. I fully embrace Boston Game Jams as a great opportunity to add to our unique community mix by offering a safe, fun environment for creative people of varying backgrounds to get together and try their hands at short-form game development.
