Area colleges host game makers for global event

SYRACUSE — Jan. 26-27 wasn’t a typical weekend for thousands of college students, including more than two dozen in Central New York, as they gathered to take part in a planet-straddling game-creating event.

Global Game Jam, organized by a group of the same name, took place at 803 spots around the world, attracting 42,800 participants in 108 countries. Combined, participants created 8,597 games.

On Jan. 26, as 5 p.m. struck in each time zone, participants learned what the theme was for this year’s event. Then they chose teams from among themselves and set to work creating games — video games, card games, or even board games.

They had 48 hours, until 5 p.m. Sunday, to complete their work and share it with the world on Global Game Jam’s website (globalgamejam.org). 

Syracuse event

By Saturday evening, midway through the event, teams at Syracuse University were deep into their work. Haley Knapp, a senior studying music, history, and culture at Syracuse’s College of Arts and Sciences, was putting together the soundtrack to play with the game her team was creating.

To match the Global Game Jam theme, “transmission,” the team was creating a game called “Mursil,” an Arabic word meaning “transmitter.”

Junior Anjelica Escalante, who is majoring in English and textual studies at the College of Arts and Sciences, was creating the story script, including dialogue for the characters. Mursil was to be a “choose-your-adventure” game where players can decide what to do next and each choice would bring a different result.

“Middle Eastern steam punk visual” is how Knapp described the look of the game, with cartoon-style characters in the foreground and sepia-toned backgrounds.” The soundtrack she was working on was “Pan-Asian fusion” with music and instruments from the region.

The idea of the game is to take steps to fix a transmitter in time for a festival, lest the ruler get angry with your family.

The task of making the game work on a computer fell to Alexander Jansing, a graduate student at SUNY Polytechnic Institute who works as a senior consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton in Rome. He was focused on writing in open-source software called Ren’Py and had a clear goal. “My thing is I just want to get a game finished. One of the most important parts of this is getting it finished,” he says.

At 28, he’s seven years older than his teammates. That’s not unusual, area Game Jam organizers say. The event attracts plenty of students but also adults who are just interested in games. Like Jansing, Knapp, and Escalante, many don’t even know each other before the event begins, but they team up shortly after the start.

In this case, Jansing showed up about three hours into the Game Jam. “Alex saved the day,” Knapp says, noting that neither she nor Escalante are coders.

“For people who don’t know each other, we work together pretty well,” says Escalante.

Knapp, Escalante, and Jansing successfully completed their game. It was named “Most Immersive” of the nine games completed at the university’s event, says John Sanders, one of the campus organizers.

Sanders is a fan of games. (Sid Meier’s “Civilization” is a favorite, he says.) A Ph.D. student in English, with a concentration in film, screen and game studies, he spent Global Game Jam moving from area to area at the university library watching over game developers, offering tips, and ordering pizza.

Morrisville event

The ability to collaborate with others is something employers value, Morrisville State College President David Rogers says in a phone interview. His school has hosted Global Game Jam for the past nine years, in part to encourage students to develop those skills.

“They are not just people who know how to code or build things or grow things,” he says of Morrisville students. They are able to be creative and work with others creatively.

The college has more than a dozen student-run enterprises on campus, Rogers says. Products include ice cream and flowers, and services include car repair. Morrisville also has semester-long internships where students spend a portion of their senior year in the working world.

Compared to the work involved in creating and maintaining those programs, deciding to support Game Jam was laughably easy, Rogers says. “I said, ‘are you kidding me?’” he recalled when Morrisville Professor Richard Marcoux first floated the idea.

“Anytime our faculty can find a way for our students to learn skills employees are looking for, we will,” he says. “It instills confidence in them,” he adds. And “working in teams is what employers are looking for.”

This year Marcoux reports that the Morrisville event drew 15 participants. They broke into teams and created four games.

“It’s not a competition,” Marcoux says, explaining that the concept of Global Game Jam has always been to give people interested in game making a chance to get together and create. The Morrisville event has drawn students over the years as well as Morrisville alumni and people who live in the area.

It’s even drawn people from other colleges, Marcoux says. He says visitors from Syracuse University and Ithaca College came several years back, saw what was going on, and decided to host their own events.

Marcoux, who fondly recalls buying a few cases of caffeinated soda for the first Global Game Jam at Morrisville, is already planning for next year. For the 10th anniversary he and Rogers are planning to invite back all past participants.

Rogers, who was the dean of Morrisville’s school of business when he first approved having the event there, says the college is now considering the possibility of creating a game-design major. It may be an option or minor first. It’s a long process to develop and get approval for such a move, he says.

But Rogers is obviously impressed by what game makers offer. Students who combine creativity and the ability to work in teams aren’t common, he says. “But they show up in droves for Game Jam.” 

