Morrisville State College gears up to host Global Game Jam January 26-28

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MORRISVILLE, NY­—Morrisville State College is gearing up to serve as a jam site for the 2018 Global Game Jam® (GGJ), the world’s largest on-site game creation event, taking place Jan. 26-28.  

GGJ is a fast-paced, 48-hour digital “jam session” which gives teams of artists, hobbyists, programmers and gamers throughout the world a chance to brainstorm, innovate, collaborate and develop new ideas for game design.

GGJ begins at Morrisville on Friday, Jan. 26, at 5 p.m. in Charlton Hall with the unveiling of this year’s theme.  

Teams, some of which are formed on-site, spend the next 48 hours brainstorming and designing a new video game based on said theme from scratch without any outside help. All finished GGJ games are then archived for everyone to play on the Game Jam website here: https://globalgamejam.org/games  

Registration for GGJ at Morrisville remains open for students and non-students 18 and older of all skill levels at www.morrisville.edu/gamejam. The $10 registration fee includes a T-shirt, pizza, beverages and breakfast. 

This is the ninth year Morrisville is serving as a host site for the international event, which will be celebrating its 10th year. Games that participants at the Morrisville site have created include:

  • Traps: The Spanish Adventurer (a journey to prove capability as an adventurer, by collecting all of the gold)
  • Ex-Extinction (Sir Captain Rawrington must save his dinosaur ancestors from the incoming asteroid onslaught)
  • Flight Team Phoenix (pilot a phoenix spaceship and eliminate alien enemies)
  • Cardiac Canyon (a hiker tumbles down a cliff and must follow his heart to lead him through the dark and back to his camp)
  • WaveBummer (control a wave that a hamster rides, using power-ups and surviving as long as you can)
  • Trumma (help a poor helpless soul who has stumbled upon a cult’s sinister ritual escape)

Morrisville will be streaming live during portions of the event, which will be broadcast on the GGJ Twitch Central Channel.

For more information about GGJ at Morrisville, visit www.morrisville.edu/gamejam or contact Richard Marcoux, Ph.D., at 315.684.6788 or marcourp@morrisville.edu.

More information about Global Game Jam, including a database of downloadable games, photos and video from the events and more, can be found at http://globalgamejam.org.

Global Game Jam history

2009: 53 sites, 23 countries, 1,650 participants, 370 games  

2010: 138 sites, 39 countries, 4,300 participants, 900 games

2011: 169 sites, 44 countries, 6,500 participants, 1,500 games

2012: 242 sites, 47 countries, 10,684 participants, 2,209 games

2013: 319 sites, 63 countries, 16,705 participants, 3,248 games 

2014: 488 sites, 72 countries, 23,189 participants, 4,292 games

2015: 518 sites, 78 countries, 28,000 participants, 5,438 games

2016: 632 sites, 93 countries,  36,164 participants, 6,866 games  

2017: 701 sites, 95 countries, 36,401 participants, 7,263 games

Morrisville State College’s curricula are enriched with applied learning and pave the way for opportunity at both the Morrisville and Norwich campuses. An action-oriented, interactive learning lab, the college is a national leader in technology and has been lauded for its exemplary, innovative and effective community service programs. 

The college was ranked among the Best Regional Colleges in the North by U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges 2018 issue and was also recognized in the Top Public Schools, Regional Colleges North in the 2018 Best Colleges rankings.

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