Wireframe 2019

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Time Crisis: The creative benefits of game jams

Interface

 Global Game Jam

executive director,

Seven Siegel.

 Eggnog Games

founder and regular

game-jammer,

Andrew Reist.

 Low Mem Sky

developer Paul

Nicholas, better

known as Liquidream.

 Generating ideas using the theme

‘Transmission’, Edinburgh’s

participants for Global Game Jam

2018 are hard at work.

centres, tiny rooms, or online, game jams are
designed with the same goal in mind: to quickly
and efficiently dream up and test out new game
ideas. It’s perhaps no accident that video game
companies also use game jams as a proving
ground; Frontier Developments, creators of
Elite Dangerous, have long held ‘Game of the
Week’ jams for its employees – a process which
resulted in, among other things, the WiiWare
title LostWinds. Tim Schafer’s Double Fine
Productions often hold events called Amnesia
Fortnight – two-week prototyping exercises that
test out new concepts. Costume Quest, Stacking,
and Iron Brigade all resulted from developers
splitting into small groups to create new games.
A particularly unusual jam took place at UK
developer Rebellion in 2017. The company’s
publishing section had just released Nate
Crowley’s book 100 Best Video Games (That Never
Existed), based on a surreal Twitter thread;

 One of the Wii’s most delightful titles,

LostWinds began as an internal game

jam at Frontier Developments.