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Global Game Jam | 29th – 31st Jan 2021

Joint post with the NI Game Dev Network

Farset Labs has hosted Northern Ireland’s only public site of the international “Global Game Jam” hackathon for the past 8 years, and this year they’re bringing it back – again – virtually. 

In the face of ‘unprecedented times‘, while the space, events facilities, co-working facilities and new-and-improved workshop (and Laser Cutter…) are still available to socially-distanced members, this year we can’t offer the usual warm, pizza and burrito fueled welcome we have over nearly the past decade to Northern Ireland’s Games Development community.

So, we have teamed up with our friends at the NI Game Dev Network to coordinate the Northern Ireland site of GGJ online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting with a live-streamed kickoff event at 7pm on Friday 29th January, the jam will run from until Sunday 31st January, and is a brilliant chance to virtually meet and collaborate with people from the local games industry while making interesting games and experiences in a weekend. 

There is no required skill level to take part – programmers, artists, musicians and enthusiasts are all welcome.

Global Game Jam is a worldwide weekend focused on creating games; from fully interactive video-games, to board games and card games. Some of the games are created for charitable causes, such as “Games For Change”. The global event involves a number of large industry sponsors, including PayPal, Unity, Sony Interactive, Microsoft, and it often acts as a stepping stone for new games developers.

In the before times, Farset Labs hosted over 50 aspiring games designers developing more than a dozen games in the 48 hour period

The theme will be announced on Wednesday 27 January, and previous years have seen amateurs and professionals from all over Northern Ireland come to create thought-provoking projects, and have fun while doing it.

The first Global Game Jam was run in 2009, and this year there are already over 500 individual Jam sites registered around the world for 2019.

Farset Labs and the NIGDN will be broadcasting live from our Belfast facility throughout the 48hour event (with over-night special guests to burn the midnight oil!), as well as sharing feeds from Jam sites world-wide.

How to get involved

As a Sponsor

  • Contact ggj@farsetlabs.org.uk if you’d like to support spot prizes or otherwise sponsor this grassroots event

As a Jammer

Jammers will be notified of next steps!

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