// Recovered from WaybackMachine: http://www.abrevik.net/
Posted on January 26, 2013 by norwigi · Leave a comment
First of, let me apologize for the lack of an NGJ update. Things got busy between that and this.
As you may know, my thesis group and I are attending the Global Game Jam at Staffordshire University in Stafford, England. It’s now Saturday morning (Roughly 12 hours in), and we’ve already some interesting differences between NGJ and Staffordshire GGJ. I’m not going to bore you with details here, but the whole creative process is quite different from what I’m used to. Somehow that was expected, though. When we arrived we had a chat with the host, and she said that the students here are more doers than thinkers.
So what does Stafford have to offer? I mean, students I’ve talked to so far come from all over Europe, and I find that quite impressive considering the fact that it’s not really located in a major city. Unfortunately, the only part of Stafford I’ve seen so far (Except the school, of course) is the train station and some scenery through the bus window between the station and the school. I hope to be able to see a bit more today.
As for the school I’m quite impressed, and maybe just a little jealous of the facilities. I’m not really going to say much about this, but rather let the pic speak for itself. I should mention, though, that it represents just a tiny part of the university. (They’ve closed down the rest of it for the weekend, apparently. We’ve been limited to this smaller area, but the school itself is quite big) Also, check out the picture at the bottom of this post. ~~I’ve been asking around, and strangely enough people don’t seem to know what the button does…~~ Updated info: The button turns on the lights when the motion sensors, for whatever reason, fails to trigger.
By now you are probably wondering “What’s up with the title? Is Stafford, like, the darkness? And how can you be returning to somewhere you’ve never been? And I thought the end was supposed to be in December last year…” If you are now sitting there nodding to yourself, then you’ve made the wrong assumptions. It has nothing to do with Stafford, England or Staffordshire University, but rather the other big topic of this post: The Global Game Jam.
You see, this is where I’d like to post a picture of this years theme. But I can’t. It wasn’t a picture. Or even a word. The theme for this years GGJ is the sound of a heartbeat. On a black background. Just the sound of a heart going Dhu-Dhuk,Dhu-Dhuk,Dhu-Dhuk. In complete darkness. Yeah. Kinda hard to take a picture of that. But I bet the title makes more sense now 😉 So far, the different interpretations I’ve seen varies from simply a heart (or multiple, in some cases) to reasons why your heartbeat would change. (Love, stress and (Most common among the groups here) fear.) I’m looking forward to see how people process, and will try to come with an update later.
