Education

The Global Game Jam

Christina Scott

35 computer game enthusiasts from across the country spent the last weekend of January locked inside the computer science laboratory at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

They were not alone - and that doesn't just refer to the webcam tracking their activities. In 139 locations around the world, straddling 23 time zones, likeminded gamers were also getting locked in.

''This was part of the Global Game Jam, a 48-hour international game development race,'' said South African organiser and UCT computer science lecturer Patrick Marais.

''The idea is to stimulate ideas and creativity. Once they are locked in, the teams are told the rules, theme and constraints so there's no way that they can arrive with a readymade concept,'' said Marais, who is one of four lecturers who teach a UCT course on game development.

''We did offer prizes but it really isn't a competition. The participants mainly do it to see what the international reaction is like when their games are downloaded and given a score.''

Marais expects to lock even more people inside the UCT computer science labs in 2011. ''The 2009 event only attracted 9 people and produced 3 games. This year there were 35 participants and 10 games were produced by the time proceedings closed at 3 pm on Sunday.''

The first placed South African game was called Press Tilda, an old-fashioned platform puzzle game which changes shape when the user presses the tilde button (the squiggly or ~) on the keyboard, which brings in a new window.

''Otherwise impossible feats become normal,'' boasts its creative team, the Tasty Poison Games, which includes Evan Greenwood, Filip Orekhov and Luke Viljoen. ''Enemies can be teleported, crates can be levitated, potplants will be burnt.''

Press Tilda has been uploaded on the GlobalGameJam website with the comforting reassurance that ''very few pot plants were harmed in the making of this game.''

Second place went to YouDunnit, an outer space murder mystery where the aim is to spin a web of deceit while navigating flashbacks without tripping over the laws of cause and effect.

Rhodes University information technology graduate Rodain Joubert worked on YouDunnit with Robbie Fraser, a UCT student who designed and sold his first cellphone game while completing matric. Other team members included Marc Luck and Danny Day, the 27-year-old owner of QCF Design, an independent game development studio based in Cape Town.

''We lived on pizzas in the evening and drank huge amounts of Coke and coffee to get through the night,'' said Joubert, who is currently creating cellphone games for GameDev, a non-profit online organisation to encourage South African game developers. ''Game development is huge internationally. Games - computer, cellphone, and video - make more money than movies.''

Another all-male team - UCT computer science students Richard Baxter, Robin Tyler, Kieran Duggan, Rainer Dreyer, Victor Kirov and Stephen Finniss - secured third place with a game called Module. The team, a mix of computer programmers, designers and artists, designed the game for two competing players who design Meccano-like structures complete with rocket engines and lasers which are then released into the game world to vie for dominance.

''Physics and cunning design then combine to determine the victor,'' said Marais.

More information:

* All the games available free at www.globalgamejam.org. UCT computer science department is online at http://www.cs.uct.ac.za/. Game Development is online at http://www.gamedev.co.za/ 

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