Web Devs Should Jam

As I wrote the outline for this article, the Winnipeg Game Collective (WGC for short) is putting on their Slow Jam, and I’m participating for the first time! A game jam, stretched over the course of an entire month! I’ve decided to pick up the Unity game engine for the first time, and I’ve really been enjoying this meaty discovery process.

I’m not a stranger to game jams, which are usually teeny tiny game development sprints. Over the course of a weekend or so, you bring a game all the way from the ideation phase into rough development to the playable finish line! But this is the first time that I’ve participated in a WGC jam that expressly takes a slower pace, and it’s given me a chance to actually think instead of furiously writing code all day.

If you’re a web developer who has never joined a game jam before, this article is for you! I have a shortlist of encouraging words.

The benefits of web developers doing a game jam:

• Web developers, and I think front-end developers especially, are really adept at planning and thinking about how a project comes together from multiple angles. Think, design and copy and development and testers… It’s just like game development! Working for a marketing agency, or on a communications team is multi-disciplinary just like it is for games.

• I think working in a different medium while using the same coding area of your brain can be really refreshing! It’s like trying to learn a different language and you find out that the verb tenses are all the same. What a nice leg up, and since game jams are low-stakes it’s a great environment to learn in.

• If you work at an agency you may be used to working on projects that stretch and balloon and delay over time… all the time. Let me hold your hands when I say this; relish in your short timeline here! Please enjoy killing your code darlings. Take charge with murderous intent and take your game development project by the horns! The tiredness at the end of the day will come from the hard work of coding all day as opposed to the tiredness that comes from admin and corporate structure. There’s no time tracking and defending your decisions here, friend, you’re the one in charge. Get to it!

• I will go out on a limb here and say that I do believe in the stereotype that all devs like video games. And what’s cooler than saying you play video games? Saying you just made one, obviously.

Did I pique your interest? If you’re looking for recommendations on game engines to try first, you are in luck! I recommend all web developers to try making a game in Twine, which is a small open-source game engine. It’s used primarily for making interactive stories, but can be pushed surprisingly far with stylesheets, markup, and Javascript. Yes, you can immediately start making beautiful games with your existing skills! Twine is also easily used for a solo dev, but also works perfectly fine with Github alongside another dev, a writer, or an illustrator.

And now that I’ve said my piece, I’ll end with a shameless plug for the jam game that I made alongside two of my favourite local 3D artists. Check out Lightbringer, our 3D roller-ball game on itch.io!