Collaborating: My Journey at Global Game Jam 2024
An Workshop Experience at GGJ 2024
Introduction
The Global Game Jam is a 48-hour event where you team up with other game developers to create fun and innovative game prototypes based on a mystery theme. The GGJ fosters collaboration and is not a competition. It's a popular annual global event you can join and participate in. This year’s theme is “Make Me Laugh”
Our Game: A Comedian Walks Into an Eldritch Bar
In this game you take the role of a Human Comedian who finds themself in a Comedy Bar for Eldritch Beings on 'Open Mic Night' and these monster are hungry... for comedy at least!
Watch other comics tell jokes to learn the language they all speak and what the crowd finds funny. Then remix the other comics’ words to create your joke and hope it goes over well! Each round you gain more words to use in your jokes as you watch more comics tell jokes. Survive five rounds to get out safely, or bomb your set and face grim consequences.
Reflection
During the game jam, I was the UX designer and sound effects searcher for our team. However, since most of our team members were not familiar with UX/UI concepts, I had to take on the responsibility of guiding them. At the beginning of our discussions, I explained what UX and UI meant and gave suggestions on various aspects of the game, such as button size, functions, layout, and more.
In addition, since I am not skilled in coding, I helped the team by finding some sound effects that they could use in their game. Through this experience, I came to realize that being a back-end engineer is a challenging job because they are responsible for making the game come to life. In contrast, front-end designers or UI designers typically use tools like Figma to demonstrate the interaction and visual design, without worrying about programming or coding.
In conclusion, I learned a lot from this game jam and gained valuable experience that I will carry with me into future projects.
