At the weekend, the second Global Game Jam took place, and Denki sponsored the Scottish leg of it, held in Glasgow (although there was a smaller gathering in Dundee too). The Global Game Jam sees people come together to produce the best game they can in the space of 48 hours. It’s a tough challenge, but one that people seem to rise to. As a result of our sponsorship, yours truly was a judge. Although I was considerably outnumbered by people from Realtime Worlds (by 4 to 1, stat fans), you’ll be pleased to learn that I didn’t let them scare me.
The SGJ was held at Glasgow Caledonian, who do a great job of organising the whole shebang and keeping the teams going. At least from what I can gather, since I simply swanned in at the end and passed judgement.
There were nine teams this year, of varying levels of experience, and each of them had clearly worked hard on their projects. Although the end results varied, what impressed me was the variety and quality of the ideas at the heart of each project. I hope that each of the teams will carry on working on their ideas, since I’d like to see where they go. You can read the wrap up post from the event here (includes download links for each entrant).
As with last year, though, it was a great experience, and one which I’ll happily repeat next year! Assuming my judging wasn’t too harsh…
-David (@dwlt)