I like to hear how everyone's game company jams work in terms of rules like how long they typically last and what you can and cannot do?
If you work in a triple a studio, do they do annual game jams?
Does your game company do game jams and do they have to rebuild the code base?
If you work in a triple a studio, do they do annual game jams?
Since 2000 I've shipped games for Interplay, Activision, Atari, and Sega, and I had to google "game jam" just now. It sounds like fun but I've never experienced the sensation of having extra time for such a thing. YMMV
I work at a AAA studio, and in the last two years, we've done (I think) 4 game jams. We often have some amount of structure (like suggested themes that intersect with the type of games we make), and the jams are generally about 48 hours (people end up working two long days on their jam projects).
I worked at Krome, which I wouldn't call AAA, but they did have 3 studios an 400+ staff at one point...
It was only when they were on the verge of bankruptcy that we had a "Let's save the company with cool game ideas" jam. Half of my office had no work to do, so we brainstormed ideas individually and in groups for two days, then on the third we sat in the board room with anyone who wanted to getting up and pitching their idea to the room. After that, we went and worked on whichever of the ideas that we felt like. There were some interesting little one-man prototypes, or half-a-dozen people pulling out old shelved games and turning them into something new.
Sadly we didn't make anything cool enough to save the company though...
Nowadays I work in an office full of indie gamedev companies, so there's a lot of people who do the global game jam, etc on their own time. I did the Cyberpunk jam recently :D
It was only when they were on the verge of bankruptcy that we had a "Let's save the company with cool game ideas" jam. Half of my office had no work to do, so we brainstormed ideas individually and in groups for two days, then on the third we sat in the board room with anyone who wanted to getting up and pitching their idea to the room. After that, we went and worked on whichever of the ideas that we felt like. There were some interesting little one-man prototypes, or half-a-dozen people pulling out old shelved games and turning them into something new.
Sadly we didn't make anything cool enough to save the company though...
Nowadays I work in an office full of indie gamedev companies, so there's a lot of people who do the global game jam, etc on their own time. I did the Cyberpunk jam recently :D
We've never done a formal "game jam" at my studio. However we have a tradition for now programmer hires where we have them do anything they want as a first week project. We've had a few cool things come out of that. One of my coworkers once made a skateboarding game with Kratos.
I dont know about company in-house game jams but I try to participate in public game jams as much as I can. I love speed game creation, usually they last from 12 hours to maybe 2 days but those are full on "bring your tent and food" type of events. As for rules you get more of a decided theme guidelines.
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