Pushing the boundaries of game development with JamBike and other experiments

[Music] [Music] we are here to talk about game jams and not just game jams about awesome game jams my name is Sonic as a cool demo and this is Jana harem I'm gonna talk a little bit about our other experiments and then Jana will tell why the bike is on the stage so yeah hopefully we can get the slides there thank you so I'm a jam to beast a jammer organizer and a chairperson for a nonprofit organization called Finnish Game Jam we

help Finnish Game Jam organizers to run cool events and we do run a lot of games ourselves we're running a game jam right now behind this wall here so it's called pocket jam I'm also game researcher that so that's where my salary comes from so if you don't know what is a game jam I probably everybody now already knows what is a game jam but let's just reiterate that so game jam is an accelerated game development event where you create a game in a small in small teams within a relatively short time and publish the game right right after the event this is exactly what happens also today tomorrow at pocket jam so people are creating games in teams right there will also publish them right after the jam this is a probably something that if you define a jam people forget to mention that the games are out

immediately there are tons of different kinds of jams most of us have heard about global game jam olodum there and offline and an online game jams that have been running for quite a long time so for instance global game jam has the first goggle game jam was 2009 and club game jam was formed on top of a tradition of Nordic game jam which was also part of global games him for a long time but then it's it's a separate event nowadays there are all sorts of weird different kinds of game jam so global Game Jam Nordic game jam they're about 48 hours of development usually during the weekend but for instance train Jam is a jam that goes on a train of a 52 hour journey from Chicago to San Francisco's I think this year was the 4th year already of that there's also in terms of time or the time constraint there is much stricter

one so for instance zero hour game jam is a game jam where you create a game in one hour when the clocks are turned back so basically the game in a zero hour we're and also game jams in different locations of the conferences and events like here at Pocket Gamer connects and also innocently there's another kind of nice locations like for instance Castle Game Jam is in the actual castle then there are topical jams for instance list which is not pay proper they they are taking a break so you can't join that next year so list is about love sex and romance then just quite recently Rovio announced that there is going to be mum jam for the mothers to come back to the industry so create games together there are also serious game jams such as health game jam run from co-op in

finland and then as as Rovio announced their mum jam there's a lot of jams happening in companies so also very publicly for instance Double Fine's amnesia fortnight if you check a cheese calendar on game jams you can find that there's like all the time there is a game jam happening so that's like a huge explosion of gems right now and we also update the calendar which is a little bit more curated so you can check what kind of game gems we think that are the ones that you should participate in too Finland is a super jammer country if you are from Finland if you've been coming in Finland you might not be aware of that that we actually have quite high percentage compared to the capital of the jammers so in 2016 for instance we were the biggest country in clobber game jam jamming during that weekend so

compared to capital also like in absolute numbers considering how many countries actually participate into global game jam we were on the on the on the sixth position so that's quite huge for such a small country so in 2016 we had 929 27 participants only in one game jam and we also did survival mode watch which is which is a jam experiment that I'm gonna highlight a little bit but we've done different kinds of jams other than global game jam as well so roughly around thousand people during one calendar year are part of our events and as I already said we're jamming right next door and maybe if you're not completely kind of convinced how important it is to follow this trend I'll give you a highlight of our super

jammer so in Finland we have a lot of jammers that have been participating to over 25 game jams but then we have jammers like Somali ASCII line and also part of the Jam bike that if I remember correctly the exact number of jams that he has taken part of from 2012 onwards is 53 so that's quite a lot of jamming that he has been doing he's created 88 games during his life so that's quite crazy so there's a number of game jams and participants and and the kind of people are very into this scene and some of the jammers travel around the world to go into different kinds of challenges and for that taste we've also created because if you have been jamming for over 25 times you might want to experience something different oh my you like to push the limits a little bit further so we've done a game jam in a

bus which was touring the global game jam sites in 2014 so we put like 20 developers in the bus and they were doing games while driving that bus and that was 2014 so now it doesn't really feel that special because you can do games anywhere but we've also been kind of we fancied weird technology so we've done three game jams in a planetarium so for a full dome projector for instance it's so much fun to explore new technologies or kind of technologies that you wouldn't consider like commercially viable but you never know something might happen and maybe that's actually your basis we've done game chance with a very kind of challenging topics like quantum Game Jam and then also we've we've kind of sent jammers up north without electricity and running water and so forth I'm gonna tell a

