Positive Impacts of Game Jams: Finding Hope By Making Games

While game creation is commonly viewed as a profession – and the game industry heavily revolves around for-profit games, there are many who are interested in working on games for other purposes, such as a hobby. One of the most common ways to develop games as a hobby is to participate in game jams ─ game development events that last a limited time, usually between a day and a week.  

There are multiple reasons to participate in game jams, such as creative fulfillment and learning new skills related to game creation. Anyone can join a game jam whether they are a professional game developer, or someone who has never done any game development. Game jams are often events that emphasize participants having fun and learning new skills rather than game making-competitions. Additionally, game jams can be a good opportunity for networking and learning social skills such as communication and teamwork. 

However, in recent years there has been more of a focus on serious game jams ─ game jams which have a purpose other than just creating games for fun. These motives can be educational, game industry commentary or even commercial game jams. These game jams could be considered purposeful game jams. This article focuses on research achieved during two purposeful, educational game jams.

In the 2024 article “Game Jams and ‘Heavy’ Topics: Navigating anxiety through game creation” a group of researchers describe their interest to find out how educational game jams, NordEcoJam in 2022 and NASG Un-Jam in 2023 with the topic of sustainability affected participants. Students from six different universities in five Northern European Countries participated in these game jams. The objective of the events was to use the game jam-format to teach about sustainability, both in environmental and in social sense. The researcher paper focuses on the gained data from surveying the participants. 

 

Climate change is one of the biggest threats to human society at the moment, and just like many other industries, the game industry is not without its faults in contributing to said change. The development of games, unfortunately, consumes high amounts of electricity and fossil fuels. Additionally, there are social issues related to sustainability such as workers rights and social inclusion. Teaching about these topics were the focus of the game jams, and the participants were hoped to be able to reflect on these issues through the medium of games. 

When teaching about heavy topics such as these, there is an issue of balance. While these are serious and even scary topics that can’t be avoided, the education can’t be so depressing that participants feel completely hopeless. Therefore, there was a delicate balance of trying to take care of the participants’ wellbeing while lecturing about these serious topics. Additionally, to ensure that the event would have a safe and healthy working environment, overworking was discouraged. 

The participating people were asked to do a daily survey at the end of the day to tell about their learnings as well as their current mood. In addition to game creation, there were multiple lectures during the jam to educate the participants about topics such as climate change, cultural and social sustainability and how these topics are related to game development and the games industry. These topics are considered heavy, so it was no surprise many participants felt negative emotions at the beginning of the game jam. 

However, as the event went on the researchers noticed a surprising change in the attitudes of the participants ─ the feelings of hopelessness and anxiety were mitigated by the creative and collaborative game creation activity. The participants described that using the game jam as a creative outlet helped them cope with their negative feelings. Additionally, the participants were inspired by working with people who share the same feelings as they do, and they wanted to come up with solutions for the environmental and social issues in game development. 

There is already research on how games can be used as a tool for therapy, as well as there are many people who would agree that games can be an effective way to cope with many different kinds of life issues. However, the research that was achieved during NordEcoJam and NASG Un-Jam indicates that game creation can be an effective tool for coping with negative feelings, and that it is an activity with therapeutic effects. 

 

Source: Wirman, H., Bankler, J., Fiadotau, M., Prax, P., Walliander, H., Engström, H., Garda, M., Gissurardóttir, S., Grabarczyk, P. (2024) Game Jams and ‘Heavy’ Topics: Navigating anxiety through game creation. 2024: Conference Proceedings of DiGRA 2024 Conference: Playgrounds.

Image provided by author, made with free assets in Canva.

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