Game Jam Culture at the Workplace - Teemu Kokkonen, Finnish Game Jam.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] game Jam is a huge part of finished life and due to the venue change this year and I'm not having the space of time we couldn't support our usual Jam so I'm quite upset about that but we will be doing it next time um but I am we have got somewhere to talk about games Jam so we have timu coconut of the finished games Jam hello timu and you're going to talk about game jams in the workplace yes come on finish strong yes hello everyone I guess we're gonna dive straight into the Sim so hello my name is democraconen I'm the president of Finnish game Jam organization I'm

gonna talk to you about game Jam culture at the workplace and uh getting used to the to the uh clicker here like everyone else is it the green play button or it's the green play button where where there we go so what's gonna happen in the next about 20 minutes is I'm gonna introduce myself again and then I'm gonna tell a little bit what are game jams and then I'm gonna tell a little bit like what to not do and then what to do like regarding uh implementing uh game jump culture at your workplace so who am I and this is going to be the most chaotic slide that you will see today uh I am a program and a designer I started teaching at uh in a kovala college uh for game programming and game design then I worked for a Japanese company called worker B uh for uh programming and Publishing games in Japanese Japanese markets then I switched to mobile hyper casual so I worked at Twisted Arc a bit then at lightninger as I went in as a programmer

and switch a designer and then briefly at Skunk Works before well we most of us know what happened there uh and but then now I'm actually also at fingersoft so like double dipping the the sponsor and Associated here and on on the side of all of this I'm also have been in Finnish game Jam as a site organizer as a AV team lead and then later uh now as a as a president for third year in a row but what is a game jam and uh a game Jam is an accelerated opportunistic game creation event where a game is created in a relatively short time frame uh exploring given design constraints and the results are shared publicly and this is bayana Casa golden who's actually sitting in Iran standing in the front row there and this is kind of the basis of all this that I'm going to talk about so the red highlighted words are actually relevant to what I'm going to talk about uh so in layman's terms typically a game

Jam is developing a game or a prototype over a weekend relating to a specific specified theme and finish game Jam so if I didn't talk about that so Finnish game time organization is an umbrella Organization for game jams in Finland especially the global game Jam in Finland which is Finnish game Jam cool and what's game Jam culture now then uh so what this is relating to speech is relating to is how we facilitate game jams at Finnish game jam and then it's the atmosphere of equality because everyone comes into the game jam and they are like everyone is on the same level and then of course the practicalities of development so doing things fast and getting results of that cool so using Game gem culture at the workplace don't uh okay so this is a game Jam is where you make a so should I make my my employees make uh really good prototypes in 72 so 72 hours or 48 Hours uh week after week don't so a couple of doing uh

kind of uh important things here is to don't Crunch and don't expect and let's go more into these so don't crunch so the long jamming hour so people do tell Tales or in-game gems that they do these long hours overnights and and other stuff so these are voluntary and internally motivated and don't chase that if you start kind of expecting someone to be internally motivated the chances are that they're just gonna kind of they don't want to do that anymore so don't chase that that is voluntary and keep that voluntary keep that internally motivated and if you if someone does then do extra effort always compensate for that so for example Flex hours or indirect pay so if you do some sort of prototyping take this into account as well cool uh then don't expect so uh game jams May produce breathtaking games so there are actually Veterans of game gems who are able to optimize their process they know what uh maybe audience is

looking for the professionals might know what audience is looking for but uh there's a lot more value to the all of the others and all of the game Jam games most of the time they lack something so they are might look nice but for example we have this Finnish game Jam award so we actually do go look into the all of the other games as well and see like what is the key what is the the jewel inside the inside the game there uh but yeah also just remember Jam game Stone don't magically replace lots of work so they might look like they are finished products that they are not so just keep this one in mind but now that we have the uh negatives out of the way let's go to the positives positives here and we're right on time as well uh cool so here's a couple of uh words that we're gonna do so relax time box create rainstorm include and going each of these uh through as well like we did so and those as a context here uh

