Game Jams and 'Heavy' Topics: Navigating Anxiety Through Game Creation

The paper, by authors from several Nordic and other universities and published in the Proceedings of DiGRA 2024, examines whether game jams can be used to teach sustainability to game development students. It reports on two Nordic Alliance for Sustainability in Gaming (NASG) events: NordEcoJam, held in Tallinn in June 2022 with 28 students in six teams creating prototypes, and NASG Un-Jam, held in Copenhagen in June 2023 with 23 participants creating five games. Both lasted five days and combined development with workshops and expert talks. The study analyses participant reflections, mainly daily end-of-day surveys (87 responses in the first round and 63 in the second), using qualitative thematic analysis, with investigator triangulation.

The authors report that several participants felt pessimistic and anxious after the first day, largely because of the topic rather than social anxiety related to new teammates and an unfamiliar setting. Moods were mixed, with participants describing the talks as both inspiring and overwhelming. The balance between optimistic and pessimistic moods shifted over the jam, and participants increasingly reported tiredness.

The authors also note that the organisers discouraged crunch, and that participants described the jams as more relaxed than previous events, though the topic created a new kind of stress. The study concludes that the creative and social process of game jamming can mediate eco-anxiety while engaging with heavy sustainability topics.