Evoking inspiration for game jam ideas

Abstract

Game jam participants, or "jammers" for short, are under time and pressure to make a playable prototype. With limited resource, they cannot rely on serendipity to encounter new ideas. As game jam themes can be a major inspiration in evoking design in jams, the role of idea generation toolkits seem diminished. Few game jams provide prizes, because game jams are not competitions, but a compressed, cooperative development environment to learn, experiment, and share results. This makes it an ideal situation to employ idea generation toolkits. We investigated how jammers use these idea generation toolkits, and how might they aid in inspiring evocative ideas. Our survey of idea generation toolkits show that experienced jammers tend to experiment with new ideas, and largely possess intrinsic motivations to participate.