like what do these relate to is mostly uh so for generating new ideas so finding the next big thing that was talked in the panel as well that what is the next one so this is these are ideas for for that this can also be used in like receiving feedback uh so when you have a feedback session you can use these these uh mechanics and and notes here and then of course for the general atmosphere at your company for example and these are I just realized a little bit earlier here that these are written sort of like leadership position but you can also apply these to yourself so with self-leadership there uh for yourself and forever on Singularity but let's get into the beef here uh so relax drop your shoulders and so on ease upon the requirements of so this is for example prototyping so if you're doing new ideas uh ease upon the requirements if you are requiring uh kind of a business plan for someone to pitch their idea they're probably not going to be

there's gonna be a couple of ideas someone will go through that but you're missing out on really good ideas and and kind of initial initiatives uh when you make the requirements so just kind of keep it really really casual and cool reduce external pressure so in Finnish game Jam for example none of our gems is are competitive so we try to keep the competitiveness away so you don't actually have external pressure because if you make something a competition you need to have a criteria that what is the winner and then people will optimize for that and they will forget everything else they will the creativity will go out of the window they will just optimize because why would you want to be some part that is not for the criteria uh and this all is just kind of allow such a psychological safety which is probably a keyword that you will hear here this this two days here as well but just to kind of when you are able to be relaxed and you feel safe sharing your your stuff uh then it's it's always just gonna be much better and you can release

the creative potential of everyone then uh do time box and uh isolate the creative sessions uh from other activities you have a starting time and at any time and you don't have to prepare anything for it and you don't have to kind of worry about the results afterwards uh if you have a for example a prototyping a brainstorming session for example it can be like this is like half an hour now and uh you can just isolate that you don't have to prepare for it you might be able to kind of put some ideas into people's heads before that but uh just kind of keep it as low so that you can actually kind of isolate it and also for like from the kind of tail end then you should have so like we mentioned in the first slides that you have kind of uh the results are shared publicly as well so you should have some results down and then you can then kind of return to those results and the people who actually kind of need to look at those results can look at those and you don't have to bring everyone there so if you

have creative sessions isolate them from other activities kind of this also you just kind of time box the thinking there as well and create healthy time pressure so this is also creating healthy time pressure but uh if you are like me that you do everything on the last last second uh just healthy time pressure is then that you move the last second a little bit kind of backward there so that you when you're doing something and you kind of are at the edge of your kind of well-being there you can actually then say okay I'm actually gonna ease this up because it's not in reality it's not not like so serious as it kind of you might have to fool yourself but just create healthy time pressure so when you have deadlines have some buffer time there and kind of create create there then that you have something that prompts action but then is not critical there and doing this over and over again you then kind of learn to observe what is essential and what is not solved this is just like you don't at first like I mentioned that there are C like better

game Jammers they haven't got the like knowledge of what you need to do and what you don't like in an uh one session they have done it over and over again so they know what they can can prioritize and what they don't need to necessarily prioritize then to create uh stay playful so this is very important to have the infinite we have this thing called pilgrimage so glimmer at the corner of your eye so just keep keep smiling or stay playful and have this kind of genuine kind of playfulness in you uh related to that let your inner child speak so this is probably the most most protected thing of everyone else inside us so have a place be in a place where you can actually allow your inner child to speak as well and this is especially when we're doing games and games are well in Finnish we have game is uh lake or or a belly so there's like the playful children's games and adult games and you can actually then just kind of have the

uh Bring the actual toy factor and kind of playfulness in into your product as well and this is where this is why people play games as well they want to have the toy Factor cool don't rush ideas let them simmer so you don't have to actually always always just kind of make something quickly and just kind of let them simmer a bit cool then for brainstorming do brainstorming so in game jams we also like the gem starts with with a brainstorming session and don't over complicate sharing so just uh don't make it so that you have to fill a form and then we will check the forms and everything just have something one paper A4 paper of of your idea or one one slide uh one page pitches so a lot of like a common thing that we're doing in a lot of Finnish game Jam gems is that you have one page pitches for uh everyone's ideas and then you can kind of go through those and everyone can pitch their idea in like 30

