From Player to Creator: My Experience at the Global Game Jam 2018
By Zane
I have played video games as far back as I can remember;
heck, I still remember my first computer game, Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon. Whenever I see a game that I think that
I am going to like, I take out my wallet or grab my debit card and get it for
myself. Playing video games is something that I can understand and become
proficient in in a short amount of time, but creating a video game? Creating a
video game was something foreign to me. So having to participate in the Global
Game Jam as part of my English Course on Video Games was a nerve-racking
experience.
What surprised me most about the GGJ, though, was the level
of creativity that it was capable of generating amongst its participants. One
would think that having to create a video game based on a pre-determined theme
in forty-eight hours would be hard, but not as hard as I thought it would be.
Granted, the theme of “transmission” might be limiting to some people, but we
quickly learned that the theme did not have to dictate everything that we had
to do for our video game. All we had to do was find a way to include some form
of transmission, no matter how vague, into the game and we would meet the requirements.
It was still frustrating at times, but once we got started, we did fine.
I was working in a
group of four: there was myself, Ryan Kight, our leader, Zoe, and Akira Lane.
In our group, I never really had an assigned role. Putting it simply, I was
kind of the everyman of the group; if something needed to be done, I would be
asked to do it. Mostly, though, my contributions consisted of creating the text
for our game, mainly for the failed endings. Other than that, my biggest
contribution was providing all the sound effects and the voice-acting for our
game, which I enjoyed. I make videos for YouTube and do a lot of commentary for
them, so I fit right in.
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| Some of Zoe's impressive sketches for in game characters. |
As for our game concept, it went through a lot of development. Starting out, Ryan’s idea was this dating sim involving a Mars rover and talking to rocks. Ryan’s logic was “if they can make a dating sim involving pigeons, then we can do one about rocks”. We soon realized it was not a good idea, though, and decided to switch to something else: we created a text based game involving a pilot who crashes on an alien planet and needs to find the parts they need to call his mom and pick them up. The game had a solid concept and, thanks to Zoe’s artwork, great imagery. If we had more time, I think we could flesh out the game and make it into a full-blown text game with visuals and everything; ride the gravy train as far as we can!
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| This reminds me of the infamous fail that Ubisoft had with Assassin's Creed Unity, only not as creepy |
My favorite game, though, was this game made using Unity Engine where you play as this guy trying to locate and turn on radio’s inside a room. Aside from the impressive graphics, I mainly liked it for the easter egg from one of the radio’s.
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| Zoe= Good Artist |
Would I participate in the GGJ again? As much fun as I had, I would decline. For me, I feel like having to revolve a game around a set theme can be too constrictive at times; I would prefer to start open-ended and work my way down. I guess I will have to learn to adapt, however.
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| We couldn't shake the original dating sim concept, so we snuck it in in the form of a conversation with a anthropomorphic UFO. Her name is UFie. |
Global Game Jam Livestream
