Game Jam Research Articles

Future-oriented skills and knowledge in game jams, a systematic literature review

Game jams, events for co-creating digital or non-digital games, are connected to learning in several ways: learning is a common motivation for participation and various learning results have been reported as their outcome. The existing literature on game jam learning consists mostly of descriptive individual case studies, with very incohesive and varied research aims, methods, and settings. Thus far, there have been no attempts to further analyze and classify the reported results of the previous studies. This article looks at existing research on game jams and learning, comparing the reported learning results to the future-oriented skills and knowledge. The data set, created utilizing the PRISMA checklist, consists of 25 original articles published between 2010 and 2022. The results show that participation in a game jam event will likely increase interdisciplinary, epistemic, and procedural knowledge. Furthermore, it can increase disciplinary knowledge depending on the theme and other framings of the event. Participation in a game jam event will likely further cognitive and metacognitive skills as well as social and emotional skills, provided the jam event is organized to create a safe and inclusive space for learning. Participation in a game jam will also likely further diverse practical and physical skills, but the adoption of these skills varies depending on individuals’ tasks inside their team. ICT-related skills are furthered in jam events concentrating on digital games and can be supported when making non-digital games. Thus, game jams offer a well-suited method for learning future-oriented skills and knowledge.

“Community” in Video Game Communities

The concept and experience of community have been changing in contemporary societies, from a traditional concept in an idealistic, homogeneous context, characterized by union, to the exploration and experience of new forms of organization and participation. The specific characteristics and dynamics of emerging video game (VG) communities can help us better understand the importance of game cultures. Based on an ethnographic study of five game jams and data from eight focus group discussions with game jam and VG community participants, this study explores five analytic and emerging dimensions of the VG community: meanings and perceptions associated with the VG community, feelings of belonging, issues of access, structure, and organization, and contexts of participation. These results improve our understanding of the ways participants in VG communities can be seen as creators of game culture and how VG communities are recreating the concept and experience of community in contemporary societies.

Game Jams: new educational places?

Resumo A existência de vários lugares para o educativo está sendo reconhecida na sociedade contemporânea. As game jams (GJ), contextos de criação de videojogos, vêm sendo estudadas como lugares onde o educativo pode ser emergente. Este artigo apresenta uma revisão da literatura, que integra estudos acerca das relações entre game jams e educação. Poucos estudos têm sido realizados, mobilizando métodos qualitativos e explorando as percepções e perspectivas das pessoas participantes sobre a forma como esse educativo desenvolve-se e concretiza-se. Este artigo recorre a dados de um estudo etnográfico multissituado e focado, desenvolvido no contexto de 5 GJ, e dados de 8 grupos de discussão focalizada, realizados de forma síncrona on-line, com participantes em GJ. Os resultados da análise revelam a emergência de quatro dimensões analíticas, que identificam as motivações educativas para a participação nas GJ e as características da experiência educativa vivida; as percepções sobre os resultados e efeitos educativos da experiência; os métodos, as estratégias e recursos educativos percebidos; e as percepções sobre o clima relacional e social vivido nas GJ. Essas dimensões analíticas permitiram explorar uma compreensão das GJ como novos lugares educativos, que concretizam a procura da integração ativa e dinâmica do lúdico, do tecnológico com e no educativo. As GJ, portanto, são reconhecidas e valorizadas pelas pessoas participantes como lugares educativos emergentes no panorama educativo contemporâneo, que integram dimensões facilitadoras da vivência de uma experiência educativa.

Educational games created by medical students in a cultural safety training game jam: a qualitative descriptive study

