I participated in Global Game Jam this year from Jan 27-29 at the Sydney city venue. You have to form teams on the spot and produce a game in 48 hours on a theme revealed only when you arrive. The theme is the same for all game jammers around the world, and they all work through the same 48 hour period at once. All games are uploaded to the website at the 48 hour mark, regardless of their state of completion.
Some game jam venues will host any kind of game making (boardgame, videogame, physical game, etc) but the Sydney sites are videogame focused. This year I helped design, and produce sound and music for, a horror game we called Unholy. Unfortunately at the 48 hour mark, the game goal wasn’t implemented (find and snuff out the candles that allow the demons to continue to arrive in the village), but nearly all the ghost possession mechanics were in. We even recorded some voice acting. We plan to finish the game now that the jam is over.
There’s nothing to stop someone or a team producing an IF game at gamejam, and I even vaguely considered it myself (doing one on the side, for instance), though not being a big fan of speed IF it would be hard for me personally. But I just wanted to put that idea out there, because I question whether anyone’s made a parser game for game jam yet. You could get a team ready and do something next year.
For anyone interested in what a 48 hour hothouse of collaborative game design is like, I wrote a full account of my team’s experience in my blog at honestgamers.com:
It’s definitely inspiring at the end when you look at what you’ve got and you say, ‘Darn, 48 hours ago we had zilch.’ It makes you realise that if you just get together with other coders and artists and cover your skillset bases, producing complete videogames is far more in reach than it feels to most of us most of the time.
. Wicked indeed.