Reflective Blog Post-The Game Jam

Introduction

I participated in the University Game Jam last week.  A game jam involves students of different backgrounds coming together to form a team and create a game, the game jam was a fun contest with prizes awarded for the top games created. The jam was structured as follows; I was assigned to a multi-disciplinary team where we had about the whole weekend (72 hours) to produce a game. We were tasked with creating a language learning educational game, and it was a language of our choice or based on the expertise we had within the group. What was great about participating in the game jam was that you did not need to have any coding or advanced coding game skills as there are multiple game formats that can be created.

 

Team

Upon signing up for the game jam I was assigned to the team called Kangaroo, which consisted of four students including myself. 2 of the students were studying the international business and languages course and myself and another student in the Creative Digital Media Course. Once we were assigned our teams, we virtually introduced ourselves to one another and began discussing our background and our skills. Once we established the skills that we would like to contribute to the team, we assigned roles and began the brainstorming and planning stages. My role was the game production and export, whilst other students’ roles where, game design and graphics, language structure and language scripting for the game.

Organisation and Planning

Once we had our team’s name and team roles decided and assigned, we began the organisation and planning of the game. Our first group task that was assigned to us, in order to break the ice and get to know each other more was a logo creation task. We were tasked with creating a logo that represents our team and our team’s ethos, we were given about 20 mins to create this logo in our teams and then present them into the main chat. Our team did a quick brainstorm on names for the logo, after quick deliberation we had decided on the abbreviation CPL which stands for Creative language providers. I then used adobe logo creator and typed in some keywords suggested by the other team members, such as avatar and speech bubble, we then decided on colours and we were then able to cultivate the logo which can be seen below.

source: team logo created by adobe logo maker

After the presentation of the logo, we were left to our own devices to create the game. Firstly, we discussed our educational background with one another, we also discussed our skills and the skills that we are confident in regarding game creation. Other members of the team had a vast knowledge of the Spanish language in reading, speaking, and writing, so it was quickly affirmed that we would be creating a Spanish language learning game.

Whilst continuing the group call, we began discussing popular language learning games that we could reference to, Duolingo and Babbel were the top two language games that we could think of, however considering the complexity of these game designs, we decided to opt for a simpler route. After numerous discussions and a presentation from one of the game jam participants from last year, we opted for creating a memory matching card-board game. Once established the game type and format was decided, we assigned game roles, planned to meet virtually later in the day and then individually went about creating our individual parts for the game

 

Process/Production

I was responsible for creating the final game in our group. My responsibility involved collecting all the information and graphics provided by other team members and putting them into a game. As we decided on a board game, the final game output would not have been interactive. I decided to research online on how to create an interactive board game. I came across this video below. This method of using PowerPoint to create a game was something I had not seen before, and since my skills using unity and C# were not that strong , this was the best route that I could have taken for the group. The process of creating the PowerPoint game started off smoothly, I was able to quickly assemble the game from the graphics created by my fellow classmate, and I was also able to smoothly include the Spanish learning phrases provided by the language students.

              

 

Lessons Learned

I was very happy to participate in the college game jam and found it quite beneficial not only for college practice, but also for future workplace practices. The main takeaways that I got from this weekend’s game jam was the importance of teamwork and communication within a team. I believe our team worked very well with each other during the game jam. There was adequate communication and continuous updates and efforts from each team member all the way up until the final game jam submission. I believe we all communicated well, and we all took time to learn from and listen to each other’s points

An aspect of the game jam that I thoroughly enjoyed was the time limit factor, the pressure put on us to create a final output in 72 hours, this was equal parts enjoyable and stressful as we worked closer towards the deadline. I found it challenging creating the actual game format, I think this is due to the fact that I was placed in a group where the members where not confident in their gaming skills, so I took it upon myself to create the game. Something else I learnt from working as a part of a team in this game jam is learning to take a step back. Oftentimes I like to assign myself the role of the team leader and split the roles and structure of the team amongst myself and other team members, this time I was able to take a step back and allow the other team members to lead and learn to follow in a supportive way.

source: game world map created in adobe illustrator

source: Snippet from memory game-beach themed level