little bit of about that but it also had the jam bag that Jana will discuss more so in 2016 we went to up north and had 25 came to Vil oprah's without electricity very limited internet for some of them it was no internet at all and kind of we did have gotta see generators running but we even limited that so we wanted to keep them the electricity can consume a very low so so not that much of natural lights during a January and we ended up doing unfortunately you can hear that this is hilarious speech but we ended up doing also documentary with Allah for for that so you can check it with from arena EULA or now if you haven't seen that but this is a cool experiment where we actually discovered you don't need that much electricity for creating a game so that was very successful and I'll give to

stay to Jana to explain what's the next step for a Finnish Game Jam boss okay I hope you can hear me so we were like actually two years ago already me and Samuel Aviva in the India beer event and we were discussing how to get to the Nordic game conference and then we popped out this idea let's take a bike and then the idea evolved quite fast at that moment after that moment so basically jams games for me personally they are but I think in restrictions that becomes lots of create creativity like mobile games varible games one that I find them really interesting professional wise so when we decided we would take a tandem bike all the way from Stockholm to malama to Nordic game conference everybody got

really really excited about the idea so it's it was quite fast after we decided this is something we really need to do and what we really wanted to do so obvious restrictions were outside in the weather exercising constantly and then one big theme was the restrictions on electricity so important part of this Jam was like developing the gear people-people we took that trip so we were like oh we need to how much electricity we can generate it's solar panels and with dynamos like how much power we can use so we can develop a game so we ended up having a Raspberry Pi computer which was purp ice cream there was lots of complications we even Vivint the architecture like university architecture like a workshop where they helped us to build a case for the computer that can withstand rain if that

would happen so there were lots of restrictions physical mental and technical restrictions on this game jam so maybe next slide so there was basically two of us on the trip I'm I was the captain captain is also title for the one who drives front and steers so we didn't die while coding and I was captain of the bike and then my code or some only our super jammer he was him back and he was taking care of the computer and he like build it up and everything like that then we had a crew of two Lowery and me here in the middle top they were awesome crew we actually had a living man following us Devon we had a photo a lot of us a cook and a photographer we had everything set on there and Myka did all the amazing social media interactions and we edited videos on the fly with the phone because we were really restricting the latency on the cartoon that was kind of surprised we

had to evolve the middle down you can see us going that's what it looked most of the time time went fast it was interesting it was fun quite economic really healthy I think there was lots of great we use there and like lots of eating and sleeping that was our in addition to develop in the game that was our our job basically so maybe the next slide so in short this is how it went like we got there many were like really skeptical I was only skeptic about this bike because my personal bike is three times four times more expensive that this one's we had to do the second hand I can tell you nobody sells tandems in Finland so this was second hand bought from some couple from hala picture for them and it took six days approximately hundreds and ten

kilometers a day more or less depending on their day trips we took like 30 kilometer jumps between eating and having arrests and it was six hundred sixty kilometers in total I almost had it all with my Apple watch I'm really bummed I've effed up a few times so I didn't get all the data during the trip Somaly developed a sore knee because he the computer was on a way and I I learned a lot about how to adjust the saddle of a bike that was we had been really I was it was painful but after third day I learned how to do it so it was a learning experience most of all there was peak problem we were planning to have a Korean game jam like generating the power and the goal but the Sun bothered us only on two days while we go went so on third day we tried to start the computer but the battery were still too low in charge so the Raspberry Pi computer didn't run so

we had to take battery that we had charged with the finish power and use it on Sweden so we didn't have enough solar power up there you can see the root somehow from the Apple photos that we took it was quite fantastic and the game was playable and yeah yeah we had a game actually you can see there on the rights left side corner it's a it was game that was planned to play around the bike I don't have it show you unfortunately there's nothing at twister where you had to push all the buttons and put all the friends and somebody ready to scream it's just fantastic so no traffic's no audio and yeah it's a develop it by game so it was so all the development happened while nothing touched to the code and that was one important restrictions we didn't have a internet connection so someone was basic

