My First Game Jam

          I attended the 2016 Global Game Jam last year. There was a jam site right on campus and I was encouraged to go regardless of my skill at making games. Seeing most of my classmates there eased my nerves a bit. At least I’m among people I know.

          At 5 p.m. the organizer, Mrs. Lowther, announced that the theme will be shown to us on a video in the Foundation Hall. We all moved to the theater and sat down to watch the short video. It addressed many things from the past year and at the end revealed the theme: ritual. Immediately after the video was over, we went back to the Grand Hall and started coming up with ideas for games relating to the theme.

          We had four ideas in total. Everyone was split into four teams with one artist, one programmer, and one designer. Some teams had more than three members, but nobody was left out. The original idea I had was meant to address obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) as people who suffer from the condition tend to engage in ritualistic behavior. Over the next forty-eight hours, that idea became scaled down incredibly smaller than what I had originally hoped.

          Everyone was working hard on their projects. We sustained ourselves primarily on junk food and snacks. As for sleep, some of us slept under the tables we worked on, others in various corners of the room in sleeping bags. I didn’t bring anything, so I ended up sleeping in an unoccupied corner in the Foundation Hall where we saw the Global Game Jam video. It was very cold in there, so I didn’t sleep too much. The second time I got to sleep I napped in my car. It was much warmer in there, but still didn’t sleep enough.

          During break times where we had to wait on someone else on the team to do something for the game, I would talk with the other jammers. They had cool ideas, but a slew of problems to deal with. I had my own problems, but I wasn’t sure how to address them. Until then, I hung out with a group of jammers who were talking about various things and watching CinemaSins to pass the time when the rest of their team would be back. One of them suggested we play Scenes from a Hat. That was the best part of the whole game jam: playing another game to get our minds off the ones we were working on.

          At the end, everything was to be uploaded to the Global Game Jam site regardless if it worked or not. Fortunately, my team had a working game. The other teams had trouble getting theirs to function properly. They did have some funny glitches that could have been mechanics on their own. After forty-eight hours of planning, executing, stressing, sleeping, procrastinating, panicking, and working… the jam went excellently. I will gladly do it again.

          That’s all that happened from my point of view. My team did a good job and the game worked fine. But that doesn’t mean it will go as smoothly this year. Sometimes you get put with people you don’t get along with. As for any newcomers who plan to attend this year’s Global Game Jam, here’s some advice:

        - Get as much sleep before the jam as possible. I tried to stay awake for forty-eight hours straight. Even with the help of caffeine, I only managed twenty hours. It might vary per person, but eventually you WILL have to sleep. You’ll think better when you’re rested anyways.

  - Use whiteboards. They are essential to planning ideas. Paper works for your own individual ideas, but group plans are best conveyed on the whiteboard where everyone can see the process. 
  - Accept when things don’t go as planned. The idea I had was bigger than the team could manage. It was scaled down considerably, but at least it worked. 
  - Be flexible with roles. Your team may have a dedicated programmer or artist, but you may have to try some things yourself. One of my teammates made most of the art assets, but I had to pitch in and make some while he was away. 
  - Even if you don’t know what to do, do something. You don’t need to have a ton of experience to do a game jam. If you want to record sound and use it as a sound effect, go right ahead. Know how to draw on paper? Your team could try and make a board game. Non-digital games are allowed in the Global Game Jam. You’ll just be posting a picture of what the game looks like and the list of the rules. 
 - Take breaks. Stressing out over your game will only make it harder to build. Come back after talking with other jammers and you might not only help them, but learn something about how to handle your own game. 
 - It’s not a contest. There is no winner, only games. When you look through the website’s games from past jams, you will see a ton of broken messes, but also some impressive works. No one will be perfect at this and you don’t have to be either.

Hopefully this helps those of you who wish to join the 2017 Global Game Jam. Maybe I’ll see you there.

What is a Gamer?

          “One who plays games.” Possibly the simplest way to define the term “gamer”. But what else does it mean? What can one do to earn the title of “Gamer”? What comes to mind when you hear the word?

          Becoming a gamer is easy. All you need to do is play something. It can be a board game, video game, card game, physical sport, whatever. You play it once and you’re technically a gamer. It’s like how writing a single sentence makes you a writer. Maybe you aren’t an excellent writer, but you wrote something. But what if you were to write more? What if you wrote two sentences? Or a paragraph? Essay? Short story? You’ll become a better writer, just like playing more games makes you better at gaming. But what does it mean for us to play?

          To play is to engage with the rules of the game. You follow the laws set before you to experience something fun and/or interesting. Breaking the rules effectively means breaking the game world itself. When you cheat the game, you deny the game itself and the engagement is gone. You’re no longer compelled to play, let alone win. And the gaming community detests nothing more than a cheater.

          Becoming involved with the gaming culture isn’t too difficult. We’re rather open-minded people. There may be the occasional player hiding behind a false identity and throwing insults, but we welcome all newcomers to join us. We’re not elitist jerks; if anything, we need new players to play with. If they stick around, they might become skilled enough to challenge the more hardcore audience.

