One of my biggest interests in life since my early childhood was video games. Like a typical boy at that age, I was very invested when playing them. Funnily enough, although I was told I shouldn’t play too much it’s this interest that likely got me set on my passion. A part of me was always curious how games got made, which led me into a path of computer science and game development. As soon as I was old enough to code, I started to work on my own projects and try to develop my own games. These games were not very high quality; there was a lot of problems that needed to be ironed out, but it was still good at getting me passionate about developing.
This was about the time I learnt about Game Jams; where people can get together to make a game within a short time constraint to show off their best developing skills. I was naturally intrigued by this process, and wanted to participate in one some day. However, entering a live game jam wasn’t too easy of a task; my location didn’t contain too many game jams, and the ones that were live were difficult for me to fully participate in because of school. If I ever took part in one, I wanted myself to fully experience and work on it for the duration rather than waste the opportunity.
The opportunity came for me at August 2023, where I was invited to the Jeonjoo Global Game Jam. The event was going to be massive; students from different universities all over the world such as the Utrecht School of the Arts, Tokyo University, and Northeastern University was all going to meet up in Jeonjoo to develop a game within 72 hours as a team. The event was intended to unite university students from all over the world over a common interest. I was entering this event as one of the only high schoolers, so I was incredibly nervous. I had a lot to live up to.
I remember how it felt arriving at the campus where the event would be held; it really dawned on me how I was now going to have to follow through a project in such a short amount of time. I’ve made several personal projects relating to game development by this point, but those had no time pressure or the need for team management. It would be my first time ever experiencing those issues first hand. This did not help my worries at the time, especially because I always found communication to be difficult; it would have to be a personal issue of mine I would have to find a way to fight through.
There was also another concern that was arguably far more burdening; the thought that I would hold back my fellow teammates down who were all more experienced and talented than I was in my viewpoint. The Game Jam was meant to be a team effort, and I was afraid that I would be seen as not a teammate but a burden that needed to be dragged around as they did their work. The guilt from that experience would be lasting on me. I knew at that point in time that I still wasn’t as skilled of a developer as I wanted to be, which only added to this worry.
Regardless, I knew that backing down from this wasn’t an option; it was something I aspired to do for a long time. So, I decided that no matter how hard things got I would always try my hardest to make sure I contributed as much as I could.
I got into a group, and was nervous to make the first move. All of these people were older than I was. What if they looked down on me? But then, someone spoke up and introduced themself as an artist. I think that moment was a pivotal moment in my mindset; my team wasn’t just cold, calculating people there to do a job but rather people who wanted to cooperate and have a good time developing together, which washed my worries away.
There were still obstacles however; even though the team got along well, we were having a hard time settling on a concrete game idea that aligned with the theme of peace. Actually being able to communicate and work out our ideas together was prvoing to be difficult in the first few hours of the game jam. It was this time where I realized the importance of being vocal within a group was; it was how problems were solved.
