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Kiwis develop 21 games in 48 hours
Tue, 2nd Feb 2010
FYI, this story is more than a year old

You’ve heard of the 48-hour film challenge, but how about the 48-Hour Global Game Jam? More than 60 locals from Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin joined developers from 140 locations around the world in an attempt to conceptualise and develop a computer game in just one weekend.

New Zealand was the first country to get started, with teams of designers, programmers, artists and musicians working together to produce 21 games based on the theme of ‘deception’. The end results ranged from platformers to shooters to role-playing games.

“This year’s deception theme led to some clever twists and new takes on established genres.  For instance, games that try to trick the player and rather than the player being in charge, the game plays the player,” explained Stephen Knightly, organiser of the New Zealand leg of the event.

“Making a game is a complex task, combining technical as well as creative skills.  The weekend has shown that there are some truly skilled, world-class game developers and artists in New Zealand.”

A point of difference to the film equivalent of the challenge is that there is no overall winner. “The challenge is to collaborate and actually get something completed in 48 hours,” says Knightly.

Run by the International Game Developers Association, it’s the second year that the Global Game Jam has taken place.

You can check out the final products by heading along to www.playmaker.org.nz/gamejam