Game Jam, What’s That?

Julie Armstrong Business Manager

Game Jam, created by SNHU’s Game Design Club, is an event that brings together Gaming and Non- Gaming majors to work together to build an interactive game based on a theme.

Like other SNHU events, Game Jam has been altered due to the pandemic. In the past year, the Game Design Club has made it a priority to keep its members entertained. They aim to bring challenges as well as comfort to their members through what is currently a weeklong event.

Since the Game Design Club keeps the themes “pretty open-ended,” according to Laura Ducran (‘22), Social Media Manager of the SNHU Game Design Club. “There are a lot of different games that come out of it.” Using the theme One, club members created “a multiplayer game that each player could only control one character, and in another game...players had to complete each level in one minute.” The main idea from these thematic challenges is to generate imaginings and ideas into virtual reality. Although the games are made differently in relation to each creator’s ideas, each game encourages users to find fun in simple things.

Held outside of weekly meetings, Game Jams are, “typically 24 hours or 48 hours over the weekend [when] on campus,” says Joshua Reid, Event Manager of SNHU’s Game Design Club. When Game Jams took place on campus, it would be a “lockdown” situation, during which all of the members would create games while socializing and eating (snacks included).

Due to the recent shift to online, the club struggled with how to recreate the event virtually. This led club leaders to initiate longer Game Jams by taking advantage of the blackout weeks. The event currently lasts for 11 days, which spans the beginning of black-out week, ending on the Tuesday after black-out week. Prizes are awarded to the winners of the best games, as decided by the judges.

Although the theme of the last Game Jam of the semester is still being decided, it will lead the club into the SNHU Convention in April. This convention, hosted by the SNHU Game Design Club, gives members a chance to show off games they’ve designed to an outside audience; the game will be available for people to play as well. The convention aims to give local game developers the chance to present their games, in addition to hosting guest speakers from the industry who can answer questions about what the game design industry is like.

The Game Jam also prepares club members for a larger convention, PAX East. Normally held in Boston, the Game Design Club participates in the convention. Reid explains this further, saying, “SNHU has their booth and we go there and show off games that our students made and we get people interested in the school. SNHU Con is like a much smaller scale thing that is kind of our convention that we put on, whereas PAX is a huge video game convention in Boston that the school pays to have a booth there. So, a couple professors and a bunch of students just go set up the booth and we display the games that we made and people can come and play them.”

The Game Design Club can be contacted through many social media platforms such Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to their SNHU email. Meetings are held at 6 p.m. every Tuesday on the SNHU Game Design Club Discord.