The Athens Site for the Global Game Jam went off superbly. It was 48 hours of craziness. The majority of the event was captured on video, which you can watch in its near entirety from ustream.tv if you’re into that kind of thing. I don’t recommend it. The event was, as expected, 90% boring for viewers and likely 10% sheer terror/chaos. The game that was created was ultimately broken due to time and engineering limitations, but if you look more closely at what was developed, it is exceptional for 48 hours. “Escape from Ralph’s Seafooditorium with Ursula and Olly,” contains a significant amount of work that was just shy of playable. Even as it stands, things like automatic level loading, sound, music, and art are all exceptional. With a little time and love from the part of those involved, I have no doubt that we will see more of Ursula and Olly. I know that the developers are already intent on flushing out an actual version 1.0 of the game, a process I will certainly also participate in.

Special thanks of course goes out to our sponsors, the New Media Institute at UGA and Athens Play N Trade. I would also like to thank Jordan Lynn and Mark Mooney for helping me out logistically when basic things like doors, food, and other things needed an extra hand. Of course it is also important to thank everyone else, without whom the event could not have been the success it was. THANK YOU!

Over the next several weeks and months, those participants at the Athens GGJ plan to continue development, moving meetings from The Pub at Gameday to the New Media Institute at UGA, where they can continue development. In the mean time I need to get to updating the SVN repository so our start/end and new beginnings are marked. The newly formed “Depth Charge Studios” even has its own Facebook form. Design work continues over at the UGA Gamelab Wiki. Game on Jammers!

Dr. Scott Shamp of the UGA New Media Institute has put together an excellent blog post on the upcoming Global Game Jam. The NMI is our biggest sponsor, donating space, money, equipment, electricity, and bandwidth for this event. It should be an impressive one. I think Scott puts it best with:

So the Global Game Jam is just the first step. I promise to send you a report – and pictures. I think these guys will make something very cool happen. Never underestimate the power of pizza!

There is a ton of potential with the folks who have singed up. I for one am delighted with the kind of commitment we have recieved and know that this event will be one for the UGA record books.

All events at the GGJ in the NMI will be broadcast via a live webcam. Sorry folks, but outside the NMI are off limits, so no images of sleepy Global Game Jammers. You can find the feed at UStream.tv, though we wont begin broadcasting until Friday, January 30th at 4PM.

The next Athens Chapter GGDA Meeting will be 01/27/2009 at The Pub at Gameday at 6PM. For those that have not yet attended a meeting, The Pub at Gameday is located at: 251 West Clayton St, Athens, GA 30601.

The primary goal is to ensure that any late-comers interesting in the GGJ can get registered and into the loop. Any engineers interested in talking about engine stuff, I would like to do that this meeting as well. We can also do any last minute brainstorming we like. If you feel like you are ready to go and happy to show up at 4PM on Friday 01/30, then don’t feel like you have to be at this meeting. Of course you can have a beer with everyone that does show up.

The pre-Global Game Jam meetings of the Athens GGJ have been a success this far. Soon this site will begin its updates and provide additional information about the Athens, GA Jam. I am pursuing several different sponsors at the moment and working to have our site web-cam working prior to the middle of next week.

Attendees are also brainstorming and beginning to become comfortable with the various digital resources that have been made available to them, ranging from a forum to the jam’s wiki. You should start to see more frequent updates to this site as we approach the January 30th start date of the GGJ.

Welcome to the official website of the Athens Georgia Global Gamejam site. We’ll be putting more details up on the site soon, so stick around.