The Jam

WHAT IS A GAME JAM?

"Jam" is a reference to musician jam sessions, not a band from the 80's or traffic or spreadable fruit.

The goal is to come together and make a video game, or non-digital game like a board game or card game. Participants rapidly prototype game designs and hopefully inject new ideas to help grow the game industry. We share a common theme and constraints. We ask participants to create a game from beginning to end in a prescribed time (at GGJNEXT we will jam for up to 5 days with no overnights). The brief time span is meant to help encourage creative thinking to result in small but innovative and experimental games.

WHAT IS GGJNEXT™?

The GGJ NEXT brings together talented young people ages 12-17 within their school and community. It is a unique opportunity for students to push their skills and learn different ways of working. Participants will work concurrently with other young people around the globe; we rally around a central theme, and then have 5 days to create a game. It's our hope that we will see some very experimental realized prototypes that folks can continue to work on after the jam. Many games developed in previous Game Jams have become fully realized games. GGJ NEXT is open source, hardware & software agnostic and all projects are protected under a Creative Commons license. We encourage people to try out new ideas and push themselves, within reason.

WHEN IS GGJNEXT™?

Global Game Jam® our parent event is held concurrently around the globe on the same day, but we have found that our age demographic doesn't globally have the same time off. We have opted for each location to pick their own days (up to 5) in the month of July. We prefer that the jam be held on sequential without any overnights. Similarly to GGJ, everyone will share a common theme and constraints.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GGJ® AND GGJ NEXT™?

Global Game Jam® is a 48 hours adult only event. GGJ NEXT provides both educational opportunities to learn about game development and a yearly JAM for young people age 12-17.