BATON ROUGE - The Global Game Jam, a week-long event in which people around the globe compete to develop games based on a single prompt, kicks off at LSU Monday evening. 

Read more about the event below:

The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world's largest game creation taking place in physical locations across the globe. Think of it as a 48-hour hackathon focused on game development around a theme.

GGJ’s mission is to stimulate innovation, experimentation, and collaboration in games. The annual event begins on a Friday afternoon in January and kicks off with video keynotes and advice from leaders in the game development industry. The jam formally begins after an announcement of the year’s theme, kept secret until the last second, and not revealed publicly until 17:00 at our last time zone to start: Hawaii! The GGJ encourages collaboration and its events are not a competition.

In 2020, there were 934 sites in 118 countries with over 48,000 jammers who collectively made over 9,600 games! The jam is known for helping foster new friendships, increase confidence and create opportunities within the community. The jam is always an intellectual challenge. People are invited to explore new technology tools, try on new roles in development and test their skills to do something that requires them to design, develop, create, test and make a new game in the time span of 48 hours.

The GGJ is open source, hardware & software agnostic and all projects are protected under a Creative Commons license. We encourage people to try out new ideas and push themselves, within reason. Many games developed in previous Game Jams have become fully realized games. We also strongly encourage participants to be aware of their mental and physical wellness during the event (to eat and sleep!), so they can stay at their creative best!

Who: Age 18+, amateurs through professionals (minors allowed if accompanied by their legal guardian/or school counselor/chaperone). Collaborate with new friends or peers you admire. Although having computer skills is helpful, code experience is not necessary. Designers, developers, artists, musicians, knitters, gardeners, architects, everyone and anyone is welcome. You could work on a non-digital game, and then there's no need for code! View FAQ's for more information.

Schedule: Monday, January 22: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Meet in the Theatre for the THEME REVEAL Monday through Friday start working on game remotely Friday, January 26: 3:00 PM Registration in the Lobby of the Digital Media Center. Sign up your team or Join/Form a Team. Friday, Saturday, Sunday until 3:00 PM: continue working on the games. Sunday, January 28: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM Judging/Showcase If you have questions, contact maubanel@lsu.edu or kjones@lsu.edu.