or or 60 seconds depending on how many people you have and reduce the kind of the idea balance latency because the most important thing for for your idea is to get it out of yourself and get it to someone else because then someone you need to first the first time you hear someone say that this is a crappy idea I don't like it that's the most important part so that you can actually then start to ground your ideas uh to the perhaps the the target audience that you have or then just like internally to your to your team and mix merge modify don't you have early ideas don't kind of try to hold too much ownership into those uh just kind of have combined ideas uh merge them mix them up by get pick up some ideas from different places and then you can also take okay that guy's ideas or that person's idea is is a nice one I'm just gonna make that but just a little bit different so that's also allowed and as long as you have done the like like you're the finished product that there

is is still a lot of work away so just don't don't own too are much ideas so yeah so get excited together so this is also that you can actually then balance these ideas so you can merge someone's idea then they can you can maybe bring them together and they are also part of like excited about the idea and then you can find some new new venues there to get excited cool then include and this is uh pretty important and finish game Jam gems doesn't start before everyone has a team so if you have a also in a company that if you have some activities uh then just take make sure that everyone who wants to like who doesn't want to be alone or do is like a very specific solo project or do something alone that they everyone else has a group or they are included in the in the part sometimes these might be someone who does isn't necessarily too uh social or or very a little bit more

quiet and you just need to kind of just make sure and encourage people to to be able to participate uh as well and everyone's thoughts deserves to be heard uh so you should listen to everyone this doesn't necessarily mean that everyone's ideas need to be actually implemented uh so everyone's ideas need to be heard including yours and everyone's ideas don't like deserve to be implemented including yours so let ideas be adopted on their own ways so just to kind of whatever things or people or whatever you have gravitates towards then kind of Follow that that uh thing there call so we're already at the summary and this is maybe this is good for catching up time here so uh in summary uh reduce latency so when you have idea just kind of bounce it around as much as possible so you can actually have have like new ideas New Perspectives and and

so on uh Embrace people so you should then Embrace people as they are fairly kind of see what people are and embrace them as they are Embrace their creativity and their ideas as well then just let go it's okay let go of the pressures if you're doing brainstorming let go of the pressures of the markets or let go of uh any kind of competition or pressures so just kind of be you relaxed be there get the uh absolute creativity the chaos from inside your mind out and inside everyone else out and then just kind of put it out there and then you can maybe come back and see whatever you kind of produced from that and if that's actually any kind of useful cool and we actually do have time for a q a at least for uh

we have time for for at least one question do we have anybody I've got a question about Q about game jams is anybody there's a man there with his hand up well maybe he's just signaling you can go to the bathroom that's what you're asking it's fine it's good yes thank you very much we can probably start putting the chairs hi hey team river thanks for the thanks for the talk I'm I'm curious about what are the tools and the engines that people use for for game jams is it very similar to their day-to-day or other specialty things ah so that depends on what person's goal is at the game gem so if they want to make something maybe they want to get their idea out they might use the things that they use in there every day everyday uh kind of um work so if you are a really good at Unity you might just want to usually because you don't have to learn new things but if someone like wants to actually learn something new so in game jams it's a really good opportunity to then kind of take it because you have the time pressure you have the theme you

have like know what to do so to get a new engine for example and then start learning that and like whatever you can manage in a definition in a game Jam is just like if something moves at the end of the jam it's like perfect you have achieved the goals of the jam cool yeah okay we have any other questions oh there's one more here you want to check your last one then we're gonna Johnny it's it looks like to be a cheeky question uh what's the next big gaming chairman going on when is the next one okay so Johnny is a vice president of Finnish game jams just as a context yeah he's got a stooge in the audience I love it yes yes I have plenty of friends uh next big game Jam is gonna be the global game Jam in Finland so in January at the end of January I don't actually remember when it is Charlie's somewhere here so she will be able to tell that but it's gonna be at the end of January uh next year so finish game Jam slash Go Global

game Jam we have a little bit trouble kind of differentiating with the event and the organization but the global game Champion Finland is going to be the next cool all right thank you very much around the pools please for our game jammers [Music]