Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I would say that there's some kind of tradition in the tech community in general around the
idea of getting together with other programmers and doing something they're passionate about.
A lot of people think of it as a bonding experience, but also it became something that we in general
associate with creativity.
Global Game Jam is a 48-hour-maximum event where all across the country - all across
the world, actually - people get together and they all create games around a central
theme. This year's central theme is "heartbeat." People get to run with it in so many different
ways. There's a lot of different things coming out of one theme, which is really cool. For
us, this is gonna be a 24-hour event. We have about 23 students, half of them are from UMass
and half of them are from Mount Holyoke. Everyone's gonna stay here on the third floor of Kendade
all night. We're gonna have a lot of pizza, snacks. soda. People are gonna get together
and just make their games.
The idea at this point is that everyone's on the same level. You're just excited about
making a game, and it builds confidence for the students because by the end of this event,
they'll actually have taken their own idea, an original idea, from start to finish in
a short amount of time, and that really builds up the confidence of 'I can do this, I've
taken the things that I've learned from the classroom and actually applied them to creating
a tangible product.' Sometimes when you're in classes, it's hard to keep a focus as to
where you're going and where you're gonna end up, and this allows the student to really
feel like, 'You know what, I thought I might like to do this, it turns out I like to do
this, and I feel like I can do this.'
I'm excited about computer science. I want to make computer science my career. I love
software, I love coding. It's what I want to do. Making games is a relatively easy way
to just make something. And what's really cool is that since so many people are doing
it, at the end I hope to see other people's projects because I'm really interested in
what they come up with and I wanna see, like, 'How are they gonna implement that?' and then
I wanna see what they come up with at the end. It's gonna be really fun.
I did not think that people would actually be so engaged. I mean the room is full of
people and they're all doing something that they're super psyched about. Why not? Great!
Definitely!