BackgroundCultural safety training, whereby health professionals learn to reflect on their own culture and to respect the cultural identity of patients, could address intercultural tensions in health care. Given the context of their medical education, however, medical students might perceive such training to be dull or even unnecessary. Game jams, collaborative workshops to create and play games, are a potentially engaging learning environment for medical students today. How medical students learn while making games is poorly documented. This study describes the characteristics of educational games created by participants in a cultural safety game jam and the concepts they used to create games.MethodsAs part of a trial, 268 Colombian medical students divided into 48 groups participated in an eight-hour game jam to create a prototype of an educational game on cultural safety. In this qualitative descriptive study, we reviewed the description of the games uploaded by participants, including the name, objective, game narrative, rules, rewards, penalties, and pictures. An inductive thematic analysis collated their descriptions.ResultsThe game descriptions illustrated the characteristics of the educational games and the aspects of the cultural safety concept that the students used to create games. Medical students situated cultural safety within a continuum with culturally unsafe actions at one end and cultural safety at the other end. Although not familiar with game design, the students designed prototypes of basic educational games including game dynamics, game scenarios, learning objectives, and pedagogical strategies.ConclusionThe findings of this study could help researchers and educators to understand how medical students learn from game design and the kind of games that game jam participants can create without previous game design skills.

Essay Jams and Collaborative Writing as a Community Event

The Pandemics and Games Essay Jam <https://pandemics-and-games-essay-jam.pubpub.org/> was a community writing event hosted by Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination <https://csi.asu.edu/> and online games writing nonprofit Critical Distance <https://critical-distance.com/> . The event drew on the practice of “game jams,” in which participants spend a short, focused period of time creating digital games, either as solo developers or teams that may have only formed at the start of the jam. Echoing prior events hosted by Critical Distance and organised by Emilie Reed, the essay jam provided a social context, theme, and creative constraints for participants to create a piece of writing and share it with a community. The publishing platform PubPub provided tools for peer feedback, swift sharing and revising, and sorting essays into sections that would comprise the structure for an ebook edition. Meanwhile, the existing Critical Distance Discord <https://discord.com/> server provided a space for synchronous chat during the jam and later for a book launch event. Building on Critical Distance’s role as a community hub and signposting resource for critical writing about games, the essay jam located submissions within a specific community structure. The leadership role of editors and curators at Critical Distance is nuanced, and the organisation’s work suggests a negotiation between two polar positions: neither fully autonomous and informal community-led editorial management, nor fully hierarchical and formal academic journal management. Critical Distance offers a recognition, response, and context for community writing, through events such as essay jams as well as ongoing curatorial and archiving work. In this essay, we consider how the essay jam, and Critical Distance’s larger editorial structure, both captures productive tensions in community-led, community-responsive publishing, and suggests future directions for structuring collaborative writing activities, from figuring out incentives for participating authors to creating a culture of dialogue around drafts and ideas in progress.

Materializing the abstract: Understanding AI by game jamming

In this article, we argue that game jam formats are uniquely suited to engage participants in learning about artificial intelligence (AI) as a design material because of four factors which are characteristic of game jams: 1) Game jams provide an opportunity for hands-on, interactive prototyping, 2) Game jams encourage playful participation, 3) Game jams encourage creative combinations of AI and game development, and 4) Game jams offer understandable goals and evaluation metrics for AI. We support the argument with an interview study conducted with three AI experts who had all organized game jams with a focus on using AI in game development. Based on a thematic analysis of the expert interviews and a theoretical background of Schön's work on educating the reflective practitioner, we identified the four abovementioned factors as well as four recommendations for structuring and planning an AI-focused game jam: 1) Aligning repertoires, 2) Supporting playful participation, 3) Supporting ideation, and 4) Facilitating evaluation and reflection. Our contribution is motivated by the recent discourse on general challenges and recommendations of teaching AI identified by related literature, here under the long and intertwined history of games and AI in general. The article presents an initial discussion of the value of game jam formats for learning about AI and which factors need to be considered in regard to this specific learning goal.

2022 Gaming Event: Battle Royale 14 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Reports on the 14th Battle Royal, the annual gaming event that took place from March 4–6, 2022, in Ottawa, ON, Canada. This charity event, hosted by the IEEE Carleton and IEEE uOttawa student branches, fundraised over $1000 for the Ottawa Food Bank. This event also housed a game jam, which is a hackathon but specifically focused on game design and development. Technical workshops and a networking opportunity with industry professionals were offered to game jam attendees, opening the door for students to learn about game development and industry-standard tools and technologies.

