LCV students participate in Global Game Jam 2018

On January 26-28, LaSalle College Vancouver hosted the Global Game Jam 2018 on campus. A game jam is a challenge in which groups of game designers receive a theme, and must all design a playable game that fits that theme, from idea to finished, within 48 hours. Global Game Jams typically attract thousands of people from around the world, working out of host locations in every country. The LaSalle College Vancouver game jam, led by LCV’s game art & design instructor, Lisa Smedman, hosted 25 students from our Game Art & Design and Game Programming programs as well as a couple of alumni who are now working in the industry.

The theme for Global Game Jam this year in all sites around the world was transmission. The theme was released on Friday afternoon showing radio towers, synapses, cars, gears, and different types of communications, giving a few ideas of the many ways this word could be interpreted by each team. Game jams are a common practice in the gaming industry in order to render new and fresh game ideas, and they bring together the elements of creativity, experimentation, collaboration, and lots of hard work.

The Global Game Jam officially kick-started on Friday January 26th at 4:00pm and ended on Sunday, January 3:00 pm.  Although some jammers left to rest and recharge overnight, many others stayed at the site for the full 48 hours to continue working on their games. On Sunday, each of the 5 teams of LCV game designers emerged from a sleepless, caffeine-fueled trance to present their final games.

"The opportunity to participate in a game jam is very valuable for our Game Art & Design and Game Programming students. It teaches students scope - how much they can get done in a very short period of time - as well as accustoms them to the process of designing, testing and redesigning multiple times. It also teaches them teamwork skills and time management which are crucial skills in the gaming industry nowadays. The pressure of this event pushes the students even harder than a class-base project which often has a longer deadline. Here knowing 48 hours is all you got students end up using skills they didn't even know they had in them," says instructor Lisa Smedman. 

We are so proud to see that all 5 teams accomplished the rare task of completing a functional game in 48 short hours. Great job teams!

About the LCI Education network

LCI Education traces its origins back to LaSalle College in Montreal, which was founded in 1959. Present today on 5 continents, the LCI Education network consists of 22 select higher education institutions, and some 1,500 employees offering instruction to over 10,000 students throughout the world each year.  LCI Education is also known as a leader in online training in Canada. LCI Education encourages program harmonization across the various countries in order to ensure greater flexibility, better control over the quality of its services and respect for cultural diversity.