How many game developers does it take to make a functional video game? For big titles like ‘Madden’ or ‘Call of Duty,’ the average is about 100.

But in the increasingly popular independent games movement, teams of fewer than 20 or even 10 people are designing, programming and crafting smaller games, hoping to achieve even a fraction of the success ‘Call of Duty’ has achieved.

This weekend, the School of Education, the School of Information Studies and the College of Arts and Sciences are bringing the indie game scene to Syracuse University with the 2012 Global Game Jam. From Friday evening to Sunday morning, small randomly assigned teams will scramble to create a playable game in less than 48 hours. The Jam encompasses traditional board game creation along with video games.

The Jam will be at Huntington Hall and will kick off at 3 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, with the announcement of this year’s theme.

The event, started by the International Game Developers Association, happens each year in late January. As its title suggests, groups around the world will be simultaneously developing their own games. Syracuse is just one of almost 250 sites for the event. Registration is open through Friday at gamejam.syr.edu and costs $10.

Nilay Yildirim, a doctorate student at the School of Education for instructional design, development and evaluation, was largely responsible for bringing the Jam to SU last year.

‘This event was something I wanted to participate in the year before, but I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see how many people were interested in doing it in Syracuse.’

She said she was very pleased with the last year’s turnout.

‘We ended up networking with people after that, making a group where we could talk about game development and research,’ she said.

The School of Education may appear to be a strange sponsor for an event like this, but instructional technology M.S. Program Coordinator Alan Foley, one of last year’s faculty organizers for the Jam, feels it’s a natural fit.

‘There’s a fairly significant movement internationally called ‘game for learning’ or educational games,’ he said. ‘It’s very broad, (from) informal learning (to) how can games be used in classroom environments. We’re interested in how people learn throughout their lives in a variety of contexts.’

Chris Hanson, an English professor and the head faculty organizer for the event this year, is more interested in the study of games themselves.

‘I think games are emerging as an extremely significant cultural form. There are branches of academia related to the study of literature and the study of film as text. I know that there is a growing field concerned with games as text.’

The prospect of creating an entire game in 48 hours may be scary to many who would otherwise be interested, but Yildirim encourages students to give it a try.

‘It’s definitely doable. There are thousands and thousands of games developed in this short period.’

ikdavis@syr.edu

Published on January 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Isaac: ikdavis@syr.edu