he road to a successful career in
games development isn’t marked
on a map. Talk to any developer,
and their journey from idea to
game will differ from the next,
and the next, and the next. There is one stop on
the road that most game devs have in common,
though, and it’s perhaps the best training ground
of all: game jams.
Whether online, physical, large, or small, game
jams have become the perfect testing ground
for developers’ skills. As we explored in issue 15,
these short events are a perfect storm of low
expectation and a tight turnaround that help
creativity flow and form in ways it otherwise might
not. But what happens after the jam is over?
We spoke to four developers who started their
game careers in jams to learn about the projects
that came out of them, and the work they’ve done
since. Whether they’ve formed studios through
their experiences or are still going it alone, these
developers have found their voices through jams.
But has that translated into lasting success?FINDING YOUR TEAM
When Martin Kai Sommer, CEO of Game Swing,
entered Nordic Game Jam with his student
friends in 2013, he had no idea that the group
would go on to form a studio. Back then, they
decided to enter the jam purely for a chance to
gain some experience. “When we started out, our
motivation was the dream of releasing our game
on the consoles we’d grown up playing, which was
a tremendously exciting prospect,” Sommer says.
“An added bonus was that we could perhaps use
this opportunity to get our foot in the door to
the games industry. We were all very aware that
the first game job can be a big challenge, so if we
could gather a little practical experience in the
process, it would do us good.”
The result of this first experience was Stikbold!,
a playful dodgeball co-op game which mightT
It started with a game jamInterface
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