Quantum games and interactive tools for quantum technologies outreach and education

We provide an extensive overview of a wide range of quantum games and interactive tools that have been employed by the quantum community in recent years. We present selected tools as described by their developers, including “Hello Quantum, Hello Qiskit, Particle in a Box, Psi and Delta, QPlayLearn, Virtual Lab by Quantum Flytrap, Quantum Odyssey, ScienceAtHome, and the Virtual Quantum Optics Laboratory.” In addition, we present events for quantum game development: hackathons, game jams, and semester projects. Furthermore, we discuss the Quantum Technologies Education for Everyone (QUTE4E) pilot project, which illustrates an effective integration of these interactive tools with quantum outreach and education activities. Finally, we aim at providing guidelines for incorporating quantum games and interactive tools in pedagogic materials to make quantum technologies more accessible for a wider population.

Scene Tracing

The notion of scenes has helped frame how particular clusters of cultural activities, practices, and "happenings" simultaneously replicate and transform global practices in specific localities. The study of scenes has aided us in examinations of how geographic and virtual localities create and shape global industries, movements, and genres. In this article, I focus on the Toronto game production scene to examine how it replicates and transforms the wider cultural norms, working conditions, and genre productions of the global game industry. Based on a two-year ethnography of the scene, I survey how gamemakers maintain and challenge the expected norms and practices of industry and platforms in the production of local games. To identify these clusters of cultural activity, I develop the notion of scenes as palimpsests to trace how gamemakers replicate and transform industry cultural norms and practices in the local scene. The last decade has seen the emergence of social media platforms as a venue for participants of scenes to discuss, create, and disseminate their works with geographically local and global audiences. The textual spaces of these platforms connect participants of local production scenes to a global community defined by geography, industry, and genre. By tracing scenes through its inscriptions, I examine how these platforms are centers for encounters between the values and practices of the Toronto game production scene and the wider industry. This article is about how the geographical cultural activities of scenes are shifting into virtual environments, and how these virtual spaces are transforming the cultural norms and practices of gamemaking and its associated activities, such as socials, game jams, and "talking shop." I argue that analyses of globalization must consider the wider physical and virtual infrastructures of local production to understand how cultural media are produced and circulated around the globe.

Transactive Memory Systems, Temporary Teams, and Conflict: Innovativeness During a Hackathon

The transactive memory system has been studied extensively, yet we still know little about how it influences the effectiveness of temporary teams. Additionally, little is known about the boundary conditions of the well-established benefits of transactive memory systems on team performance. Our primary goal in this study is to build and test a theory that investigates the influence of a transactive memory system on the performance of temporary teams while accounting for conditional effects of both task and relationship conflict. On the surface, a transactive memory systems perspective may seem incompatible with temporary teams. Transactive memory systems typically require time or team member familiarity to develop. However, team members on temporary teams often are selected because of their expertise, not team member familiarity, and often must quickly and effectively operate under time and outcome pressures. We present a theory that suggests transactive memory systems should have a meaningful influence on temporary teams, and its effect is accentuated in the presence of task conflict and attenuated in the presence of relationship conflict. We test our theory using a sample of 202 teams participating in the Global Game Jam, the world's largest hackathon devoted to designing and developing games within a 48-h period. In addition to implications for literatures on transactive memory systems and temporary teams, our study adds to a growing literature providing practical advice and insight regarding hackathons, a pervasive source of innovation and idea generation.

The CHEM Jam - how to integrate a game creation event in curriculum-based engineering education

To tackle future sustainability and energy issues, novel learning approaches should be considered in chemical engineering education, particularly those encouraging learners’ problem-solving skills. This paper proposes an example for educators to integrate game-making activities into a chemical engineering curriculum. The specific activity proposed is a collaborative event, known as a game jam in Game Studies. Participants use a custom-made Game Editor for Learning to design levels for a jump n′ run/platform game. The editor facilitates the construction of games for non-game designers, has a tutorial, and is provided with inspirational gameplay videos of level examples and a template for facilitators to assess the resulting levels. This paper argues that prompting learners to create levels based on chemical concepts and structures, challenges and develops their problem-solving skills, and makes the activity valuable to be integrated in present engineering educational programs. The learning experience, named CHEM Jam, starts with an introductory phase during which participants receive essential guidance, while preserving the effectiveness, of learner-centred activities. The assessment methodology is aligned with the learning objectives of an undergraduate process design course. Finally, research and critique on the activity and how chemical engineering can benefit from game-making events and communities is discussed.

