January 29th through January 31st, at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science of South Ural State University, the Global Game Jam, a major worldwide contest on designing computer games, will be traditionally held, for the 8th time. In accordance with new rules of the contest, in 2021 it will be organized in an online format. The GGJ participants are given 48 hours to team up and create a game from scratch on the specific topic simultaneously with more than 20 thousand programmers, artists, game designers, and those, who simply love computer games, from dozens of countries!
Participating in the Global Game Jam is the best way to start designing games, meet some like-minded people, and fulfil your experimental ideas. The prototypes of such games as Surgeon Simulator, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and Mushroom 11 were first developed at the GGJ, but later became commercially successful hits and received the prestigious Independent Games Festival awards.
Besides, the Global Game Jam is a perfect way to learn how to develop video games, since both newbies and professionals can participate in it; and all the games of the past years, as well as their source codes are available on the GGJ official website. With each year, the quality of games made over such a short period of time increases. Take, for example, Magnefique and Battle of Islands. It is hard to believe that they were designed by a couple of people within 48 hours.
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The sponsors and organizers of the Global Game Jam are the major IT companies and universities of the world: Facebook, Google, MIT, California Polytechnic University, and others. The sponsors of the event at SUSU are well-known IT companies from Chelyabinsk and Ekaterinburg: SKB Kontur, Odin Games, TAPCLAP, ICVR, and Napoleon IT. Professional developers of these companies will not only help the participants gather teams of like-minded people and choose good ideas for games, but will also award presents for the best games.
Everyone interested can take part in the contest, but the number of places is limited. Potential participants should preliminarily fill out a form and register on the Global Game Jam web-site.
You can find more information on the event, ask organisers questions, as well as watch photos and videos of the past gams in the Vkontakte group: https://vk.com/globalgamejam.
Date of event:
Opening: January 29, 17:00
Closing: January 31, 16:00
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