DiGRA ‘13 – Global Game Jam Workshop
Allan Fowler
Waiariki Institute of Technology
Rotorua, New Zealand
6473468955
Susan Gold
Global Game Jam, Inc.
San Luis Obispo, CA USA
4152863489
Mirjam P. Eladhari
University of Malta,
Msida, Malta
35623402340
Ali Arya
Carleton University
Ottawa, Canada
6135202600
ABSTRACT
The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world’s largest connected game development creative activity on earth. Since the event's inception in 2009, thousands of game enthusiasts have participated in this forty-eight hour challenge, all working around a specified unifying theme. The event provides a unique opportunity to study and understand people, processes, and products; the three P’s of game development while challenging our ability to explore innovation, collaboration, and experimentation that transpires throughout the event.
The interest in researching the GGJ community has been evolving for the past few years, extending and modifying existing methodologies used by academics and researchers to understand the complexities and practicalities of developing a video game within a specified time and theme. In this workshop, we plan to explore the various aspects of the GGJ, directly or indirectly. This will bring together academics and Game Jam organizers to discuss and understand the considerable potential that the GGJ offers participants, academics, and organizers.
Keywords
Global Game Jam, Game Design, Programming, Collaborative Computing, Sandbox.
INTRODUCTION
GGJs are a collaborative organization between the Global Game Jam and local facilitators (Basic Questions, n.d.). This event brings together thousands of game enthusiasts with different skills to create games with a common theme (and some optional diversifiers) within a forty-eight hour constraint. (Global Game Jam 2013 Diversifiers, 2013) The interest in researching game jams, hackathons and similar events has been evolving for the past few years.
Game jams have the potential to provide an effective and focused experience and that participants gain valuable skills in prototyping and collaboration (Musil et al., 2010). The collaborative and community based environment that the GGJ provides supports creativity and learning, community building & development sandbox for experimentation and establishes spaces that support the indie game development ecosystem (Guevara-Villalobos, 2011).
In this workshop will discuss the various aspects of the GGJ, directly or indirectly.
Goals
The objective of this workshop is to promote the discussion forward towards synthesis of methodological knowledge. The outcome will be a greater understanding of the academic and professional research potentials of the GGJ. This information will be available to the GGJ and game development community through the Global Game Jam website. The workshop will be spent discussing case studies, existing literature, and sharing the experiences of the group. The plan for the DiGRA GGJ workshop is thirty minutes of presentations from key GGJ/Jam organizers which will be followed by an hour participatory workshop where groups brainstorm potential future research opportunities within the GGJ.
The presenters will include; Susan Gold (Global Game Jam Inc.), Giselle Rosman (Melbourne, GGJ), and John Tynes (Microsoft) who will present on the learning and or research potential within a Game Jam. Where possible, the presenters will be available for a short question and answer session if required. After the presentations, there will be a short summary of the GGJ research projects that have been published to date. We will then break into small groups to discuss potential research projects within GGJ 2014. The intention of this session is to discuss future research opportunities and form potential collaborations to undertake this research. These potential research projects will then be presented and discussed with the workshop participants with an aim to find synergies and obtain constructive and valuable feedback on each proposal. It is the intention of the workshop that these proposals will be then submitted to the GGJ Research Committee (GGJ-RC). The expectation is that these proposals will be published in leading journals or conference proceedings.
The work so far
Considering such a significant potential, and the limited studies done focusing and using the GGJ as research contact, the GGJ-RC has been established to promote, facilitate, organize and conduct scientific and technical research activities related to Innovation, Experimentation and Collaboration, on behalf of the Global Game Jam Executive Committee, in order to:
· Promote the importance of the GGJ as a global effort that can increase our understanding of game-related topics and can lead to the development of new ideas and methods
· Better understand the three P’s of game development (People, Process, Products) within the context of the GGJ
· Use the GGJ as an example or experiment to study game development and education, and other related topics in the game industry
· Use the GGJ as a global effort to study more general topics such as community building, group dynamics, and identity
· Disseminate and promote the research findings to a wide audience through publications, workshops, and conferences
· Work to create a better forum or conference for the above activities
· Provide a repository of work samples that can be used for classroom examples and critique.
