Review of Educational Benefits of Game Jams: Participant and Industry Perspective

Kolek, Mochocki, and Gemrot's review examines whether game jams deliver educational value, with particular attention to the industry's perspective, an area the authors identify as underexplored. Drawing on a systematic review across ten academic databases, the study screened 362 initial texts and identified 15 empirical studies on participant learning outcomes and 12 on industry perspectives. The participant evidence suggests that game jams develop soft and hard skills valued by the games industry, though most of these studies rely on small samples, and only five use control groups, so the overall empirical base remains limited.

The industry-focused literature reports benefits including recruitment, rapid prototyping, interdisciplinary teamwork, soft-skill development, and local community building, supplemented by practitioner accounts from Riot Games that add company-level and personal perspectives. To address the gap, the authors surveyed 14 Czech game companies in early 2021. Sixty-nine percent of these firms were involved in jam activities, and involvement was strongly associated with productivity: all high-productivity firms (two or more prototypes per year) participated, compared with 43% of low-productivity firms, while company size showed no clear pattern. The most common activity was organising in-house jams, and the leading motivation was self-education, followed by team-building and creativity support.

The authors conclude that the industry recognises the educational value of game jams, with firms engaging in them for learning alongside recruitment, networking, public relations, organisational culture, and product development. They caution, however, that the Czech sample is too small to generalise beyond the national context, and they call for larger studies on industry perspectives to strengthen the evidence base.