A Weekend of Geeky Fun

I joined the Global Game Jam Herzelia this weekend. It was simply great. About 200 game developers, designers, musicians, and others, dedicated their entire weekend to a game development innovation sprint. It’s a session that happens this weekend globally.

The theme was Ouroboros, a legendary snake eating its tail implying eternity. Ideas popped up quickly – you Car racing yourself in a circular racing, world-save-bunny: a bunny is running away from a snake, saved by the mercy and skill of the crowd, WonderSnake: an hilarious Steve Wonder PrimeSense (Kinect) based snake, dancing and collecting colors to eternity, a techno music based game that develops the rhythm based on your dancing skills, a hamster rolling throughout a house trying to avoid obstacles, even a concept for alchemy board game, and many more. See them on the Global Jam site.

Few observations:

• While a chaotic environment, people were able to get together and create working groups quickly
• People came in with their laptops, desktop computers and heavy gear. Some brought their dual monitors, others a complete musician stations
• The physical conditions were not the best, but it seemed that nobody cared
• Many developed in Unity
• The atmosphere throughout the session was friendly and collaborative. For example, one of the musicians created music for at least 8 teams
• People did it for their sheer fun and some of the results, were simply brilliant. There were no team leaders, no managers, but the results were delivered in a fraction of the time that a game is being developed the in the real world. About 40 games in different level of completion were submitted

Few years ago, I was asked what causes startup developers to stay up at night, and dedicate weekends in order to get the job done, I answered “a strong sense of ownership of something that is unique and innovative”. Over this weekend, I realized that again.

Kol Ha’Kavod to GameIS and Yuval Sapir who coordinated the event in a fun and professional manner.

Here are pictures I took at the event.