Global Game Jam is a 48-hour weekend event bringing students together to induce creativity in game design.

This year’s Global Game Jam was held at Kent State’s Tuscarawas campus and hosted by the Animation and Game Design Club. The theme was “what home means to you.”

Students create a game from scratch based off of the prompt given to them the Friday before the competition. The participants do not need any prior experience with game design.

“I was able to actually implement the things I learned in class and homework and put it into something constructive,” Lauren Moore, president of the Animation and Game Design Club, said. “It was strictly creative power that comes out of participating in Global Game Jam.”

Moore recommends being interested in gaming, animating, and/or 3D modeling to think about participating in this event. If those activities apply, talk to club members, modeling animation and game creation staff, or go look at Global Game Jam website and do research before getting involved.

The weekend of the event is set up to keep students busy and stimulated the whole weekend.

“As soon as the event started, everyone was assigned to a job and got to work,” Moore said.

Keynote speaker, Benjamin Cole from PxlPlz, LLC, was also there the first day giving students an information “pep-talk” before the creation process started.

“We are not interested in creating a farm and sending our students out to California to work,” Christopher Totten, assistant professor in Model Animation and Game Creation, said. “We want to create a community in our area of trained application far beyond just games.”

The event pushed gamers to expand their comfort zones and learn applicable skills they can apply toward their career and network with other students with different skill sets.

“After the 48 hours, there was no reward but that’s not the point,” Moore said. “The reward was being able to say, ‘I made a game.’”

Ellie Dundics is the regionals reporter. Contact her at [email protected]