Manila ‘game jam’ conducts 48-hour session

About 60 gaming enthusiasts gathered for 48 long hours to participate in the 2nd Manila Game Jam, held recently at the University of the Philippines Information Technology Training Center (UP ITTC) in Quezon City. The event was part of the Global Game Jam (GGJ) simultaneously staged in 44 countries, 170 locations with 6,500 participants. According to the organizers, the 2011 GGJ tripled in size, including locations compared to the first event in 2009. With almost 1,500 games produced and submitted to the official global website, this year so far was the biggest ever game jam to date. The game jam is a development event for students, professionals, amateurs, independent game developers and even hobbyist who want to create video games in a controlled environment, over the course of 48 hours. It is to challenge the skills of game developers in order to showcase what games they can produce under a time constraint and with a central theme to guide them to conceptualize their games. The games were not expected to be super fancy, but they are meant to demonstrate the ability of developers to code and the ability to come up with the working concept for a game. Teams were free to use any software they have, even commercial ones, provided that the participants owns the software and have installed on their own personal computers. They were also free to download from the Internet the software which they require. The Manila leg started at 3 PM last Friday, January 28, 2011 and ended at exactly 3 PM of Jauanry 30th, Sunday. Teams uploaded their game before the 3 PM deadline to qualify. In line with the game objective, to encourage collaboration with new friends and peers, teams were formed only during the game jam. Eighteen teams formed among the participants and battle it out for three major awards, the Participants’ Choice, Jury prize runner up, and the coveted Jury Prize. Each team were given time to present their games for judging. The games were judged by the strength of concept and execution, most creative use of the theme, and which was the most polished in terms of playability, given that the participants had only 48 hours to finish the game. Team Angry Robots attack (Lizz Buenaventura and Josh Liao), with their Bunnypocalypse project, went home with the Jury Prize. Team Mazelle (Marnielle Estrada) bagged both the Jury prize runner-up award and the Participant’s Prize award. (For a complete list of the 2011 MGJ games, go to www.manilagamejam.wordpress.com) The GGJ, which aims to connect the community of gamers and developers through cooperation, innovation, creativity, and experimentation is a volunteer effort of organizers, games enthusiasts, and developers . As such, all participants agree to share and make the games available worldwide under a Creative Commons no-sell license. The organizers of MGJ 2011 – International Game Developers Association- Manila, Game Developers Association of the Philippines, and UP ITTC — said that future game jams will become bigger to attract more participants all over the country and to serve as a venue for Filipino game developers to show the world what they are capable of. — Newsbytes.ph