STL Game Jam 2011 – Day 1

DAY 1 WAS CRAZY!!! (For me at least)

But things worked out wonderfully.

I dropped my car off at the mechanic for an oil change, then spent the day buying soda, chips, coffee, and stuff for the Jammers with co-organizer Amanda Walker. We got to the room at around 3:00 PM, where we created a UStream feed (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/stl-gamejam-jan-2011), figured out the projector, and I did some heavy reworking of the local Jam instructions until around 4:30 PM. With 30 minutes ’til showtime only two people had shown up. I started wondering if it was going to be a bust.

Dan Eichling (look for posts by DevDan on here) popped in the room and he quickly took me to the mechanic to pick up my car. In retrospect, putting this off until the last minute was probably a bad move, but everything ended up fine. I got back at exactly 5:00 PM, wondering if anyone would be there, and the room was absolutely bursting with people. 39 to be exact. It was amazing. So many new faces. So many people willing to sacrifice an entire weekend to create something awesome. It was beyond overwhelming.

As stupid as it was to leave 30 minutes before the jam began, the awe I felt the moment I walked in the room and saw it bursting with people made it totally worth it (no matter how unprofessional and unorganized it may have seemed).

Shortly after 5:00 PM, I did a short PowerPoint that basically consisted of thanking everyone I could and reminders for things I knew I’d forget to talk about if I didn’t have notes. I’m pretty sure I was able to fit a dumb joke into every single slide, so that was pretty great. We ended that with the Global Game Jam keynote video, which – aside from some great heckling – didn’t contain anywhere near as many jokes. After that, I announced the Theme (which I think I need to wait until tomorrow to mention here), and Simutronics’ President and CEO, David Whatley took the stage and got people pumped for the idea of indie gaming, using a few hugely successful iPhone games he made outside of work (the outstanding geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm) as evidence. This is the kind of thing people who want to make the next World of Warcraft or Call of Duty need to hear, and it was great to hear it straight from a success story.

We then split the room into three groups of 11-15 people led by Elonka Dunin, Dan, and myself, and over the next hour each group put together around 6 game pitches. These pitches were then presented to the entire Jam audience, and after a lot of chaos we ended up with around 9 or 10 games. Exactly as I’d hoped, teams essentially developed naturally around those ideas, and began talking immediately. Some people, including myself, had to give up on their own ideas to work on games that others like more, but I don’t think anyone’s feelings were hurt too bad.

I know this is really bad of me as the organizer, but I have no idea what all of the groups are working on. I know at least three of the pitches somehow involved balls, which makes almost no sense once you know what the theme is.

Once the groups were formed and everyone found a place to be, the chaos of organization, presenting, and leading immediately stopped and I could tangibly feel the weight being lifted from my head. With that out of the way, I sat down and talked to Dan Eichling, and we ended up starting a new game – one that scales nicely depending on how frantic things get over the weekend.

We’re going to make a game about a meteor wielding a giant sword to attack stuffed dinosaurs. It’s everything we told the rest of the Jammers not to make, and as long as we understand that everything will be ok.

Tomorrow we go back into the chaos. Fun!

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