{"id":990,"date":"2015-12-13T15:37:18","date_gmt":"2015-12-13T13:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playlab.uta.fi\/?p=990"},"modified":"2015-12-13T15:37:18","modified_gmt":"2015-12-13T13:37:18","slug":"what-is-a-game-jam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/what-is-a-game-jam\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a game jam?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is a #gamejam? An academic definition explains.\u00a0#gamestudies #gamedesign #gamedev #GGJ<\/em><\/p>\n

Game jams have become a big phenomenon in game developer and hobbyist communities. They\u00a0gather groups of enthusiasts to work together on an intensive schedule, providing a platform for\u00a0collaborative creative expression. Big jams like the Global Game Jam<\/em> gather tens of thousands of\u00a0participants in different countries. Many jams have also emerged that specialize in a certain theme,\u00a0such as health technologies, or take place in unexpected locations, like a moving train. As the\u00a0interest in game jams has increasingly grown, many game researchers have also seen game jams\u00a0as a viable research area for studying game design and development processes.<\/p>\n

As it is often is with new research areas, the researchers first need to agree upon definitions and\u00a0explanation of terms to be able to communicate about them in a coherent manner. Plenty of\u00a0academic research articles that concern game jams have already been published, but they often\u00a0approach the phenomenon with a slightly different emphasis and point of view. To address this\u00a0issue, game researcher Annakaisa Kultima<\/strong> from the University of Tampere Game Research Lab,\u00a0also a Global Game Jam associate herself, has reviewed 20 prior academic papers that in one\u00a0way or another address the conceptualization of game jam.<\/p>\n

By combining the views presented in the literature with her personal game jam experiences,\u00a0Kultima proposes the following definition:<\/p>\n

A game jam is an accelerated opportunistic game creation event where a game is created\u00a0in a relatively short timeframe exploring given design constraint(s) and end results are\u00a0shared publically.<\/em><\/p>\n

The definition reveals many underlying aspects of game jams. Firstly, game jams involve creation\u00a0of games \u2013 either on a fixed location or online \u2013 often starting from scratch. They are accelerated:\u00a0the jam usually happens within a relatively short timeframe compared to the usual game making\u00a0process. Design constraints such as themes or technological limitation are often set to facilitate\u00a0creativity. Opportunism refers to the participant\u2019s expectations: jammers hope to gain networking\u00a0opportunities, experience, awards, or other positive outcomes. Finally, the end results of jams are\u00a0commonly shared to the public, whether by presentations or releasing the game to distribution.<\/p>\n

Game jams are an intriguing opportunity for game design researchers. They compress the whole\u00a0game design and development process into a brief timespan, making it easy to observe, document
\nand conduct experiments on. Continuing with the proposed definition, more comparable empirical,\u00a0theoretical and experimental research on the topic can be conducted to help understand how\u00a0games are being created.<\/p>\n

Kultima, A. (2015). Defining Game Jam. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the\u00a0Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015), June 22-25, 2015, Pacific Grove, CA, USA.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is a #gamejam? An academic definition explains.\u00a0#gamestudies #gamedesign #gamedev #GGJ Game jams have become a big phenomenon in game developer and hobbyist communities. They\u00a0gather groups of enthusiasts to work together on an intensive schedule, providing a platform for\u00a0collaborative creative expression. Big jams like the Global Game Jam gather tens of thousands of\u00a0participants in different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-research-highlights","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}