like drawing the syntax on the paper so he could memorize it while we go because he didn't use the Python PI game that much either so it was interesting so it was a it was amazing trip and we had a fantastic sponsors like ink also like the Finnish kangan Association was like really important part they helped us all the all the way and we actually have something in the proving it seems that next May we're gonna jump Pike is gonna write again so I hope you follow us jump pike yeah we're gonna probably do the same approach and have Facebook lives on from the from the trip and that's that's quite exciting to follow as well so yeah thanks that's my part yeah so I have

actually so that's like that's what we do in Phineas games and we try to bring game gems to the to the beginners but also to the ones that already have gone through a lot of different game gems and want to challenge themselves in different ways and we have a nice announcement to make this is straight from the press so you are the first ones to hear about it we've been thinking about a lot of different kinds of new ways or new things and new game jams to work with and one of the game gems that that we are we've been working for a few years was as I mentioned quantum gain gem quantum game jam is a jam where you create games with quantum physicists so it's actual theoretical physics professors and and her students and and colleagues that are joining our Jam and we're actually making that jam on a survival mode like the one that we already had on a cottage but we just

want to add a little bit more of the challenge because it was basically too easy so we want to make the games that are tied to the topic of quantum physics the cool thing about quantum game jam is that they're creating a so-called black box so you just as a developer you create a game that has an input and output and then in between there is a code created by the scientists that you that they can use for crowdsourcing their actual research problems so it's a little bit like folded but in a more perhaps fun way and the thing is that we we are sending we're paying a trip for gifted game developers and jammers full kind of full boarding so the speakers that all the travels in the food and stuff so we are having applications and application is online now so any of you can apply to

this trip which will be in December from seventh to tenth including the travel days so that would be our next stunt in in the field of game jams and we're gonna enjoy a nice cottage up north with quantum physicist and a game developers so that's that's our next trip and we hope that you will join that adventure if not that then other adventures follow our game gyms as well or become an organizer a sponsor whatever kind of means you want to be part of the our organize a game jamming scene in Finland so there is both we have volunteers for you to talk more we have free stickers in candy if that's what you want instead and you can always ask more questions by

email and in Facebook and just follow us in our channels and I think we have enough time if you have any questions about our stunts and game jams in general so feel free to ask questions thank you [Applause] thank you very much yes we have some time for questions perhaps from from the audience if there are any one on the left here I can see oh look at that first I know I think if it's not a secret who are usually the sponsors of a game James and what are their motives say again so who is the sponsor and what are their motives yeah so we actually when we started game jams of running game jams in 2010 we were asking money from different kinds of places to cover pizza and soda basically and then we

discovered that when you put a jump t-shirt and then there's the logo on the back people are using these dishes quite a lot so we ended up only asking money from game companies so it is basically giving back to the community and then some companies might have an interest to be visible for the future talents so it is a recruiting motive or well not all of them have a recruiting motive we have a very great community in Finland and and game companies really want to support the hobby scene where they also come from themselves so hopefully that answers your question then it may be sometimes other other organizations that just want to have a little bit of kind of contact to the development scene we've had also some of our sponsors they didn't only get give us money but they also put a lot of money in time to participate our gems to go to the

grassroots level to perhaps kind of reconnect with their love if they can't do the games that they want to do or they can't explore perhaps all the technologies that are not relevant to their commercial productions so that is for also kind of a very keister storm you know that's a I don't know what is it in English but for for funsies but but but but it is important also to go to the grassroots if you think about like IT da meetings you talk with people but in like where do you actually can test your future co-workers in a actual game development setting so it's a pretty efficient way to me to meet the new talent as well cool thank you as you could you just for a moment perhaps to tell us what's going on with the pocket Chamonix tour they work into a theme and when do they finish yes so we started at ten and then

we are ending the deadline for the jam is at two tomorrow so it is it's less than four or thirty hours and the theme is more love less hate because of the world today so that's that's the team and then they're making pretty awesome games and we have actually in few minutes we are going to take a look at their development of the first seven hours so if you're interested to see what they were able to do in that such a short time they're gonna showcase their projects behind that wall thank you very much perfect thank you Anna Anna Kaiser and Jana thank you very much thank you very much for for your talk a round of applause please and thank you [Applause] [Music]

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