The GGJ-RC helps researchers conduct their studies and publish the results by providing global surveys and direct observational field research that include questions through using approved research projects, inviting all GGJ participants to respond, collecting and passing the data to researchers, and organizing means of disseminating the research findings.
In 2012, the GGJ-RC sent out its first public Call for Proposals and approved three research studies:
· Key success factors for developing a videogames industry in South America
· Learning Aspects of the Global Game Jam
· Music in Video Games
In 2013, this grew to eight approved proposals, and a dedicated workshop in the Foundation of Digital Games 2013 conference. At the 2013 Foundations of Digital Games conference, five peer reviewed papers were published. From this initial workshop the following papers were published:
· The Evolution and Significance of the Global Game
· The Motivational Power of Game Communities - Engaged through Game Jamming
· Promoting Game Accessibility: Experiencing an Induction on Inclusive Design Practice at the Global Games Jam
· Game Conceptualization and Development Processes in the Global Game Jam
· Adaptability of the Global Game Jam: A Case Study in Japan
These papers generated good discussion amongst the attendees and presenters and the consensus was that the GGJ represents a significant opportunity for education, industry, and research.
Author Bios
Allan Fowler
Allan Fowler is a senior lecturer in game design at Waiariki Institute of Technology in Rotorua, New Zealand. He has been involved in the Global Game Jam since 2009 and has since then been actively engaged with organizing and promoting game jams for education and research. With over twenty years of industry experience Allan has a keen interest in providing applied and practical learning experience. Allan has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from RMIT University, a master’s degree from the University of Southern Queensland, and is a doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology.
Susan Gold
Prof. Gold’s personal focus is on collaboration found in video games, which resulted in the creation of the annual Global Game Jam (http://globalgamejam.org), an experiment in creativity and innovation in game development. Susan’s frequent conference talks and consistent outreach efforts has extended GGJ to over 63 countries, effectively changing the course of education and game development around the world. Susan served as chairperson of the International Game Developers Association Education SIG from 2006-2010, but continues to develop tools & resources for educator professional development and hopes to bring the lessons of game education to emerging game development communities. Susan has orchestrated numerous game education conferences including the Education Summit at GDC from 2006-2010 and the Federal Games Working Group Summit at Games for Change in 2012. Susan has been consulting with the Office of Science Technology Policy at the White House with projects like Apps for Healthy Kids, STEM education initiative and now, the Federal Working Group in Games. Susan got her start and organizational skills as a community activist in her hometown of Chicago. Her artwork, writing and ideas have been featured in numerous universities, galleries, museums and publications. Susan Gold received her Bachelor’s degree in Communication & Biology from the University of Tampa and Master of Fine Arts from The Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY.
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari
Dr. Mirjam P Eladhari is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Digital Games at the University of Malta. She teaches the subject of game design at the McS given by the institute, and works with the design aspects of the EU project C2Learn. In her research Dr Eladhari aims to design, develop and evaluate innovative features for constructive and positive game play experiences in games with many players. Her work is conducted in the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and game design (AI-driven based design).
Ali Arya
Ali Arya received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Tehran Polytechnic, Iran, and his PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Canada. With years of industry and academic experience as systems engineer, project manager, researcher, and lecturer, in 2006 he joined Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, where he is an Associate Professor of Interactive Multimedia. Ali’s research interests are Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Games, Artificial Intelligence, Educational Technology, and Digital Art. His research is supported by NSERC, SSHRC, OCE and industrial partners. Ali is a senior member of IEEE, and a member of ACM and editorial board and technical committees of journals and conferences in the areas of multimedia and graphics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the reviewers and Global Game Jam, Inc. for their support.
-- 5 --
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Basic Questions (n.d.) Retrieved from http://archive.globalgamejam.org/wiki/basic-questions#what (accessed Apr. 2013)
Global Game Jam 2013 Diversifiers (2013). http://globalgamejam.org/news/2013/01/23/global-game-jam-2013-diversifiers (accessed Apr. 2013)
Guevara-Villalobos, O. (2011). Cultures of independent game production: Examining the relationship between community and labour. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play.
Musil, J., Schweda, A., Winkler, D., & Biffl, S. (2010). Synthesized essence: What game jams teach about prototyping of new software products, In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering, (Cape Town, South Africa, May 01 - 08, 2010). ICSE’10. ACM, New York, NY. 183-186
-- 5 --