How the Global Game Jam made its way to Singapore

Edward Wong was head of the Diploma in Game Design at Singapore’s Republic Polytechnic when he first stumbled across the Global Game Jam. As a teacher of young, impressionable minds, he realized that:

There’s the next gen of consoles, and then there’s the next gen of game designers.

And the next gen of game designers were the same teenagers he was mentoring every day at school. So Republic Polytechnic became the main site of Global Game Jam Singapore, and has been so for the past five years.

“The game jam is important as it connects the industry within itself and to the students,” he said to me that cold evening 2014’s jam kicked off in Singapore. “This has got to keep happening as the next folks to take up the industry are these young people.”

A total of 255 people registered themselves for the Global Game Jam in Singapore, a relatively huge jump from last year’s 190 participants. The Republic Polytechnic site was the 11th biggest around the globe, with 233 jammers in all, while the remainder jammed at an alternative site at Nanyang Polytechnic. The RP site, supported by the IDGA Singapore and sponsored by Blackberry, had its own separate registration as well, so the organizers could keep track of the event’s logistical needs.

The majority of the jammers in the RP jam site were students. At least fifty percent were from Republic Polytechnic, while the rest were from other schools or working professionals. Some came from industries far removed from gaming; others were studying to be a part of the gaming industry.

25 year old Leong See Shuen, a student at the National University of Singapore, had hauled his desktop computer along to the jam. He told us that he had been participating every year, and this year was no exception. His team of five made the impressive looking T R I S with the Crytek engine.

A group of three guys who looked to be in their early thirties said they were from a well-known engineering firm. A tall, blond, curly haired individual told me he had come all the way from the UK to study in the National University of Singapore. Other younger participants came from different polytechnics (kind of like vocational institutes).

Elroy Chan, a 22 year old student from Digipen Singapore, said that he had “heard a lot of good things” about the jam, and that he had come to enjoy “a session of squeezing all the creativity out of [himself] to make a game in a very short amount of time”. Chan had come to the jam on his own, and managed to form a group with the help of the site facilitators. His five man team later produced Fight For Glory, a platform brawler similar to Super Smash Bros.

Then there was Matthew Ong, a 24 year old who is exploring starting up his own business. He said he came for this year’s because “last year was awesome”. Ong attended the 2013 jam on his lonesome, and found an unlikely friend in 17 year old Ryan Yu. Together, the two of them produced Cell Wars, an interesting little strategy game where the player has to balance both salt and sugar in a human body in order to keep it alive for as long as possible.

Most of the jammers left on Sunday were students. While official jam site rules encouraged jammers to go home and rest each night, they were evidently relishing the time away from possibly overprotective parents. Most had finished their games well ahead of time, and were finally taking much needed breathers by playing games on their laptops, strumming a guitar, and of course, nodding off after a hard weekend’s work.

All the teams in the jam site managed to produce a game of their own, achieving what Wong hoped they would. A total of 40 games were created, topping the 37 made in the previous year.

“We learned how tough it is to actually create a game. Many ideas were rejected and the thought of working with time constraints was stressful, but at the same time a lot of fun,” said one girl from a group of thirteen Nanyang Polytechnic students. Their 19 year old spokesperson, Joseph Ho, had earlier shared that it was the team’s first game jam.

RP students Mohd Syuhada and Dion Chow were of the opinion that the jam had been “a chance to showcase what we could do,” adding that it also gave them an insight into the demands of actual development.

When Edward Wong initiated the first Global Game Jam Singapore site, he had two hopes: one, that it would help connect the industry. And two, that his students could truly experience making games. The Global Game Jam Singapore 2014 definitely fulfilled those criteria!

You can check out more pictures of the Singapore jam site here.