Global Game Jam 2024

Friday 26th of January - Sunday 28th of January 2024

Location: CST C00 Labs

Site opening times:

Friday 6pm - Midnight, Saturday 8am - Midnight, Sunday 8am - 5pm

The CST department is hosting a site for the Global Game Jam, open to all students on Creative technology courses (Games, Graphics, Computer Animation) and Alumni of these courses. this is an exciting opportunity for all levels of games and animation students to challenge themselves, be creative, and have fun! Design and program games, make assets for games, animations for cutscenes, promotional material, and more. There will be scope for students of creative writing, sound/music design, etc... to collaborate with game and animation students to make something awesome! You'll be working alongside alumni from previous years (including some industry professionals) and be part of the showcase event at the end, where we can celebrate all your wonderful creations.

The GGJ is the world's largest game creation event taking place around the globe boasting tens of thousands of participants (jammers) at hundreds of physical and virtual sites in over one hundred countries around the world. In January/February 2023, 40,000 people at 800 locations in 108 countries created 7,600 games in 48 hours around the theme of Roots!

A game jam is similar to a hackathon where people come together for a short period of time to create games around a central theme revealed at the start of the jam. The structure of The GGJ is usually that everyone gathers on Friday late afternoon, watches a short video keynote with advice from leading game developers, and then a secret theme is announced. All jammers worldwide are then challenged to make games based on that same theme, with games to be completed by Sunday afternoon.

Find out more about the Global Game Jam

Learn, teach, enhance your CV, make friends, and make games of all types!

Global Game Jam @UOB

In the CST labs, 31st January - 2nd February 2020

For the eleventh year running we are hosting the global game jam game development event in our own Computing Labs. The Global Game Jam is a worldwide happening - during last year's event there were 309 locations in 63 countries creating over 3000 games in that one weekend!

The structure of the weekend is that participants gather on Friday afternoon, watch a short video keynote with advice from leading game developers, and then a secret theme is announced.

All sites worldwide are then challenged to make games based on that same theme, with games to be completed by Sunday afternoon.

Our site is open to current and past students of our own BSc Computer Games Development and BSc Interactive Digital Technologies and BSc Computer Animation & VFX degree courses.

You can work in teams or work alone. You can arrange your team beforehand or turn up and get into teams on the day. You can use any of the software we have in the labs (including Flash, Unity, 3dStudio Max, Photoshop) or bring your own laptop.

We will be kicking off at about 5pm on the Friday, getting into groups if necessary, and working on some ideas in the in the Creative Technologies Games Lab, following the opening presentations.

After a few hours of game designing we will close for the night at 10pm, and then open again at 9am on the Saturday. We go through the night on Saturday (you can bring along a pillow or leave and have a sleep at home if you prefer) and finish at about 5pm on Sunday afternoon, where we finish off with a presentation and viewing of the finished games.

It is a great opportunity to develop your skills, work with students from all levels and returning alumni (some of whom now work in the games industry).

You’ll be able to apply what you know to a very short term project see instant results and be able to publish your game alongside the thousands of other teams on the Global Games Jam site.

A fantastic opportunity to have fun, develop your CV, make friends, develop contacts and maybe even win a prize!

How to apply

Any further queries please email Antony Brown at antony.brown@beds.ac.uk