What is a Game Jam and Why Should You Care?

For the uninitiated, game jams are inventive events where small groups of people team up to create a videogame from scratch, usually with a timeline of anywhere between 24 hours to a week. Much like playing live music together, game jams are also hubs of improvisation, learning, and teamwork. While game jams can be done solo, they are designed to be collaborative experiences, encouraging participation from folks of all backgrounds and levels of game development experiences.

In order to paint a better picture of why game jams are so important, I teamed up with fellow Autodesk colleague and game jam-veteran Hagen Deloss. Deloss, better known online as Portland-based multi-media artist @gloombones, has participated in over 20 game jams since 2011. For anyone nervous about entering their first jam, this article will aim to alleviate some of the stress and demystify the experience, allowing you to focus on having fun and improving your skills. Let’s take a look at why game jams are the perfect event for both professional developers and novices alike.

Setting Expectations

The first thing you should note before joining your first game jam is to level your expectations. The stakes are only as high as you make them. There’s no need to worry about how your team’s project will be perceived by the world at large. Whatever your skillset is – art, music, coding – remember that you’re not alone. Just as there’s bound to be someone on your team who’s just as nervous, there’s just as likely to be an experienced developer in your corner. “There’s a natural mentorship that can be born out of a jam… Collaboration is a skill in and of itself and jams will teach that very well. You’ll get a lot of hard and soft skills [by participating]”, says Deloss.

Even when it comes to clashing egos, Deloss sees an opportunity for growth: “Collaborators can sometimes have bad ideas, and that’s okay, because you may have bad ideas too. But instead of saying 'This person has a bad idea' it’s really just about guiding them into finding the brighter side of their bad idea. It’s about finding that gold nugget. The bad ideas in a game jam will become apparent very fast.”

Despite what you may have been led to believe, the point of entering a jam isn’t to ship off some fully realized videogame to the world. No one should go into a jam expecting to come out with everything figured out. “[For newcomers], Game jams can be stressful enough, so do not expect a final product,” Deloss advises. “Look at them as a learning experience first. [Game Jams] are opportunities to learn a new workflow, try a new style, etc. A good long-tail goal is education and self-improvement. Don’t put added pressure of needing to create a final product. Sometimes you just need to see if a core game loop has legs.” So don’t let anticipatory anxiety get the better of you.

Teamwork is the name of the game

The collaborative nature of jams is built into their structure. If you’re new to the scene, you’ll likely be working with other developers for the first time and will need to work around each member’s respective skill/comfortability levels. Much like sports, you need to be a team player and have a sense of good sportsmanship with your fellow competitors as well. Be prepared to make compromises as you work alongside other developers, potentially for the first time.

Deloss explains, “… game jams aren’t about getting your way. They are a malleable give-and-take process, more so than even a full-length studio project. It’s not about trying to push specific things. It’s about cutting corners, making things work, and making the project viable. Aim for that one small thing and do it well. You’ll be happier for it.” Don’t get too hung up on whether you make the best game of the event or what others will think. Instead, focus your energy on being open-minded and experimenting with new ways of creating. Even the most storied developer could learn a thing or two from collaborating with other creators on this smaller scale. You might even learn something about yourself as a person along the way.

How to find game jams

Game jams are one of the most hands-on learning experiences you can get as a developer separate from the rigid structure of formal education or hired work. They’re invaluable experiences that can provide you with skills that will be important throughout your career. That being said, a game jam is not a perfect reflection of the “traditional” game development pipeline either. “It isn’t very realistic to the workflow of a game on a larger scale”, Deloss explains. “Games take years to create. Game jams are a very truncated version of the game development pipeline but things that DON’T come into play are things like marketing, business development, etc. There are things you can take out of a game jam that can’t necessarily be removed from a full-length game with so many people involved.”

In a larger studio setting, overarching creative decisions are often already decided upon by the time you’ve been brought on to the project. In a game jam, it’s up to you and your teammates to make these decisions together on the fly, leveraging each member’s abilities in the best ways possible. In a professional setting, there are budgets to manage, longer production times, and layers of executive decision-making that may impede your progress. In a game jam, the only serious creative road blockers should be your time limit and the specificity of your event’s theme/prompt (if there is one).

If any of this has piqued your interest, it’s time to start looking for the right event. The best way to get started in game jams is to first see what’s available in your area. One great place to get started is through indiegamejams.com (IGJ). As recently highlighted in our piece, The Game Developer’s Resource Guide, IGJ is a comprehensive, interactive calendar of game jams happening all around the globe. IGJ also offers a free newsletter of upcoming events if you want a regularly curated list of options throughout the year. Game Jams are hosted by a variety of different institutions around the world, offering both in-person and fully remote events for anyone to join and as a result, every host does their own game jams in slightly different ways. Your local game jam may have no restrictions on genre, while others like Portland’s annual Summer Slow Jams, for example, provide specific gameplay or genre prompts for participants to work off.

Depending on the size of the event, there can also be a variety of resources available to help first-timers: “Some places offer a lot of resources from the get-go to help the creators make the best of their project like Global Game Jam or Ludum Dare. Jams can be very organized with a prompt or a theme from the event or, more often than not, just a single word or saying as a prompt. Knowledge is important but the level of organization of the participants is often colored by the organization of the event’s leaders.”

Every jam has a slightly different audience and goal in mind with even some larger studios hosting internal jams. Recognizing the format’s penchant for producing oft-kilter ideas that may not come up organically otherwise, Double Fine Productions has been hosting internal game jams since 2012. Double Fine describes their annual jam as:

• … a two week break to collect our thoughts during big projects but [where] the work doesn’t entirely stop. In a process called “Amnesia Fortnight,” anyone and everyone at the studio can pitch a game concept. The goal: turn those ideas into working prototypes in that two week period. … The result? New projects embodying the studio’s ethos of comedic adventures and unique games. Split into teams and working on a tight deadline, Double Fine’s stable of artists, programmers, producers, musicians and other artists must come together and overcome technical hurdles in a game jam bonanza. (Some of those have led to full projects like Iron Brigade, Stacking, Costume Quest, and more!).

Most jams don’t end with publishers greenlighting projects like Amnesia Fortnight, but events like this are a testament to the format’s appeal. Sometimes studios have scouts who go out of their way to find especially viable projects which would benefit from funding and a traditional game development pipeline, or simply to find new talent. No matter your level of experience, there’s always something to be gained from this unique exercise in collaborative, on-the-fly creation.

From novice jammer to his team’s lead visual artist over the course of a decade, he’s clearly caught the game jam bug. Despite juggling a busy job at Autodesk and his work as Gloom Bones, it's the specific flavor of creativity and collaboration native to game jams that keeps folks like Hagen coming back year after year. These days, having racked up all this experience, Deloss now finds himself in a mentor position on his jam teams, much like the kind strangers that guided him during those hectic early jams. So, I asked him, what keeps him coming back?

“It’s knowing that I’ve still got the chops to create a project that is thought-provoking and engaging. It’s very satisfying to know that you’re creating something that is creating joy,” he tells me. Ultimately, it’s about having fun and sharing your art with others. It’s about the joy of creation and sharing this joy with as many people as you can. If you’ve never been part of a game jam, consider this a sign to take the plunge. Who knows, you might catch the bug yourself too.