One student-organized group on campus has taken their passion for gaming to the next level. Members of Spartasoft are not satisfied to simply spend a weekend playing video games — they aim to design their own.
The club participated in Global Game Jam during the weekend, a worldwide 48-hour marathon dedicated to inspiring creativity and building a working game from scratch in one weekend. The event is sponsored by companies like Intel, Microsoft and Facebook and is the largest event of its kind.
Members of Spartasoft and other eager gamers gathered on Friday afternoon in Communication Arts and Sciences Building in preparation for the event. Although the club is focused on game development, not everyone participating was a computer programmer. Artists and graphic designers were present to help create characters and models for the games.
The goal of Global Game Jam is to a stir up a global creative buzz in games while at the same time exploring the process of development, according to the event’s website. And while the marathon continues for 48 hours straight, students at MSU were encouraged to come and go over the weekend to work on their games.
“I won’t be able to stay for the whole time,” computer science sophomore Trever Daniels said. “But I want to help out as much as I can.”
To kick off the global “hackathon” on Friday, a special Keynote presentation made by several game developers worldwide was shown in the auditorium of Communication Arts and Sciences Building. The same video was screened at nearly 500 locations worldwide to inspire creativity.
“This year’s theme is, ‘What Do We Do Now?’” media and information senior Nicholas Thurston said. Thurston organized the on-campus event with Global Game Jam.
“We want people to ask questions when they get their hands on our finished products, and we want to be asking the same important questions as we build it,” Thurston told fellow members.
Eight teams were made within the group participating at CAS, each in charge of creating an entirely unique game from the ground up. All of the finished games from this year and previous years are made available on Spartasoft’s web page. Most games use Unity, a web-based plug-in, but some students created games with physical elements or using smartphones and tablets.
“It is really important to have a plan for all aspects of the game in advance,” said computer science junior Andrew MacAfee.
The global event ended Sunday evening, with a presentation of the games and each team was encouraged to share their creation online with other programmers worldwide.
In 2014, more than 4,000 games from 72 countries were created in the span of one weekend.