SYRACUSE — Jan. 26-27 wasn’t a typical weekend for thousands of college students, including more than two dozen in Central New York, as they gathered to take part in a planet-straddling game-creating event.

Global Game Jam, organized by a group of the same name, took place at 803 spots around the world, attracting 42,800 participants in 108 countries. Combined, participants created 8,597 games.

On Jan. 26, as 5 p.m. struck in each time zone, participants learned what the theme was for this year’s event. Then they chose teams from among themselves and set to work creating games — video games, card games, or even board games.

They had 48 hours, until 5 p.m. Sunday, to complete their work and share it with the world on Global Game Jam’s website (globalgamejam.org). 

Syracuse event

By Saturday evening, midway through the event, teams at Syracuse University were deep into their work. Haley Knapp, a senior studying music, history, and culture at Syracuse’s College of Arts and Sciences, was putting together the soundtrack to play with the game her team was creating.

To match the Global Game Jam theme, “transmission,” the team was creating a game called “Mursil,” an Arabic word meaning “transmitter.”

Junior Anjelica Escalante, who is majoring in English and textual studies at the College of Arts and Sciences, was creating the story script, including dialogue for the characters. Mursil was to be a “choose-your-adventure” game where players can decide what to do next and each choice would bring a different result.

“Middle Eastern steam punk visual” is how Knapp described the look of the game, with cartoon-style characters in the foreground and sepia-toned backgrounds.” The soundtrack she was working on was “Pan-Asian fusion” with music and instruments from the region.

The idea of the game is to take steps to fix a transmitter in time for a festival, lest the ruler get angry with your family.

The task of making the game work on a computer fell to Alexander Jansing, a graduate student at SUNY Polytechnic Institute who works as a senior consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton in Rome. He was focused on writing in open-source software called Ren’Py and had a clear goal. “My thing is I just want to get a game finished. One of the most important parts of this is getting it finished,” he says.

At 28, he’s seven years older than his teammates. That’s not unusual, area Game Jam organizers say. The event attracts plenty of students but also adults who are just interested in games. Like Jansing, Knapp, and Escalante, many don’t even know each other before the event begins, but they team up shortly after the start.

In this case, Jansing showed up about three hours into the Game Jam. “Alex saved the day,” Knapp says, noting that neither she nor Escalante are coders.

“For people who don’t know each other, we work together pretty well,” says Escalante.

Knapp, Escalante, and Jansing successfully completed their game. It was named “Most Immersive” of the nine games completed at the university’s event, says John Sanders, one of the campus organizers.

Sanders is a fan of games. (Sid Meier’s “Civilization” is a favorite, he says.) A Ph.D. student in English, with a concentration in film, screen and game studies, he spent Global Game Jam moving from area to area at the university library watching over game developers, offering tips, and ordering pizza.

Morrisville event

The ability to collaborate with others is something employers value, Morrisville State College President David Rogers says in a phone interview. His school has hosted Global Game Jam for the past nine years, in part to encourage students to develop those skills.

“They are not just people who know how to code or build things or grow things,” he says of Morrisville students. They are able to be creative and work with others creatively.

The college has more than a dozen student-run enterprises on campus, Rogers says. Products include ice cream and flowers, and services include car repair. Morrisville also has semester-long internships where students spend a portion of their senior year in the working world.

Compared to the work involved in creating and maintaining those programs, deciding to support Game Jam was laughably easy, Rogers says. “I said, ‘are you kidding me?’” he recalled when Morrisville Professor Richard Marcoux first floated the idea.

“Anytime our faculty can find a way for our students to learn skills employees are looking for, we will,” he says. “It instills confidence in them,” he adds. And “working in teams is what employers are looking for.”

This year Marcoux reports that the Morrisville event drew 15 participants. They broke into teams and created four games.

“It’s not a competition,” Marcoux says, explaining that the concept of Global Game Jam has always been to give people interested in game making a chance to get together and create. The Morrisville event has drawn students over the years as well as Morrisville alumni and people who live in the area.

It’s even drawn people from other colleges, Marcoux says. He says visitors from Syracuse University and Ithaca College came several years back, saw what was going on, and decided to host their own events.

Marcoux, who fondly recalls buying a few cases of caffeinated soda for the first Global Game Jam at Morrisville, is already planning for next year. For the 10th anniversary he and Rogers are planning to invite back all past participants.

Rogers, who was the dean of Morrisville’s school of business when he first approved having the event there, says the college is now considering the possibility of creating a game-design major. It may be an option or minor first. It’s a long process to develop and get approval for such a move, he says.

But Rogers is obviously impressed by what game makers offer. Students who combine creativity and the ability to work in teams aren’t common, he says. “But they show up in droves for Game Jam.”