The Global Game Jam Game Jam Game! (From GGJ 2009)
So, I’ve started a little enjoyable labor, blogging, for my job that starts next Fall at Miami University, where one side of my joint appointment will be in The Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies (AIMS). I posted today about Miami’s Global Game Jam event which starts tomorrow. I re-posted my thoughts below. I keep it kind of simple on the Miami site although I wrote more at length about the problem of “innovation” in indie game production in my dissertation. I think Global Game Jams are problematic, as I am sure many others do: forcing creativity and innovation, getting students ready for crunch time when they work in the actual games industry, and generally the valorization of the concept of innovation in general which becomes one paean of contemporary Capitalism (and indie game production). I tend to agree with Stephen Shaviro when he writes about innovation upon critiquing a text from Paolo Virno entitled Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation:
I think that Virno’s reference to Schumpeter is symptomatic, because it offers the clearest example of how he fumbles what seems to me to be one of the great issues of our age: which is, precisely, how to disarticulate notions of creativity and innovation and the New from their current hegemony in the business schools and in the ways that actually-existing capitalism actually functions. [...] I myself don’t claim by any means to have solved this problem — the fact that we can neither give up on innovation, creativity, and the New, nor accept the way that the relentless demand for them is precisely the motor that drives capitalism and blocks any other form of social and economic organization from being even minimally thinkable — but I feel that Virno fails to acknowledge it sufficiently as a problem.
GGJ events are not interested in the disarticulation that Shaviro talks about; they are about innovative production, not even broaching the concept of innovation itself (although it would seem like an ideal chance to invigorate students, game designers, etc., to ponder the concept of innovation and how it operates with the game industry). Indeed, the GGJ FAQ state that the goal is to “rapidly prototype game designs and hopefully inject new ideas to help grow the game industry.” The growth of the industry, capital accumulation, etc., is the goal. In any event, you can read my post on Miami’s AIMS blog re-posed below, although my dissertation chapter “For Time Flows On: Innovation and Opposition in Video Games” approaches the concept of innovation in more depth…
Beginning tomorrow, Miami University will host its 2nd annual Global Game Jam (GGJ), an unique opportunity for individuals interested in game production and design to gather and work together, producing a video game in just 48 hours. Yep, 48 hours of sleepless design and implementation!
The GGJ is a young, though important, phenomenon. The event fosters collaboration, social networking and sharing. It is a hothouse of budding ideas, where the molecules of individual expression bounce off one another and create a super-heated atmosphere of innovation. It is a constrained space and time which catalyzes creativity and experimentation, a 48 hour “magic circle” where the excitement of game production embraces a beneficial acceleration. It is an event where individuals can pick-up tricks of the trade and potentially learn something new while sharing ideas with a wider community of colleagues. And in a world where so many of our ideas remain unfinished and filed away in sketchbooks of possibility, GGJ is a chance for folks to feel the deep satisfaction of creating a finished product (however small and preliminary) and to take pride through one’s participation in a global enterprise that seeks to cultivate the flowering of the video game medium. Indeed, GGJ is all these things and more…
Yet, like any play experience which creates a powerful “magic circle,” the GGJ will end and participants will be cast back into everyday life (though hopefully with a stellar game under their belts and a wealth of new experiences!). In these after-moments, one achieves a kind of critical distance from the magic of the experience, a distance which allows for further reflection. Hopefully in these moments one can even reflect on the model of innovation that the GGJ embraces and puts into action: an unleashing (and “forcing”) of creative potential that strives toward a model of rapid-prototyping where an idea is implemented quickly to test its potential. Such an accelerated model of development can produce great ideas and games (or, at least, the seed great games). Witness 2D Boy’s the Tower of Goo created for the monthly game “jam” called the Experimental Gameplay Project. Yet, while accelerated moments of innovation can produce excellent ideas, such ideas can also depart quickly and thus allow powerful insights to wither. Just as we know that cramming for an exam might produce successful results, the knowledge gained from the experience is often fleeting and ephemeral. Indeed, the Tower of Goo did not become The World of Goo without sustained innovation and creative thinking long after the initial rapid-prototyping had occurred.
Beloved indie game developers thatgamecompany—creators of the games flOw, Flower and the forthcoming Journey—published a description of their production process for their student developed game Cloud in 2006. The team had this to say:
[A] number of academic programs have also begun to initiate a series of fast-paced, innovation-oriented events called ‘game jams.’ [...] While the rules for each jam have varied, most of have focused on speed and quantity of games produced. The intention seems to be towards discovery of new ideas by brute force and enthusiastic energy. A fun way to innovate, to be sure, but only a few of the games produced during these highly energized events have provided inklings of true innovation, and unfortunately none have seen any application past their initial demonstrations in respective showcases. It could be argued that the game jam format may lend itself to small innovative ‘flashes’ that would need a secondary level of longer-term research to foster and iterate on these flash ideas.
Their intriguing article describes a longer, deeper form of game innovation and design that would act as a nice counterpoint to the method emphasized by the GGJ. Elsewhere one can find similar reflections on notions of sustained innovation such as a recent interview with Jonathan Blow (the developer of the award winning game Braid) or a video from the “Innovation in Indie Games” panel at the 2007 GDC that featured members from thatgamecompany, 2D Boy, Jonathan Blow and others.
I am not certainly not playing the role of the naysayer here, championing a more sustained creative reflection over the intense innovation produced by game jams. They both have their merits, and it is perhaps in combining their merits that a more robust model of innovation and satisfaction will be attained. It can only be hoped that after the jam the excitement and energy can be sustained, that the innovation (of design, game mechanics, collaboration, etc.) produced in 48-hours will unfold into a longer duration of development where such innovation can be deepened. In any event, while participants in the GGJ should be focused on having fun and producing cool stuff, there is no reason why the event should not also be an occasion for contemplating its cultural significance and for critically reflecting on the concept of innovation itself (well, at least after the fun has died down…).
Above I referred to the GGJ as “a hothouse of budding ideas.” A hothouse is a hotbed of activity, a concept often embraced by musicians to describe an environment electrified by improvisation, innovation, and creativity. Indeed, the GGJ is certainly a wonderful space for jamming and experimentation (as Lindsay Grace has pointed out in his description of the GGJ). But a hothouse is also a greenhouse of sorts which sustains a warm environment needed for seeds to grow. It is a delicate space full of fragile lifeforms which depend on the warmth for their continued growth. Indeed, true innovation needs to strike a balance between the accelerated generation of creative ideas and their long-term nourishment. Only then will the knowledge generated by the game jam (or cram) truly blossom.
