Morrisville State College is gearing up to serve as a jam site for the 2018 Global Game Jam, the world’s largest on-site game creation event, taking place Jan. 26 through 28.
GGJ is a fast-paced, 48-hour digital “jam session” which gives teams of artists, hobbyists, programmers and gamers throughout the world a chance to brainstorm, innovate, collaborate and develop new ideas for game design.
GGJ begins at Morrisville Friday, Jan. 26, at 5 p.m. in Charlton Hall with the unveiling of this year’s theme. Teams, some of which are formed on-site, spend the next 48 hours brainstorming and designing a new video game based on said theme from scratch without any outside help.
All finished GGJ games are then archived for everyone to play on the Game Jam website at globalgamejam.org/games.
Registration for GGJ at Morrisville remains open for students and non-students 18 and older of all skill levels at morrisville.edu/gamejam. The $10 registration fee includes a T-shirt, pizza, beverages and breakfast.
This is the ninth year Morrisville is serving as a host site for the international event, which will be celebrating its 10th year. Games that participants at the Morrisville site have created include:
- Traps: The Spanish Adventurer (a journey to prove capability as an adventurer, by collecting all of the gold)
- Ex-Extinction (Sir Captain Rawrington must save his dinosaur ancestors from the incoming asteroid onslaught)
- Flight Team Phoenix (pilot a phoenix spaceship and eliminate alien enemies)
- Cardiac Canyon (a hiker tumbles down a cliff and must follow his heart to lead him through the dark and back to his camp)
- WaveBummer (control a wave that a hamster rides, using power-ups and surviving as long as you can)
- Trumma (help a poor helpless soul who has stumbled upon a cult’s sinister ritual escape).
Morrisville will be streaming live during portions of the event, which will be broadcast on the GGJ Twitch Central Channel.
For more information about GGJ at Morrisville, visit www.morrisville.edu/gamejam or contact Richard Marcoux, Ph.D., at 315.684.6788 ormarcourp@morrisville.edu.
More information about Global Game Jam, including a database of downloadable games, photos and video from the events and more, can be found athttp://globalgamejam.org.
Global Game Jam history
- 2009: 53 sites, 23 countries, 1,650 participants, 370 games
- 2010: 138 sites, 39 countries, 4,300 participants, 900 games
- 2011: 169 sites, 44 countries, 6,500 participants, 1,500 games
- 2012: 242 sites, 47 countries, 10,684 participants, 2,209 games
- 2013: 319 sites, 63 countries, 16,705 participants, 3,248 games
- 2014: 488 sites, 72 countries, 23,189 participants, 4,292 games
- 2015: 518 sites, 78 countries, 28,000 participants, 5,438 games
- 2016: 632 sites, 93 countries, 36,164 participants, 6,866 games
- 2017: 701 sites, 95 countries, 36,401 participants, 7,263 games