That’s Entertainment! People urged to sign up to the Global Game Jam

Posted on Thursday 21 January 2016

The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world's largest game jam event – last year more than 5,000 games were produced in the course of just one weekend.

GGJ is hosted in hundreds of locations across the globe with thousands of people ‘jamming’ to the same theme all weekend.

The York event, which runs from January 29 to 31 at the University’s Ron Cooke Hub, is on a record-breaking course to beat the attendance numbers and 12 games entries from last year.

The structure of a jam involves participants gathering on Friday late afternoon to watch a short video and hear advice from leading game developers, before a secret theme is announced.

All sites worldwide are then challenged to make their games in 48 hours.

This year the York event has six prize categories - art, programming, audio, design, writing and overall game.

Jo Maltby, from the University of York’s Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence centre (IGGI), said the event was open to everyone.

"This will be the third year we have taken part and it promises to be the biggest one yet,” she said.

"The way people interpret the Jam is completely open: it can be a computer game but people can come along and say I want to produce a board game.

"We have hardcore coders, but we have artists and designers. It promises to be a fun weekend of creating games.

She added: “We have people from industry coming to the event so it is a real opportunity for people to showcase their skills and perhaps enhance their CV and future job prospects.”