Virtual Game Jam: Collaborative Pathway to Serious Games for Health

Game jams are collaborative competitions where participants make games from scratch within a short period of time. Occasionally, these games aim to promote meaningful learning outcomes by embedding functional knowledge into entertaining and engaging gameplay. We wanted to understand if a game jam during a global pandemic could be used as an effective method to facilitate a collaborative, multidisciplinary team’s ability to design, develop, and implement a serious game on a health-related topic (i.e., COVID-19). We examined the 2020 game jam hosted by the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate one method to organize a serious virtual game jam and provide a roadmap for implementation using qualitative and quantitative data collection methods to evaluate its efficacy. In addition to identifying best practices and lessons learned from our tools and processes, our results demonstrate that a virtual game jam can in fact be a powerful tool for creating a scientifically sound, population-level, big picture–thinking serious game used for health education, facilitate collaborative multidisciplinary teams and be a practical learning experience for game jammers.

Game Jams as Valuable Tools for the Development of 21st-Century Skills

The concept of 21st-century skills refers to the knowledge, skills, and emotions that are critical to successfully navigating today’s world. Game jams can act as spaces to develop these skills and thus boost cooperative learning, problem-based learning, or co-creation. Additionally, game jams offer opportunities to improve collaboration and creativity skills, among others. This paper summarizes three years of activities designing and studying game jams to develop 21st-century skills, focused on Mexican students aged 12–16 years old. Data were compiled through direct observation, open-ended questionnaires, and interviews and were subject to thematic analysis in order to construct new knowledge on a previously underexplored topic. The results suggest that game jams are valuable tools to develop 21st-century skills, and, although the outcomes of skill evaluation may vary and may be difficult to verify, the participants reported increased skills, such as creativity or collaboration. Finally, this paper provides recommendations based on the research and practice conducted by the authors on how to use game jams to develop 21st-century skills and different ways to organize game jams, along with the resources needed.

Recentering Indigenous Epistemologies Through Digital Games: Sámi Perspectives on Nature in Rievssat (2018)

This article examines Rievssat (2018), one of the six games developed during the 2018 Sami Game Jam, as a case study to demonstrate how digital games on Indigenous issues afford opportunities to embed Indigenous ways of knowing into the core of game design. In particular, by exploring Rievssat’s themes and game mechanics, this article identifies the way its procedural rhetoric models an understanding of and relationship to the game environment that reflects the dialogic connection with nature and animistic worldview unique to the Sámi people. This article thereby demonstrates the value of new media in recentering Indigenous systems of knowledge and cultural practices by engaging with and incorporating Indigenous epistemologies into the foundation of game design, revealing how Sámi digital games can offer insight into Sámi ways of knowing and experiencing the world to Indigenous and non-Indigenous players alike.

Radecznica memory game. An educational workshop

The paper describes and discusses the educational workshop in the form of a board game jam held in Radecznica, a village in Eastern Poland. The event, organised by researchers from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, was a follow-up of the research project on uncommemorated Jewish mass graves in the area. The aim of the workshop was to facilitate individual reflection on local Holocaust killings amongst the participating adults, as well as to bolster the memory of mass graves in Radecznica. Combining Holocaust memories with the didactic properties of rapid board game design, it was also an attempt to employ game jams as a method in Holocaust-related education. The workshop’s success leaves us optimistic regarding the method and its possible applications in the future.

COVID-19 Innovation Approach to Support Wellbeing, Anxiety, and Depression Through Gaming Technologies

With this current Covid-19 pandemic, colleges and Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) must focus on applying educational experiences that are enriching, joyful, rewarding, and engaging. With such dynamic changes to the education systems due to the Covid-19 pandemic, gaming technologies have played an essential part in improving retention, engagement, motivation, and wellbeing. The needs of students are ever-changing within the pandemic, and institutions need to focus on wellbeing, anxiety, and depression. Current evidence does support that institutions have seen an increase of students seeking support from specialist teams for anxiety, depression, and wellbeing issues. The preliminary study used within this research is used to discover if gaming approaches can assist individuals/students who are experiencing distress within the Covid-19 pandemic. The research finding within the preliminary analysis studies does show that the use of a Game Jam provided students a chance to interact with others, assist with aspects of engaging in activities outside the everyday routines.

