Aimee Kwon, Shai Ginsburg
Type: Lab
For nearly 48 hours last weekend, about 20 participants filled the Duke Game Lab and—fueled by plenty of coffee, pizza, and snacks—joined minds to bring to life their ideas for games related to a common theme.
At the same time, at 933 other sites around the globe, tens of thousands of people were doing the same thing. They were all participating in the Global Game Jam (GGJ), the world’s largest game creation event, where people interested in game development came together all over the world to design, develop, and present games around a secret theme.
This year was the first time Duke hosted a GGJ site. Bass Digital Education Fellow Katya Gorecki, who organized the Duke site, said bringing the GGJ to Duke was a way to introduce students to the game development industry despite the lack of a formal game design and development program on campus.
“We decided to partner with the Global Game Jam because they have so much access to different resources that we couldn’t replicate on our own,” said Gorecki, an English Ph.D. candidate. “It also allows students to plug into a global network of game designers and people interested, even if it’s just a hobby.”