You’ve got 48 hours in a weekend to build a game. You don’t even know the theme until 5 p.m. on a Friday.

That’s what participants in this weekend’s Global Game Jam – Calgary edition will be up against when they gather to build their games during the event at the Platform Calgary Innovation Centre. They gather at 4 p.m. and the process begins at 5.

“We go all weekend until about four o’clock on Sunday, when everyone submits and then we kind of have a big showcase party, and we show off whatever got worked on and laugh at all the ridiculous games that are built over the weekend,” said Mike Lohaus, one of the Game Jam organizers, and president of the Calgary Game Developers Association.

Lohaus said the teams have to come up with their ideas and then map it out and produce it. The process is fun to watch, he said.

“These games are definitely the amalgamation of everyone’s personal influences and the games they play, and they want to build,” he said.

“A lot of times what happens is those ideas start to come together and then you have something that’s a little bit more collaborative.”

While they aren’t building the next Grand Theft Auto, Lohaus said you’d be surprised by the quality of games that are built at the Game Jam. He said that’s due to the sector’s accessibility today compared with years ago.

“The (game) engines are so friendly; you can jump in and if you don’t know something, you can learn it on YouTube,” he said.

“There are assets you can either download for free or you can download if you don’t have say, an environment artist or a character modeler, you can get assets on the Unity store or on the Unreal store.”

Gaming starts here

Lohaus said there are a fair number of people who started out with game development weekends like this one. A game his team developed – Krunch – was first launched in 2012, and it came out of a game jam.

Bringing people together is the real key to a successful game jam, Lohaus said.

“I think there’s a lot of value that game jam’s bring, pulling people together, because I’ll say this – there’s a lot of times where at these events, you didn’t even know the person next to you was an incredible game programmer,” he said.

Alecia Peters, executive director of Digital Alberta, an organization dedicated to helping foster the province’s digital interactive community, said this kind of grassroots event is critical in cementing the foundation of the growing industry.

When last tallied in 2019, game design and digital interactive gaming accounted for $148 million in the provincial economy. It’s grown from there, she said. They’re just in the process of working on new numbers that show the contribution.

“They’re really important because that’s the first step for a lot of folks to get engaged and understand what it takes to build a game over the course of a weekend – just like a startup weekend would have that kind of impact on an entrepreneur,” she said.

“It’s amazing because it also allows those folks that might have technical skills to build their portfolios.”

It’s also a great place for students to take the plunge into the digital world.

That’s the environment that Lohaus said they’re trying to build with the Global Game Jam – Calgary edition.

“Our goal here is really to bring people together and kind of foster this collaborative environment where people can build these awesome things together,” he said.