This video was shot at the last PegJam and captures the vibe of game jams pretty well!

What’s a PegJam? It’s a game jam in Winnipeg! Bring your computer and work on a project around other rad game developers. Collaborate or work alone, it’s all cool. If you’ve got cojones, you could try starting a new game and aim to finish it before the jam ends!

Address: 415 Morley – Kenley of NDBStudios‘ house!
Time: August 28th: Saturday morning to Sunday evening, set up Friday evening. (7-10pm ish)
Food Situation: Kenley’s place is 15 minutes from some solid restaurants, and we may make some snack runs to convenience stores. Bring your own snacks in advance if you like, but please stick to things that aren’t likely to cause a mess.
Computers: Bring laptops, if possible. Bring power bars. Bring headphones.
Tables: If you have a reasonably portable folding table, please consider bringing it along.
Sleeping: Kenley has a couple spots where people could crash, but I imagine most people will want to head home/elsewhere to sleep.
Attitude: Don’t bring any bad vibes, please!
Gifts: Since Kenley is graciously hosting all of us, it might be nice to bring some extra bucks or a roast chicken or a rare video game soundtrack or a couple phoenix downs or something.

RSVP Please post your name in the comments if you’re planning on coming! If you’re bringing a tower, or if you have any other special requests/info, let us know.

We’re looking at either the weekend of the 21st or the weekend of the 28th.

The advantage of the 28th is that Jeff Lindsay, webmaster of TIGSource, will be in town – and he’d probably love to join us.

One of the biggest things we’re missing is a location! If nothing else, we may end up hosting it in our apartment – but it’d be better to have it somewhere with more space.

If you’re interested in attending, and/or have any ideas for a location, please let us know. Thanks!

These tees were designed by Marlon Wiebe and feature “frozen horses in the river” – a reference to Guy Maddin’s fantastic film My Winnipeg. (interesting trivia: Roger Ebert included “My Winnipeg” in his Top 10 Films of the Decade. Also, he hates video games!)

In fact – if you were wearing one right now, kitty cats and ladies might find you as cuddly and adorable as local composer Kenley Kristofferson here:

Get ‘em while they’re hot!

It’s kind of hard to describe game jams to non-game developers… The most immediate metaphor might be imagining that developers are like musicians, getting together to jam out on their instruments – playing whatever feels good in the moment. Through this kind of free experimentation, cool new ideas often emerge.

But it’s not just about making stuff, it’s also about creative and funny people getting together to enjoy each other’s company. Since there are no real rules or restrictions forced onto the event, it tends to flow along naturally based on who shows up and what they’re interested in. Oddly enough, this lack of formal structure makes for a more exciting and fun learning experience than most heavily organized game conferences I’ve been to.

This particular TIGJam had an extra emotional punch for me, as it gave me a great excuse to have a lot of my indie game developer friends from out of town visit Winnipeg.

For me, growing up in Winnipeg was a pretty depressing experience from a game development perspective. I would have loved to find anyone in town who could have taught me how to start making a game, or indeed anyone to share the experience of game development with in general. I remember on two occasions registering for local gamedev courses, only to find out they’d been canceled due to lack of interest a few weeks later. Since this was before the internet was a prominent source of information, I’d end up making regular trips to the downtown library in hopes of finding a new game development or programming book to inspire me. My family and friends had no idea why I was so obsessed with making games. They didn’t believe that there’d be any way to make a job out of it. In highschool, my dad tried to find me a job that would have some relationship to computer programming – the only thing he could find was a soul-crushing data entry position. This bleak lack of community was part of what factored into my willingness to leave Winnipeg when I was 19.

So finally getting to the point where I could see some of my best friends and fellow game developers walking through the core of this messed up city was overwhelming for me. It felt like two worlds colliding.

But the moment that made all the planning (btw, Chrissy did a lot of the planning ^_^ ) worthwhile for me was seeing Chevy Ray, developer of the Flash Punk game library, helping out 17 year old, Winnipeg native Noel Berry with his game. Just a few days ago, a trailer for Noel’s game was featured on IndieGames.com. The fact that Noel is already linked into this community of developers makes me feel really happy for the future of game development in our city.

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I think that TIGJams only really work because of two key ideas: Diversity and Respect.

Diversity is a word that feels kinda gross, because it’s been overused in many cases. It’s a shame, because the indie scene really does harbour a diverse collection of individuals who create very diverse output. The fact that everyone has their own ideas and wants to pursue them, ensures that we’re not going to be ripping off each other’s game ideas or trying to compete in the exact same space. It also means that we’re self-motivated; we want to see our own unique ideas come to fruition. Nobody has to go around at a TIGJam getting people riled up and ready to work – everyone brings their own work ethic with them.

