By Jurge Cruz-Alvarez
Video games are an interactive and technically impressive form of entertainment that also continues to be very popular, with video game sales in 2018 reaching $43.4 billion in sales according to the Entertainment Software Association and The NPD Group.
They come in all shapes and sizes and are enjoyed by millions. But not many who enjoy them might know how they’re actually made. Video games are of course made by individuals and teams with the skills to realize a vision, but those skills sometimes need to be worked out and implemented to make sure they stay sharp. That is where game jams come in. These are events for developers to practice and experiment with game development.
One of the biggest game jams is the Global Game Jam, a yearly event with locations across the world where developers meet to make video games or non-digital games in a condensed time frame of 48 hours. From locations in the United States to cities in different countries like Barcelona, this event reaches far and wide.
On Jan. 25, University of Nebraska at Omaha Libraries and the UNO Creative Production Lab hosted the Omaha meet-up for Global Game Jam at Mammel Hall. Beginning on Friday and ending on Sunday, developers brainstormed ideas based on the theme of the game jam of “What Does Home Mean to You?” Having received the theme, developers quickly took up the white boards in the room to come up with ideas and a design for their games.
In attendance were developers with varying skill sets. Asset generators familiar in 3D and 2D, programmers, composers and more were all getting to know each other and forming teams. Two previous strangers, now turned co-project developers, were Oakland Thomas Eliff and Roosevelt Fitzgerald Boyland III.
The two began by writing down ideas and concepts next to each other until they landed on the design for a platforming game, similar to something like a Super Mario Brothers, about a mobile home owner who wishes to own a castle. Players would then collect 100 coins spread across two environments to upgrade their home.
Roosevelt leveraged his skills in programming to put their game together, Oakland created the game’s visual assets and design, and other game jam members assisted with aspects like music. Speaking to the two and being there since the inception of the idea, it was clear that a big reason why they went forward with this design was because they kept in mind the size of their team, their skills and how much time they had to make it.
“The bigger the game, the more people it requires, the more unique skill sets it requires and the more time it requires,” says Roosevelt on the subject of resources needed to make a game. “If you are a one person team. Do not expect to make Skyrim or Fallout or like literally any AAA video game title.”
Speaking to both of them, it was clear that the quality of a video game really depends on the team behind it, the scope of a project and the resources they have available to them. This is especially true if one sets out to make a game on their own.
“Once they start working by themselves, then they’re going to have to figure out that there’s characters to design, there’s environments to design, the way the characters move,” says Oakland.
Of course, one can make a game by themselves, if it’s a project that has the developer’s skills, knowledge and resources in mind. Their game, Mobile to Noble, did account for all of that and it allowed it to see completion with time to spare before the deadline.
At the end of Sunday, what started off as an idea on a whiteboard, became a fully playable video game.
