Students, graduates and professional developers working together at GGJ2018

This year’s GGJ was held at Accelerator Building in Shoreditch again – it was another exciting weekend that saw current students working alongside professionals to create games in 48 hours. This year’s theme was TRANSMISSION. We were delighted to see some of our Londonmet Games graduates there – artists Matthew Isteed, Ana Da Mota and Quoc Luu joined current students Tom Carr, Erik di Biase and Filippo Libardi at the event.

Check Steve Blunt’s photos on flickr above and also the Faculty set on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/FLSCLondonMet/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1053442728082660

Team photo

Erik, Dimitri, Ana and Quoc worked tirelessly all weekend at this year’s Global Game Jam, hosted by Londonmet at Accelerator.  They were part of a team developing “A Clowny Day”, inspired by this year’s theme: RITUAL

http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/clowny-day

Tyanah leads Werewolf game

The jam kicked off on Friday evening with a keynote and the release of the secret theme, then some brainstorming and ice-breaking with Londonmet Computer Games Programming graduate Tyanah Graham, who reprised her role as Mistress of Werewolf.

Then it was down to business, as teams began to work on their ideas and settle in for a hard night of digital work.  Some of the jammers stayed overnight, sleeping on the floor – 48 hours to make a game requires a lot of stamina!

On Saturday, graduates Ashley Mackenzie and Chris Newsum visited the site to meet new students and talk about their careers since graduation.  Ashley is a lighting expert, currently working for Cloud Imperium Games while Chris works at Rocksteady Studios, doing game testing.

Chris and Ashley talk to Ana, Dimitri and Quoc

We also had a visit from Gorm Lai, one of the founders of the Global Game Jam, luckily captured on our twitch live stream…

The jam wound up on Sunday, when teams had to upload their final games to the GGJ site by 3pm.  We did some play-testing and a show-n-tell, hearing how everyone had approached the theme.  With over 40 participants, it was a busy, exciting weekend and some awesome games were produced – check out all the GGJ games here: http://globalgamejam.org/2016/jam-sites/london-metropolitan-university/games

Programmers hard at work

Creating some art

In production

Brainstorming

On Tuesday 22nd September, Londonmet’s team of toy-makers and hackers took part in the first ever ToyJam, organised by Toy News as part of the Inventor’s Workshop.

Concept art

The team consisted of Games Programmers  Zion Siton, George Anderson and Dimitri Xita with Games Modelling and Effects students Winter Milek, Quoc Luu and Robyn Sarah Andrews.

The brief was to design a new social toy or game for their own generation, and they came up with PingPlay.  The judges commented that our team had the best concept!

Inventor’s Workshop is an annual conference aimed at new toy designers, which brings them together with industry professionals to hear about new innovations and pitch ideas.

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/news-stories/university-news-2015/september/toyjam/

Pitching the idea