What we learned from the Game Jam Summit 2022
During our Game Jam Summit, we welcomed experts from across the industry to share their experience and knowledge. Here’s what we learned.
Building games is no easy task. It requires a whole range of skills, creative thinking, and some real tough skin.
A few weeks ago, we ran the Game Jam Summit alongside multiplayer pro and YouTuber, BigFry TV. Developers had just under a week to create a killer prototype, using an ‘opposites theme’. We saw some brilliant games made by some talented developers, which you can check out here. And just wanted to say another huge congrats to all of our winners.
But during the event, we also invited the experts of the industry to share their experience and advice to all developers building games. Our aim here was to not just run a regular jam session, but to help the community learn and develop their skills.
So in this article, we’ve handpicked some key advice from each session. You can listen to the full talks here. But for now, here’s what we learned.
Top insights from the week
During the week, we ran multiple Q&A sessions from the industry’s leading experts. Each day, we covered a different topic around building multiplayer games. Here are a few of the highlights.
1. Ideas can come from anywhere
Coming up with winning ideas can be tricky, especially if you’re not sure where to start. But you can find inspiration from almost anywhere today. Even more so with social media and the internet at your fingertips.
“Look at the world around you. What’s trending? What’s popular? Social media is great for this. Instagram and TikTok have all of these trending hashtags. Take ASMR as an example. This happened a while ago, and we saw a ton of developers jumping on this.” Says Ioana Hreninciuc, CPO at Homa Games.
Following these trends on social media can help bring that extra layer to life to your game, or simply give you a competitive edge in an already saturated market. But it can also show you which ideas are best not to pursue, too.
“But it’s a good place to find out what you shouldn’t do. People may already be developing those types of games. Think about the pandemic — we saw so many ideas around Covid. We’ve seen them, tested them, and they didn’t work. So it’s good to see what people are doing and find a trend, but you’ll want to give it its own unique spin. And any obvious ideas, well, it’s either been done, or developers have tried it, and it didn’t work.”
2. Make your ideas meaningful
Finding that idea is half the battle. You’ll need to make them meaningful and unique if you want them to stand a chance. During the first session, Mark Terrano, Design Director & Founder of Mountaintop Studios took the stage and shared his thoughts.
“Start with what are the human needs, and work from there. What do I think somebody should know? How can I improve their lives? What do I want the takeaway to be? If I was to work on a game now, I would think of something on how can I overcome loneliness? Or how can I help people overcome feelings that AI is smarter than them?”
Coming up with a good idea that holds your game together is key. But it isn’t too hard. Any idea can work. You just need to find out how it connects with people. What’s the meaning behind your game?
“Sometimes I have a big cloud of ideas, all different and addressing something in life. Honestly, it’s not really a problem coming up with ideas. It’s about finding the best ones.”
Asking those tough questions can take what could be an already great game, and turn it into something memorable.
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