From 26th поthrough 28th of January, on the ground of the SUSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the largest international competition in computer games development – the Global Game Jam – is to be held for the 4th time. Participants of the GGJ will be given 48 hours for gathering a team and creating a game on a given topic from the scratch – simultaneously with more than 20 thousand programmers, artists, game designers and game lovers from tens of countries.
Participation in Global Game Jam is the best way to start designing games, meeting like-minded people and implementing one’s own experimental ideas. Prototypes of such games as Surgeon Simulator, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and Mushroom 11 have been firstly designed exactly at the GGJ, but subsequently they became commercially successful hits and obtained prestigious awards at the Independent Games Festival.
Moreover, Global Game Jam is also a great way to learn developing video games, because participants can be both newcomers and professionals; and all games of the past years and their source codes are available at the official GGJ website. Many games are also uploaded to mobile application stores; games of participants from SUSU - East Westwood and Petty Tyrant – were not an exception.
Sponsors and organizers of Global Game Jam are the largest IT companies and universities of the world: Facebook, Google, MIT, California Polytechnic University and many others.
Anybody who wants to can take part in the contest, but the number of vacant places is limited. Potential participants should preliminarily fill in an application form and register at the Global Game Jam website.
You can learn more details about the event, ask organizers questions and see photo and video of the past-years’ Jams in the VKontakte group.