The love I put on playing and developing games is no secret to the long-time readers who follows my articles on this site. One thing that makes me very interested in game development is the feeling of joy when realizing an idea in my head into a game application that other people can experience. I think this is probably my way of communicating with people around me. When you play the games I design and create, you will understand more about the soul of a game designer likes me. Ideas about bringing Vietnamese culture, history, and life into the game have rekindled in my mind since I was a student. But because of limitations in many aspects in terms of level, knowledge, and perception, I spent most of my youthful and energetic time improving my skills and learning more.
I've participated in a few game jams before to try my best and learn from other contestants. It's also quite happy because I was lucky to receive a few small rewards. If you do not know what game jam is, I would like to explain it to you briefly. The game jam is a challenge to design and create any game you can imagine within the constraints of theme, time, art, technology, features, sounds, etc. The biggest challenge in a game jam is the time limit from 16 hours to 2 weeks. And you will have to think about how to design so that players understand the theme you want to show in the game. After the allotted time, the judges will evaluate and score the participants' games. The scale of game jam can be local to a few people or global, with the participation of many people in countries around the world. That's the game jam summary, now back to my story.
More than two weeks ago, by chance, I read an announcement from the US embassy about a global game jam competition with the theme of cultural heritage. The topic fits the ideas I've had for a long time, so I signed up. Unlike the previous participation, this time, I decided to compete alone without any teammates. I wanted to test out my skills (designing, 3D modeling, animation, effects, programming) to see what I would create within two weeks.
The scale of this contest has about 442 participants and 112 entries worldwide. The organizers will disclose the specific information after they complete the statistical work. According to my observations, Algeria is the country with the most competitive groups. I also wanted to connect with contestants from Vietnam, but I was probably the only Vietnamese who participated. Maybe Vietnamese game developers are busy following the trend of making NFT games to earn money to take care of their living, so not many people are interested in fun and purely cultural exchange game jam. I need to add that jam game challenges like this will take a lot of your time and effort without giving you much benefit in terms of money other than the mere joy of creating and developing games. So this is understandable as it is less attractive to many Vietnamese at this time.
Competing alone also grants me the unique advantage is fast decision-making. It saved me a lot of time because it is super easy to fight myself for making decisions. So I had a chance to speed up the progress of finding the right tool and implementation. The disadvantage is the polishing of the image, sound, and art is limited compared to other teams with more people. I was very impressed with a game created by a Brazilian team when they showed it off their local culture in full sight and sound. With a team of five, and within two weeks, the results they produced were impressive. I also learned a few things from looking at their work.
Another challenge is participating in the feedback session for the game from experts and organizers. The most difficulty comes from the different time zones. I had to wake up at two in the morning, adjust my mind to present my game in a foreign language. That made me a bit uncomfortable and wobble for the rest of the day. Fortunately, that process also went smoothly, giving me more confidence to complete the rest of the work. I didn't feel any pressure of competition or worry about winning or losing. I totally enjoyed my creativity time and shared the final result with other participants in the last session.
Talking about the summary, it took a long time, more than three hours of a live stream on Twitch. This one is not a grading session, but it is a chance for jammers to see each other's work and exchange back and forth. However, since we come from many different time zones around the world and the pressure of completing the test as the deadline gets closer and closer sucked everyone's energy, most people went to sleep after their game appeared on the live stream. As for me, I am lucky enough to be awake to see all the products, draw my lessons, and sit down to write this review.
What are the things I learned after participating in this game jam? Firstly, there are many things about the culture and history of my homeland Vietnam that I don't know. Being Vietnamese does not guarantee you will automatically know all about your country's culture and history. In researching Hoi An heritage, I suddenly realized that I never truly understand and love my homeland and compatriots if I do not know the history and culture of my country.
My country has more than four thousand years of history. That means the cultural heritage that my ancestors have accumulated for many generations is uncountable. Even if I spend a lifetime learning, I do not know all because it stretches in history and presents in all parts of the country, from rural to urban areas. The process of self-discovery and learning from diverse knowledge, experiences, and cultures are present all over our country ignites the patriot that is available but cooled in each of us. Only when we understand this, we feel responsible for the land we live in, and we want to contribute to changing the status quo for a better community to where we belong. I probably wouldn't have been able to say this if I hadn't gone through the self-awakening process while making the game. You and I, we have been lulled and mentally poisoned for so long that we have forgotten who we are, who our ancestors are, what the hidden strength in each of us is. Sometimes we need a mental push to wake ourselves up. Those are some of the things I learned for myself.
I also feel some self-improvement in my Blender 3D modeling skill. I also realize Unity's Visual Scripting help reduce the prototyping time and debug. However, programming more complex features by dragging and dropping is torture for experienced programmers. Perhaps this feature is more suitable for those of you who have never designed a game or learned any programming language.
I think I also gained a lot of things myself and feel lucky that I didn't miss this jam experience. Accepting the challenge, doing my best, and being satisfied with the results is the path I'm on.