Game Jam Natives?: The Rise of the Game Jam Era in Game Development Cultures

Game jams bring all kinds of creators together to make games from scratch in a relatively short time, often based on shared design constraints. The most influential game jam, Global Game Jam (GGJ) was established in 2009 as an annual event connecting game makers around the globe with shared theme and time-space. The growth of the GGJ indicates the establishment of game jam era: in ten years GGJ expanded from 1 600 to 47 000 participants and diverse set of other game jams are organized modelling GGJ or its online counterpart, Ludum Dare (LD). Even though many game jams are directed towards hobbyist creators or game development students, also professionals take part on these events. Game companies run their internal game jams for various reasons from experimentation and recreation to recruitment and education. Game jams are so widely spread, that they are destined to impact the game making cultures at large. In this paper, I am proposing that we live in the era of game jams and the generation of game makers that have started their development careers within this era are native to game jams.