The concept of the rapid game development competition has become increasingly familiar over the last few years. It originated back in 2002 with the Indie Game Jam, a four-day event launched in California by, among others, coding guru Chris Hecker and Braid creator Jonathan Blow. Since then, new variations have cropped up all over the world, culminating in the annual Global Game Jam, which this year saw almost 1,000 teams competing at 139 jam sites across 39 countries.
But X48 Game Camp is a little different. It’s not put together by a ramshackle collective of indie coders or by well-meaning academics: organised this year by Pixel-Lab, it is run by Microsoft, and it represents part of the corporation’s attempt to reach the next generation of developers. Based within Huddersfield University’s enormous computer science building, 2010’s is the third outing for the event, following well-subscribed versions in Derby and Birmingham. All the competitors are studying game design and programming at nearby universities, and all are using XNA Game Studio, the toolkit designed to support and encourage game development on Xbox 360, Windows and Zune.
Among the five judges, who will also mentor the teams throughout the event, there are three senior Microsoft employees. “It’s about populating our technology, promoting XNA, getting in at the ground level, getting students who are interested in making games using our tools,” says Simon Harris, an executive producer at Microsoft Game Studios. “But it’s more of a personal interest for me. Hopefully these are going to be the next geniuses of game design – the next Sid Meier or John Carmack or Tim Sweeney. Just being involved in helping people get access to the games industry is good.”
It’s Friday morning, an hour before the beginning of X48. Currently, the next John Carmacks are sitting in a lecture room patiently listening to a talk about health and safety (“If the computer lab is on fire, don’t try to put it out”). Every game jam has a theme to build the projects around – a means of ensuring teams can’t show up with pre-built code. This time it’s ‘giants’, inspired by the name of the local rugby league team. During the subsequent lunchtime brainstorming session, most of the teams take a lateral approach to the keyword. The ambitiously named Team Awesome from Nottingham Trent University has an idea about controlling a gas giant as it flees an ever-growing black hole; Team Default envisions a sort of procedurally generated platformer in which, every time the player defeats a level, the camera pans out to reveal a larger map with further challenges. The Krunch Bunch, from University of Wales, Newport, are thinking about giant egos – their idea is a character whose head expands as he receives compliments from nearby NPCs, but shrinks when he’s insulted – the player must manage the cranial size to pass different obstacles. When the teams are allowed into the sizeable computer rooms, the coding begins almost immediately. In the background, a series of projectors display giant countdown clocks on the walls.