Tuesday, February 5, 2013

My Experience at the Global Game Jam 2013

For those of you who are not aware of the Global Game Jam, The GGJ is a global event where small teams assemble across the planet with the goal to create a video game within 48 hours. This was an event that I, Jon Harwood participated in, in the year 2013. With only minimal knowledge of the unity engine and no experiences in C# I walked into MATC Main building. I was paired with 8 other people who had same knowlege as me. I learned a lot during this event i learned how invaluable it was to learn how to code. I learned that copying and pasting scripts that others had written does not count as plagerism. I learned what a good team lead should be like because my team's lead, Dane was fantastic at leading us and with out him I don't think our game would have been nearly as good. I think the most important thing that I learned was how a team should behave. Constant communication is a necessity. Establishing a proper vocabulary is also incredibly important. For example in the game that we made for GGJ we established differences between different visual assets. Instead of someone saying "I am sending the pictures over to you." they would say "I 
am sending the Icons over to you" It was also important to specify which means they would send the file. I also learned that the unity 3d engine is terrible for trying to make 2d sprite based games. At the end of the 48 days we stunk to high heaven but we had modified and existing tower defense with its own paths textures and models. I was hardly competition for any of the other groups but I felt good about it and it received high praise since we essentially had no prior experience. A few days later I was checked in on a let's play channel that I fancy called the Yogscast. There most recent lets play featured a game called Surgeon Simulator. This game was made at the 2013 game jam and it was a strange experience to watch a bunch of internet celebrities that ive had no contact with, reference and event that I participated in.

Jon out   

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