Video Gamers Discover Inspiration on a Train
After two days on a train without showering, 190 video game designers, artists and programmers disembarked at this station on the San Francisco Bay. Some of the travelers had come from as far away as Zambia and Pakistan to take part in Train Jam, which uses the 52-hour trip from Chicago to the West Coast as an opportunity for strangers to come together and, amid laptops, headphones and virtual- reality headsets, create video games.
Adriel Wallick, the event’s organizer, conceived Train Jam as a way of making a creative venture out of the journey to the 30th Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the world’s largest annual gathering of game makers with about 25,000 attendees. Ms. Wallick, 29, an independent game developer from the Netherlands, said the idea came to her during a trip from Boston to Seattle three years ago: “I realized that a cross- country train ride would work perfectly as a game jam,” she said, referring to the events in which participants develop video games over an allotted time period.
The views are spectacular. Along the nearly 4,000-kilometer route, the train weaves through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, shifting scenery from cities to mountains to deserts. “It’s hard to not be inspired by all of the changes and beauty around you,” Ms. Wallick added.
Each of the 50 or so video games made during Train Jam were playable at the conference held earlier this month. That these little games are being given a platform on such a sizable stage is indicative of the industry’s expansion. Today a video game like Minecraft, originally built by a lone programmer in his bedroom, competes with the titans of the industry, such as Call of Duty and FIFA, which are made by many workers and supported by multimillion- dollar marketing.
That kind of blockbuster game making is a high- risk venture, with spiraling budgets and development cycles that can last three years. Unproven ideas are perilous, leading most studios to cling to bankable sequels. Game jams, by contrast, are a low-risk way to experiment without the need for a commercial aesthetic or a bug-free release. Even the games that don’t blossom into commercial releases can be useful.
“It is a place to fail, happily,” said Susan Gold, founder of Global Game Jam, which invites people to join in, wherever they’re based, during a 48-hour period.
Since the inaugural Global Game
Developers are free to experiment in isolated ‘ jam’ events.
Jam in 2009, the event has grown to nearly 40,000 participants in 93 countries. The most recent event in January created more than 6,800 games, many of which are free to download.
Two days is enough time to explore an idea without burning out, and at these jams, programmers, writers, musicians, artists and project managers can all find a use for their talents.
For Adam Saltsman, an independent game maker from Austin, Texas, whose hit game Canabalt was conceived during a game jam, the appeal is more straightforward.
“I think nerds like to party and make stuff,” he said.