Book Image

The Game Jam Survival Guide

By : Christer Kaitila
Book Image

The Game Jam Survival Guide

By: Christer Kaitila

Overview of this book

<p>Game jams are fun. They are a creative, exciting, social experience. The goal of a game jam is to design a video game, either alone or in teams, as fast as is humanly possible; usually in a single weekend. <br /><br /><em>The Game Jam Survival Guide</em>, written to help you have more fun and achieve greater results at your next game jam by building a successful game without burning out, leads readers through each 12-hour phase of a 48-hour weekend game jam.</p> <p>Weekend warriors: dominate your next game jam! If you follow the system shared in this book, you will be able to build an amazing game that you're proud of and will entertain players, all in just one crazy 48-hour game jam weekend … and survive to tell the tale! <br /><br />Embrace the best practices and techniques of past game jam winners and avoid common pitfalls along the way to the finish line. You too can survive a 48-hour game development marathon with your mind intact and an amazing game to show off to friends and family!<br /><br />With <em>The Game Jam Survival Guide</em> you will learn the secret techniques that master game jammers use to create winning entries. It starts by showing you great ways to brainstorm and design a game based on a theme. It then moves on to highlight the best tools and techniques to finish a game in a weekend of coding. Anecdotes and advice from past winners and losers combined with humorous words of encouragement are sure to help you on your way. The author presents a list of game jams around the world, online communities worth checking out, fantastic game engines, and art resources. Finally, learn how to monetize your game by gaining sponsorship from big gaming websites. It's the fun way to make your own video game in one weekend!</p>
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
The Game Jam Survival Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Contributors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

About the Reviewer

Joseph Labrecque is primarily employed by the University of Denver as senior interactive software engineer specializing in the Adobe Flash Platform, where he produces innovative academic toolsets for both traditional desktop environments and emerging mobile spaces. Alongside this principal role, he often serves as adjunct faculty, communicating upon a variety of Flash platform solutions and general web design and development subjects.

In addition to his accomplishments in higher education, Joseph is the proprietor of Fractured Vision Media, LLC—a digital media production company, technical consultancy, and distribution vehicle for his creative works. He is founder and sole abiding member of the dark ambient recording project An Early Morning Letter, Displaced whose releases have received international award nominations and underground acclaim.

Joseph has contributed to a number of respected community publications as an article writer and video tutorialist and is author of books such as Flash Development for Android Cookbook (2011 Packt Publishing—ISBN: 1849691428), What's New in Adobe AIR 3 (2011 O'Reilly Media—ISBN: 9781449311070), What's New in Flash Player 11 (2011 O'Reilly Media—ISBN: 9781449311094), and is a co-author of Mobile Development with Flash Professional CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5: Learn by Video (2011 Adobe Press—ISBN: 0321788109).

He regularly speaks at user group meetings and industry conferences such as Adobe MAX, FITC, D2W, 360|Flex, and a variety of other educational and technical conferences. In 2010, he received an Adobe Impact Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the education community. He has served as an Adobe Education Leader since 2008 and is also an Adobe Community Professional.