Benefits of Participation

Who can participate? 

Anyone! Stevenson University is now also accepting participants high schoolers with a legal guardian.  The spirit of a jam is innovation, experimentation, and collaboration. All skill and interest levels are encouraged to give it a try!

Why should I participate?

Students who participate get a first hand immersive experience in a whole host of important career building and creative skills, regardless of their major. Students will network while boosting time management, collaboration, and leadership skills and improving their more specialized skills in writing, design, art, programming, acting, film, editing, musical scoring, and managing. Even students who feel out of place managing a group or working on specific parts of the game will find themselves useful during brainstorming, testing, and presenting. There is a role for everyone! Game jam is also open to non-video games, which lends another dynamic to the creative sphere.

Additionally, Global Game Jam gives students a global audience for their work, a positive online presence as collaborators and innovators, and opportunities to work with publishers and game industry professionals in the future. Groups who participate are often invited to share their work in other venues and networking events, engage in additional learning opportunities with other organizations, and are even encouraged to submit their work for publication!

Working on game projects also gives students a chance to test a potential career avenue. Maryland, in particular, is a hub of game development companies, and with massive advances in virtual and augmented reality, not only for games, but for educational programs. This area has seen job growth of over 400% since 2014. Writers and artists are particularly in need as games become more narratively focused and companies begin to search for creatives whose first skill isn’t programming. While traditional game development positions are not seeing such increases, it is a massively growing and dynamic industry, meaning that game-related jobs in other disciplines are growing rapidly.