Why you should create (and join Game Jams)

Last weekend my friend and I joined a Game Jam hosted by the game development department of a film college in our capital city. We were almost the youngest ones there with everyone else being around 25 years old and we felt like such babies compared to them.

We got into teams and started working on our games. If you don't know, a Game Jam is an event (online or in person) where people get a topic/prompt they have to create a game for in a short amount of time, which can range from like 48 hours to maybe a week or two depending on the jam. So we were on quite a time crunch. In the end we made something super experimental and wacky, but human and really funny and relatable. And during the presentation, I could hear so many people laugh and compliment the project, and it made me really happy.

So, why am I talking about this? I'd like to recommend game jams to anyone interested in collaborating with others to make something awesome. You don't even have to be an artist, we had a musical composer and a theatre director on our team and they did an awesome job and helped out tons. Some teams even had producers, programmers, actors, or just people outside the field that were just curious about the whole thing. It sounds really hard in theory, but in reality, there is almost always some kind of output and the results tend to be much better than you think. It's such a dopamine rush and so much joy from submitting the game and building its Itch.io page, knowing, that we made it in time and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Well then, create! Make stuff, make really dumb and stupid and silly stuff, because unless you're a complete dumbass (which I don't think you are if you're on Spacehey and you're reading this), you're most probably underestimating yourself. In an age where everything is overly polished, personalised and watered down to the simplest forms, the world really needs some raw human art with visible imperfections. And remember, you can always join others in collabs, projects and such, people are usually happy when someone offers help :)

Good luck with your art! Go have fun!