By Fred Bloom

Daily Titan Staff Writer

Graphic courtesy of Ali Ismail / For the Daily Titan

The potential game developers of the Video Game Design Club created a game prototype in 48 hours last weekend.

Global Game Jam 2010 united student game developers from across the globe with dreams of injecting fresh ideas into the gaming industry.

Local participants, mostly members of the Video Game Design Club, met in Computer Science 300, although people around the world took part in the event through the Global Game Jam Web site.

This year’s Global Game Jam, which was put on by the International Game Developers Association, consisted of over 130 different jam sites in over 30 countries.

“(The Global Game Jam) gives a chance to get some real, hands-on experience in making real games, and that is something that most students do not get to do at all,” said Ian Schreiber, an organizer for Global Game Jam.

Developers have the freedom to choose which platform they wish to create a game for. Most participants make computer games, but they could also develop games for mobile phones or consoles.

Schreiber admits the 48-hour time limit is not enough to fully develop a finished product, but it is a great way get started on one. All of the rights to the unfinished game belong to the creators, so they can continue to develop their projects after the event is completed. Some of the games introduced during the 2009 Global Game Jam have already become full-fledged games.

All games must focus on the theme provided by Global Game Jam.

This year’s theme: deception.

Participants were also told they must incorporate ideas based on their time zone. For those on the Pacific Coast, it was punks, skunks or monks.

Developers divided into groups of about ten people to work on different games. Fourth-year computer science major Daniel Selnick said his group did encounter difficulties, mostly due to a lack of time and an unfamiliar game engine.

“People were getting really frustrated with a group member or the engine or just the situation because of the time,” said Selnick, who was part of a group working on the game “Sacred Skunk.”

Many participants skipped sleep in order to put in more work. During the 48-hour window, the individual developers devoted about 30 hours to their project.

“We were all tired so we wanted to rip each other’s faces off,” first-year computer science major Macario Lopez said. “I had to go get some coffee and come back.”

Lopez was part of the team that developed the game “Cathedral.”

Reminiscent of Nintendo’s Zelda, Cathedral allows users take control of a “punk” in a cathedral who is being deceived by monks. The user must locate a key to move on to the next level. Due to time constraints, the group was only able to complete one level.

“We would come up with a great idea then we couldn’t figure out how to do it,” Lopez said. “My friend wanted to work on getting the enemy to follow you, which would’ve been cool but was a pretty hard thing to do, so we wasted like five hours doing that.”

Other games created by participants at Cal State Fullerton were “Punk Skunk,” “Felonious Monk” and “I must escape the Monastery!”

“I would say that any Game Jam is a success if most people walked away from it thinking of it as a positive life experience,” Schreiber said.

“From the comments I’ve heard so far, I would say that Global Game Jam 2010 is a massive success on an unprecedented scale.”

For more information about Global Game Jam, or to download games created at this year’s event, visit Globalgamejam.org.