Here’s to an Awesome Long Weekend

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!