Cultural Games Creation: An Applied Game Jam Model

The Applied Cultural Jam Model examined here adapts the Applied Jam Framework to cultural game creation, operationalised across three EPIC-WE Cultural Game Jams (ECGJ#01–03) held in Óbidos, Portugal, between February 2024 and February 2025. The model departs from the conventional 48-hour jam format by running four-day events and adding pre-game warm-ups and pitch sessions that evolved across iterations. It relies on a Quadruple Helix collaboration linking a municipality, a games company, a university, and youth participants. The study engaged 71 university students, 21 facilitators, and 4 observers, who together produced 24 games, and it extends its evaluation beyond the events themselves to consider the longer-term impact of the games created, an angle the authors note is rarely addressed in applied jam research.

The central finding is that facilitated cultural engagement on site is essential to thematic depth. ECGJ#02, which benefited from continuous cultural mentoring, produced the strongest games, while ECGJ#03, with less experienced participants and limited facilitator presence, yielded the fewest games and reduced sophistication. Participant satisfaction was generally high: 84.6% of ECGJ#01 participants found the time allotted adequate, and the same proportion judged the pre-jam cultural activities useful. These results suggest that the model can support culturally grounded game creation, provided facilitators are actively involved throughout.

The study's limits are clearly acknowledged. Follow-on development outcomes for the games produced were not assessed, and the findings are confined to the Óbidos hub, which constrains generalisability to other locations and institutional arrangements. The authors conclude that further research is needed to establish the long-term viability and broader applicability of Cultural Game Jam models for creative and educational purposes. The work was funded through the EPIC-WE project, received ethics committee approval, and anonymised participant data.