Expectations and realities: Examining adolescent students\u2019 game jam experiences

This article describes the expectations and experiences of young (16 to 19 year old) digital game jam participants (N = 34) who attend Finnish general upper secondary schools. Game jams are a form of game creation: events where games are made in co-operation. They are widely used in game design education and in addition, when participated voluntarily, learning has been reported as an important motivation. The existing literature mostly concentrates on game jams for adults, and informal or non-formal learning. This article is adding to the literature by examining learning in formal education for adolescents. As part of our research, we have organised game jams in formal general education, and this article is based on the pre-event and post-event surveys of three game jam events. The article maps 1) the motivations to attend a school related game jam, 2) the expectations and apprehensions the would-be participants have, 3) what kind of learning game jams promote, and 4) how does attending a game jam affect participants’ attitudes and apprehensions regarding learning, STEAM and information technology, and their own skills. Our results indicate the creative side of digital game making, desire to learn new skills and make new friends to be the main motivations for participation, and the lack of confidence in technical skills to cause most anxiety before the jam event. The effects of attending a game jam are mostly positive, with the participants reporting learning experiences in several soft and technical skills and increased motivation to take part in creative and co-creative projects. A gendered result can be seen in the participants’ altered stance on technology and programming: girls and non-binary students report technology and programming being easier and more fun than they had thought before attending a game jam event, which is well in line with previous research on STEM/STEAM education and gender.

Conception collaborative d'un jeu d’évasion pédagogique dans le cadre d'une game jam : du design du jeu au design du jouer

Cet article aborde la question de la conception collaborative de jeux dédiés à un usage éducatif à partir de l’analyse d’une game jam qui a permis de concevoir Mission Télomère, un jeu d’évasion destiné à la prévention du tabagisme chez des élèves de l’enseignement secondaire. La question de la collaboration est examinée à partir de l’analyse des verbatims d’entretiens conduits avec quatre des participants à la game jam. Les résultats obtenus montrent que l’approche méthodologique que nous avons mise en œuvre a permis aux différents concepteurs de faire évoluer et de partager leurs praxéologies, c’est-à-dire de converger du point de vue de leurs pratiques et de développer un discours commun sur la manière dont le jeu peut être conçu. Nous contribuons donc à la réflexion sur ce qu’est un jeu d’évasion et sur les modalités de conception de ce type de jeu en tant que dispositif techno-pédagogique complexe nécessitant, pour être conçu, une approche multi-expertise.

Jamming the assessment: The viability of a Twine game jam as a learning evaluation tool in higher education

While game jams, rapid game co-creation events, have seen increased interest in learning contexts, their potential is still largely untapped. In this paper, we examine game jams as a form of playful assessment. We evaluate the potential of game jams to serve as a tool for assessing learning processes and goals of higher education students.The study is built around two instances of a university course focusing on the analysis of storytelling in digital media, taught during the autumn terms of 2018 and 2019 at the University of Helsinki. Both instances included a Twine game jam with the idea of giving the students a hands-oninsight into highly abstract topics. In our qualitative study, we examined game jam experiences of the students through their written reports. Following research questions were formulated: Is game jamming with Twine a viable tool for assessing student learning on a university course? What limitations and requirements are there in the use of game jamming in assessment?Through thematic analysis, we identified categories related to student learning and their experience of the game jam in the data. Categories were examined against the learning goals to discern how students were applying knowledge and concepts obtained during the courses.Our results suggest that the game jam format encourages reflection of the course content as well as its application. Game jams potentially complement existing, more conventional assessment methods as they strongly encourage the jammers to engage with and apply knowledge they have acquired.

Game jams for cultural safety training in Colombian medical education: a pilot randomised controlled trial

ObjectivesExplore the acceptability and feasibility of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to assess game jams—participatory events to cocreate digital or board games in a time-constrained environment—in cultural safety training of...