This past weekend I attended my first Global Game Jam up in
Cleveland. There were a lot of really incredible and talented people up there who
I really enjoyed meeting. I also loved seeing some awesome little games emerge
from the amongst chaos.
My one regret is that I wish I had introduced myself to “more”
people because I only really talked to a small handful of individuals. If I
attend next year’s event, my goal will be to work freelance style and help out
a number of different teams instead of working solidly with one individual group.
This way I can interact with more people and get more involved.
In terms of my own game, I was rather disappointed with the
outcome. I worked with two individuals who didn’t seem to really have their “eye
on the prize” throughout the weekend. An overactive scope mixed with a lot of
distractions lead to the game not being playable at all. The final product was
nothing more than an animated intro cutscene (a shitty one, at that) followed
by some broken gameplay that had no end. I give my teammate the
benefit of the doubt however because he totaled his car on the way up to the
Jam and was in the hospital for 2 weeks prior to the event. I’m absolutely certain these events factored
into the group’s overall energy as we worked.
Personally, I felt like I accomplished a decent amount of
work. I modeled, unwrapped, rigged, and
animated 2 entire characters as well as couple of other props. The models aren’t
by any means “top notch”, but considering our time restrictions, I’m happy with
what I ended up with.
I’m looking forward to getting back to work on my
own projects where I will actually have a decent amount of time to make the art
look good :)
