It's what you make of it.

So the events of the long weekend in Auckland went great. Over 25 participants met at Media Design School on Friday night for a crazy 48-hour of game making.

For its second year of running, the Global Game Jam gathered thousands of game developers, both amateur and professional, in over 125 locations around the world. This is a huge success and it makes a large amount of mini games for the organisers to play.

The participants during the briefing.

New Zealand was first to get started in the competition. And at 5pm, after watching a couple of keynotes from the organisers (IGDA), Stephen Knightly announced the theme: Deception, and the compulsory elements, which were either lakes, snakes or cakes. Knightly, coordinator of Playmaker (NZ Indie Game Association) and organiser of the Auckland’s Global Game Jam says, “This year’s deception theme led to some clever twists and new takes on established genres.  For instance, games that try to trick the player and rather than the player being in charge, the game plays the player.”

Although there are no prize up for grabs, the positive outcomes from such an event are more around the collaboration with like-minded people, network opportunities, and the chance to create a working game in 48 hours, adding to any wanna-be developers’ essential portfolio. Knightly explains further, “Making a game is a complex task, combining technical as well as creative skills.  The weekend has shown that there are some truly skilled, world-class game developers and artists in New Zealand.”

So when we asked David McCurdy, Academic Leader at Media Design School and participant at the Global Game Jam in Auckland, if he would do it again, he said, “The Global Game Jam was lots of fun, we got to work on exciting Game Development projects with some of our ex-colleagues and current colleagues. I would certainly do it again, as would my buddies and colleagues. Next time we will pick a smaller project!”

Red Bull gives you wiiiings!

And I am sure that if it wasn’t for the energy drinks generously given by Red Bull New Zealand, a lot less could have been achieved in such a short period of time. So a big thanks to our Red Bull friends too!