Global Game Jam – Startup Weekend for Gaming

So last weekend was the first Global Game Jam (GGJ).

CGJ is, as they describe it, “a worldwide event challenging game developers to create innovative games in just 48 hours”, to me it sounds a lot like Startup Weekend for Game Developers. The one difference I see between Startup Weekend and Global Game Jam (aside from the difference in objective) is CGJ happens all over the world at once instead of at one get together location at a time.

This means quite a lot more people working together at once and some crazy-cool game ideas. Over 1,750 college students, faculty and members of the game industry joined together for the inaugural event.

At the same time though, what I found rather dissapointing while looking at the results of last weekends jam was most games were rather rudimentry. People group together in 5-7 person teams competing to create the best game in the timespan given.

What I’d like to see is if it’s possible to get all those people, or perhaps even 100 or so people working together on a single game idea and see if within a 48 hour period they can come up with a game worthy of being sold to the public. That would be an interesting case. 🙂