          We play not to waste time, but to make the best of it. We’re not trying to avoid reality because life is difficult; we seek escape during our downtime to make the day easier to deal with. We’re not becoming violent; we’re learning about the world outside. We’re learning literary elements, history, science, creativity and art. We’re interacting with stories and characters we never knew could affect us on such a deep and emotional level. Ultimately, gamers are enjoying a pastime. Gamers are playing for their own reasons that perhaps only we will understand. Gamers are playing for the sake of the game.

          When I hear the word “gamer” I think of someone akin to a person who loves a good book. They seek out these stories because it fulfills some sort of need. A moviegoer does the same thing; they want to see amazingly beautiful narratives on a display. With games, we want to experience a new sensation that we’ve never had before. What’s it like to be trapped in a dark room with no escape but the end of the night shift? What’s it like to be a fire-breathing dragon? What’s it like fighting demons with nothing but a hatchet? What’s it like to be a hero? Or a villain? To be smart? Or slow? To be something beyond human? Games are the closest things we have to those experiences. To me, a gamer is “someone who not only plays games, but lives them.”

Investing Time

            So I tried playing an MMO I hadn’t played in a while. Guild Wars 2 to be exact. The same content was still there and the community seemed better than three years ago. But you know what wasn’t there? My old guild. They were just gone. None of my previous friends were logged in and I was without a guild. I tried joining a new guild, but it wasn’t the same. Trouble is, I’m not on nearly enough to play with them. School and work come first in my life and sometimes that means not playing anything at all. 

            Back in grade school, time was virtually meaningless. I woke up, ate a bowl of cereal, went to school, spent about eight hours in classes that were not interesting, then went home and had maybe 6-8 hours to do any homework I had to (and play games) before going to sleep. Then the cycle repeated over and over for a week. Weekends were possibly the only free time one could have. That was for all the personal things I wanted to do. When it comes to college, that schedule changes a bit.

            Classes vary from taking up a large part of your day or just a single hour. In some ways, it feels like any other school. You might ask yourself “Why am I here? I’d rather be anywhere else.” Let me ask you this then: if you could be anywhere else doing anything else, where and what would it be? Where are you willing to invest time and what will you be doing with that time? There’s an assignment due tomorrow. Maybe get that out of the way first? What about that project due at the end of the month? Should you work on that instead? Does it need more time compared to anything else? What about sleep? How long can you function without needing to call it a day? Knowing how to balance all of this is called “time management.” 

            You may not like to hear this, but you have to prioritize what you do in your day and you must unfortunately give some things up for other activities. I used to play online games after school as soon as I got finished with homework. Roughly, I invested six to eight hours a day playing video games (even more on weekends). You know what I could have possibly been doing during that time? Practicing drawing. I love drawing and I’ve gotten considerably better since I first attended Southern Arkansas University, but back then I took it for granted. “I could totally draw that. Just not right now.” That would be my go to response to any picture I looked at that someone else drew. I don’t know how many pictures I’ve seen and said that, but I’m sure it’s an embarrassingly large number. Knowing how to draw something is not the same as having drawn the thing. We’re judged by what we’ve done, not what we can do.

            So how does someone manage their time better? How do you break the cycle of non-production and stagnation? It varies per person, but it’s helped me to write down what I’m supposed to do today. That way, I have a physical list of tasks that need to be finished by the end of the day. Sure I cross out what I can’t do if something else comes up or my energy is spent, but I try to stick to my list. The hardest part of any task is getting started. If it’s something easy and enjoyable, then it’s not so difficult. However, if the task is demanding and strenuous, you might not be so eager to jump on it. The best thing for this is to do the most difficult task first. For me, that’s any kind of drawing. I do all of my drawing in the morning while I still have a good amount of energy to invest. If I put it off too long, I end up procrastinating more. Sometimes procrastination works and puts you in a sort of panic super human mode where you can write ten page essays in the span of one hour, but I try not to rely on it too much. If I put it all off until the last minute without any prior research, I’m boned.

            Time management doesn’t necessarily mean giving up all the things you like. I still play games despite my schedule, but it’s down to one to three hours a day. Some days I don’t get to play anything, but that’s fine. I can always play it tomorrow. It simply means you will need to prioritize certain events and tasks over others. It can be difficult, but it’s worth it. You feel more productive and accomplished at the end of the day and people like it when you put them first. Employers especially like it when you sacrifice your personal time for their projects. 

            If you’re thinking “I don’t want to have to give up my personal time for this!” I don’t blame you. I didn’t exactly want to give up online gaming. Thing is, that playtime wasn’t fulfilling to me anymore. When my guild was gone, I had nothing to return to. I moved on. Maybe the stuff you do in your time is highly fulfilling to you. I can’t and won’t make you give that up. But keep in mind that should you want to pursue multiple goals, you will have to let something else go (at least for a while).