Julia Keren Detar

I was the 2D artist for the game prototype, taking the original game jam version and cleaning it up for data collection. We would take promising prototypes that came out of our company game jam and polish them enough to put on company arcade sites and collect play data. If the metrics looked positive (e.g. replays, time spent, engagement) we would then suggest the game be put in production.

Among other things, I made sure that color emphasized pattern recognition so that matches were easier to process. This is important for ensuring flow state, as complex images and increase cognitive load, slow matching down, and affect game feel.

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Lessons Learned

The Benefits of Company Game Jams

This game idea came out of one of three company wide game jams I hosted and organized. Game Jams are events where teams come together to make a game prototype in a short period of time (usually 48 hrs) and often revolves around a given theme. The most famous one is the Global Game Jam which is held every year (where our game Mushroom 11 originated from).

My company at the time, Arkadium, had recently created an R&D group to help foster employee game ideas and develop them into prototypes to test their potential. As part of this group I wanted to host internal company game jams. A few other game companies (most notably Double Fine) were hosting their own internal game jams. It was important to me that everyone participate, including HR, sales, accounting and IT. We decided to have our first game jam span 2 days at the end of (but during) the work week. We organized teams and made sure they were balanced (everyone had a programmer or developer), and that we combined people who normally didn't work together. We announced teams on the evening before, along with the goals, rules, and our theme.

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Creating a plethora of good game ideas

With over 50 employees at the company, breaking down into teams of 4-5 people, we were able to create a dozen game prototypes within our 2 day internal game jam. We hosted an internal site so people could play the prototypes and vote for games in several categories. We wanted some buy-in from the teams to check out all the games. We didn't want the awards to be stressful, so we made sure to include some silly award categories. Game jams make prototypes, not polished games, and we wanted a way to enforce this idea so that people knew it was ok to make a game idea that didn't look good or was cobbled together.

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Game Jams for team building and education

The added benefit of including everyone and stressing the fact that creating "ugly" games was the goal, allowed people to go outside of their comfort zone. IT experimented with game programming, sales, HR and marketing tried their hand at game art, sound effects and game design. In the end, people who aren't usually involved with development got a chance to learn how games were made, which impacted their sales and marketing strategies. It also demonstrated that everyone has something to contribute, including plenty of game idea submissions from HR and sales. People felt more engaged with each other and there was less departmental fragmentation, and more support across. The first game jam was so successful that we repeated the game jam event for years after. 

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