We hosted our first game jam! Read more about our thoughts.
Video games are a rapidly growing economic sector that is even leaving music and cinema behind in international revenue. To give students an insight into this exciting area, Merih Türkoglu and Mathias Bauer organized a three-day game jam during the project week in the winter semester 2022/23. At the Hochschule Ruhr West - University of Applied Sciences internal game jam, students met to develop a game prototype within a short period of time, working in teams.
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Participants were gradually introduced to the concept of a game jam. Using pre-set game packages, three prototypes were conceptualized and developed under the theme of motivation. All semester students got a firsthand look at the complex production process of game development.
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A highlight of the three-day game jam was a lecture by a real game developer from the industry: On the second day of the game jam, Mateo Covic, winner of the German Computer Game Award for prototypes, gave a talk on the relevance of prototypes in game development. In addition to presenting his award-winning title, Makis Adventure, there was also an exciting exchange between the participants, guest speaker, and organizers.
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After three intense days, the game jam ended on Wednesday with pizza and a presentation of the prototypes in a roundtable discussion. The students were able to gain many new experiences and reflect on them in a relaxed atmosphere. To support the further development of the prototypes beyond the event, all participants received a voucher for the Unity Asset Store — the perfect foundation to develop their first game.
Due to the extremely positive feedback, the organizers are looking forward to offering more extracurricular events at HRW in the broad field of professional video game development.
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One group even published their Jam-Game on itch.io; check it out: