Whether they’re artists, programmers, game designers, sound designers, game devs are our heroes as shapers of worlds of which we’re superheroes also.
And when they come together, they make stories come alive, even in 48 hrs. Their secret could be pizza. Or a combination of their passion, craft and team spirit.
Once a year, people come together, each with their own talent to the Global Game Jam. For the love of video games.
From 31st to 2 February, in the heart of Bucharest’s historic center, 86 game devs spent a weekend together making games. At the same time, other 48 654 jammers from 118 countries. More than half of the countries in the world physically hosted the game jams that weekend.
“As long as we have each other, we will never run out of problems” was the theme of the 1st ever annual GGJ held in 2009. Over 1,600 participants in 23 countries produced 307 games. So nowadays the number of jammers multiplied by 30. And the event continued each year with soulful themes such as: “Deception” (2010), “Extinction” (2011), An image of “Ouroboros” (2012), The Sound of a Heartbeat (2013), “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” (2014), “What do we do now?” (2015),(…), “What home means to you” (2019).
AMC Artists Dragoș Dexx Casian and Marius Petre got in The Bucharest Global Game Jam 2020.
“As long as we have each other, we will never run out of problems”, I said to myself and followed their path.
Mr. Sad is:
Programmers – Silviu Mihail| Radu Dumitrescu
Sound Artist – Adrian Tudor
3D artists – Dragoș Casian | Marius Petre
This year, the theme was “Repair” and the first ideas that I heard sprang out at our neighbour team’s table, cuties Last Tales family, while hanging out with Cristina, Andrada and Andrei on the first night.
They won the Best Game community award for “Mice on Mars”, a 2D Arcade co-op game, super fun as expected from the creators of the Raiders of the Lost Island game.
When you find your wolf pack, it’s roller coaster, baby!
This is Marius’s conclusion when he presented his weekend fun to us. For a jam to be smooth and productive, the team must find its balance, cool and fast forward thinking.
And this is how Junkyard JunkBOT appeared, a tiny robot tasked with repairing his own kind, until eventually he will become himself a damaged robot on an assembly line.
That’s a good one, Mr. Sad!
The event was organised in Bucharest by Game Heroes for the fifth year in a row, with support from CINETic (The International Center for Research and Education in Innovative-Creative Technologies in Bucharest) and RGDA – Romanian Game Developers Association.
See here photos from the event.
Reported by Georgiana Toea, Community Builder AMC