...and we're off!

The Game Jam officially opened at 19:00 to give participants from the industry time to get off from work, get their gear and go to the IT-University. After a brief welcoming presentation by Miguel Sicart from the IT-University, Gorm Lai from IGDA (also co-founder of developer 3 Lives Left) and Henriette Moes from Diginet.org, the jamming started with a mingling exercise.

All 134 participants was dragged into the main room at the IT-University and was asked to split up in groups -- first according to age, then according geographical place of origin, favorite vice and favorite game character. Henriette Moes from Diginet orchestrated the exercise and it shook people together well. Then the participants were told to gather in teams of three, and come up with game concepts based on the theme, two from each group.

The theme was "Taboo"; this was chosen to make sure that the participants would have to work on themes of a more artistic nature that they'd never work with it commercially. We were a bit scared that theme might inspire participants to make a game that would provoke religious resentment globally, but the participants handled the theme in a fairly mature manner. On top of the theme, we included three game play restraints.

The game had to have a game loop and be winnable (which excluded digital toys and screensavers), the game had to be playable with a controller and not just mouse & keyboard, and the game had to be multiplayer, either against an AI or another player. The jury would judge the games on these criteria.

All of the participants gathered in an auditorium after the brainstorming, and those who wanted to advocate a concept presented it to the crowd and lobbied for people to sign up for it. The presented themes ranged from torture, pedophilia and cannibalism over sex parties and PMS to lighter topics, like farting in an elevator and the associated social pressure.

In round two of the pitching, the advocates placed a piece of paper on their chest with a description of the concept and a "wanted" description for the people they needed; everybody mingled and people signed up for the teams. At 22:00 the groups spread out over all of the IT-University to develop their games. Hectic teambuilding was replaced by further game designing and focused work.

Crunch, crunch, lovely crunch...

The game industry has a reputation for crunch, those extended periods of time where teams work nonstop to finish a delivery and make the milestones. This is almost universally loathed; few teams survive crunch unscathed. One of the conundrums of the NGJ '08 was that teams had approximately 40 hours to finish a game demo, including time for sleep. So the participants paid to experience conditions akin to crunch... and they do so in very high spirits.

Unfortunately sleeping isn't allowed at the IT-University, so people had to go home or to their hotel/youth hostel to sleep. More than one team was rumored to plow through, ignore sleep and work for 40 hours straight. However, a local journalist photographed one such team early Sunday morning while they were thinking truly deep thoughts while resting their heads on their keyboards.

Everything was very quiet during the development period. The only interruptions were the morning status meetings, where the teams discussed their progress and potential issues and the three daily meals. We decided early on that we wanted good food at the event and that it had to be more than adequate to keep the teams going through the entire event.

Thanks to our sponsors and an excellent catering company we managed to provide a hotel-style morning buffet (no Danish, though!), a traditional Danish lunch and a hot meal at dinner. The catering company also gave us an excellent offer on Cuban beer, which was sold alongside sodas throughout the entire event.

Almost 300 beers were drunk during the event. We topped off the catering with as much coffee and tea as people wanted ; it wasn't uncommon for a team member to come down to the catering table and pick up three or four canteens of coffee for the team; come Sunday afternoon it was sorely needed.