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WGU: Gaming Event To Set New World Record

by Adam Howarth, Editor
Gaming Event To Set New World Record

An annual gaming event held at Wrexham Glyndŵr University aims to set a new world record. All with a little help from staff and students. The multi-award-winning Computer Game Development team is to host the event called The Global Game Jam. The Jam is a regular fixture in the calendar at the university, which is the longest-participating game-jam representative in Wales.

Registration

Registration is now open. The event will run from Friday, January 29th until Sunday 31st.

The goal of the jam is to bring people together and attempt to make a game from start to finish within a strict 48-hour period. Jams emphasise teamwork with new people from different backgrounds to encourage creative thinking. Hopefully, this will result in small – but innovative and experimental – games. 

This year’s Global Game Jam is slightly different to usual. It will not be in-person due to public-health measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. However, the team at Glyndŵr are still preparing for another fun-packed weekend.

Glyndŵr‘s lecturers have played a key role in developing the Global Game Jam in Wales. They have seen their work on jams and other development activities featured across the media, including one on Channel Five’s Gadget Show among others.

Rich Hebblewhite

Programme Leader for Game Development, Game Design and Enterprise and Game Art, Rich Hebblewhite, is reprising his role as the Regional Global Game Jam Coordinator for UK and Ireland. The team will run the jam through its thriving Discord community.

He said: “It’s really exciting to be returning as co-ordinator. The global pandemic has brought some interesting challenges for us to overcome. The GGJ community has continued to thrive, however, and we already have more than 700 sites registered around the world!

Game jams are a big part of our course experience here at Wrexham Glyndwr University and, as the GGJ is the biggest jam event in the world, our students look forward to it every year.

“We expect this year’s event to feel a little different due to transitioning over to an online format, but we have a great community spirit. I have no doubt we will see the development of a huge number of awesome games over the course of the weekend.”

Games Jams Highly Recommended

Having helped to set a world record during last year’s jam – which was the largest ever – the team are looking to do even better this year. In total, 48,753 game jammers working from 934 different locations, spread across 118 countries, simultaneously spent a staggering 2.3 million+ hours of development time building 9,601 different games

At Glyndŵr‘ a team of more than 90 jammers managed to design and develop 17 unique games within the 48 hours.

Rich added: “Game jams come highly recommended by the industry as we know through our close work with a range of industry partners across our courses.

Free Registration

“They are also an excellent chance to develop creative skills, teamwork, scope management and general people skills. Consequently, all students at any level of study, on any course have an invite to attend as the experience is very rewarding. You don’t even have to make a digital game – board games and hardware projects are fine too!”

To register for the jam – which is completely free – visit the official Glyndwr Game Jam 2021 site.

And to find out more about Wrexham Glyndwr University’s award-winning BSc (Hons) Computer Games Development course, click here.

About Wrexham Glyndŵr University

Founded in 2008, Wrexham Glyndŵr University is a young, bold and vibrant university based in north-east Wales. The university has two campuses in Wrexham, Plas Coch and Regent Street plus campuses in Northop and St Asaph. In addition, in 2017, the university won the silver award in the Teaching Excellence Framework for the quality of teaching.

The university is driving academic excellence through a wide range of innovative and industry-relevant courses. Examples are Applied Science, Computing, Engineering, Creative Arts, Criminology and Psychology.

In conclusion, Wrexham Glyndŵr has been a Top 100 University in the WhatUni Student Choice Awards in 2019 and 2020. Besides this, the Campus 2025 strategy encompasses plans for new student accommodation. There will also be new car parking and upgraded facilities over the next five years.

We hope you enjoyed reading “Gaming Event To Set New World Record”. For more articles about Wrexham Glyndŵr University, please click here.

Photo by Luis Morera on Unsplash

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