Leadership Styles of Game Jam Organizers

Abstract

Organizers are crucial for the design and implementation of game jams, and yet they do not all share the same organizing philosophies. Different leadership strategies tend be adopted depending on variations in jam goals, such as community formation, enabling creativity, or teaching and learning. While the goals of game jam organizers are known, details about how organizers lead and organize their jams are lacking. To understand these leadership strategies, we interviewed seventeen game jam organizers who ran online and physical game jams for student groups, hobbyists, and semi-professional game developers. We found that these organizers valued learning, community, and creativity, and employed leadership strategies such as establishing a vision for jam outcomes, attending to participant emotional needs, and providing mentorship to ensure participants remained engaged during their game jams. We also found a tension between creativity and learning oriented leadership strategies, with some organizers choosing to disengage to remove their influence on event outcomes. We use these findings to reflect upon how to balance game jams for both learning and creativity, and how to design for leaderless jams.