The seventh annual Global Game Jam, an epic two day coffee-and-Doritos fueled game workshop, is happening this weekend at locations all around the globe.
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At last year's Jam, people gathered from over 75 different locations, sacrificed sleep and their families to create more than 4000 different games for a multitude of platforms. Only through a weekend of sensory deprivation could we ever get the popular - and always horrifying - Surgeon Simulator (and the equally ambiguous Legitimate Business Simulator, in which you participate in an organ harvesting ring),
While the theme for this year is kept under wraps - they don't reveal it until just before the Jam starts - if it's anything like the past few themes, an Ouroboros (2012), "As long as we have each other, we will never run out of problems" (2009) and last year's "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are," this weekend's creations are sure to run from the sublime the ridiculous.
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The Global Game Jam site also recently updated its list of Diversifiers for this year's event, adding a deeper level to the constraints developers can choose to put on themselves. Up for more of a challenge? Then you can try your hand at NES, which asks you to "Make the game playable on an old school console, either directly or through an emulator."
Or Make a game based on the works entered to Public Domain on 1st January 2015 - for instance works of Wassily Kandinsky, Edvard Munch, Edith Sitwell, Piet Mondrian, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Felix Nussbaum, Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti, Glenn Miller, Flannery O'Connor, and Ian Fleming (cough, James Bond, cough), depending on your country with the Public Domain Class of 2015 Diversifier.
The full list of constraints and where to go to watch or participate can be found on the official site. Game Jams are a great font of intense creativity akin to the always fun 48 hour film festival and we look forward to seeing what pops out of the heads of this year's participants.
Hopefully, nothing actually pops out of people's heads. Looking at you, Surgeon Simulator! You terrifyingly hilarious game, you. The Global Game Jam gets underway this Friday night, January 23 with the opening ceremonies, and then its off to the races until Sunday, January 25.