Respect is something that’s hard to come by, and it’s incredibly valuable. Without a mutually understood respect for the work of others, I don’t think TIGJams would have as much cheerful energy as they do. This is what balances out the self-motivation to pursue one’s own ideas – the interest in what everyone else is up to. It’s also what leads to the transferring of skills and sharing of valuable knowledge that make jams a great place to upgrade your abilities. A capacity to see other people’s perspectives and the open-mindedness to realize that there might be other, better ways of doing things than one’s own are key to making these events work.

Thanks to everyone who showed up! And a big, big thank you with hugs ‘n kisses to Louie Ghiz and Kevin Hnatiuk of New Media Manitoba – and Ryan Fitzgerald of Fortune Cat Games Studio for providing food, space and funding for the jam. I hope we get to do it again sometime!

More…

Now doesn’t that make you proud to be both in Winnipeg and independent? I know it works for me…

Missing the reference? See here and here:

The only way to get one of these sweet tees is to sign up for TIGJam Winnipeg – and fill out the accompanying Google form so we know your shirt size. We have to put in a print order very soon, so register ASAP!

P.S. To view the current list of attendees, check this post.

You can now register for TIGJam: Winnipeg!

What is a TIGJam? Well it stands for “The Independent Game JAM”. What is THAT?

Basically: Bunch of game developers get together, bring their laptops and work on whatever project they feel like.

New projects will be born, long-lasting friendships will be formed, skills will be gained – epic levelling-up! – and little or no sleep will be had…

It’s just sort of awesome.

Yes, Bring!
- Laptop (conserve space)
- Good Pair of Headphones (so you can get in the zone)
- Working Workflow (engine/tools set up ‘n ready to go)
- Your Game Development Skills (code, art, design, music, etc!)

No, Do Not Bring!
- Bad Vibes
- A Huge Setup

For more info and discussion: Visit the TIGForums

Dates: May 29 – May 30, 2010 (optional setup Friday evening, May 28)
Location: Fortune Cat Games Studio, 201-62 Albert Street Winnipeg
Province: MANITOBA.
Country: Canada. (duh!)

These indie fellas from out of town have booked travel already:
Adam Saltsman – Canabalt, Paper Moon
Kyle Pulver – depict1, Snapshot, Verge, Time Lapse Jam
Greg Wohlwend – 4fourths
Matthew Wegner – Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, Minotaur China Shop
Shawn White – Blush, Time Donkey
Mark Johns – stdBits, Owl Country, Das Cube
Eric McQuiggan

Local Manitobans:
Robin Debreuil – Video Profile
Marlon Wiebe
Tom Rab
Eileen Holowka
Chrissy Chubala
James Swirsky
Noel Berry
Evan Harasem
Dylan Fries
Chris Lobay
Kenley Kristofferson

Always remember to brush your teeth – and don’t forget to register!

HEY! We’re Looking for a TShirt Design!

I’m on the hunt for a funky and talented 2D artist to design a unique TIGJam: Winnipeg t-shirt. In previous years, the illustrious and batty Derek Yu has designed wonderfully twisted pieces to commemorate our jams. See the appropriate example below:

I would absolutely love to throw some money at someone who can mash together visual ideas unique to “indie games” and “Winnipeg”. The Golden Boy riding a curling rock whilst playing Game boy? The Weakerthans as 8-bit Nintendo characters? Surprise me!

If you have a design that you’d like to submit for consideration, fire it over to Chrissy and myself at hello@infiniteammo.ca or post a link on this here blog.

P.S. Due to my disorganizational skills, we’ll need to get this design wrapped up pronto so we can get shirts printed in time for the jam. But extra pressure just makes us more creative, riiiight?

Special Thanks To:
Fortune Cat Games Studio
New Media Manitoba
Matthew Wegner

Questions or Comments? Hit that “Read More” Button and Fire Away!

TIGJam is a game jam format that grew out of the TIGSource online indie game community. There have been two very successful iterations in Phoenix, one in the US midwest, one in the UK and one in Berlin! The formula is really simple, but leads to good times and valuable learning experiences.

* Show up for a day or two
* Bring your laptop, your positive/creative vibes and your experience
* Work on a new project, an old project – in a team or by yourself
* Meet new people that are working in the games scene in Winnipeg and make new friends!
* Share your experience with others with short presentations (e.g. a series of 5 minute rants)
* Not just for game programmers! Composers, artists, modellers, etc should definitely attend.
* We’d probably charge a small registration fee, like $5-10 to cover the cost of some food (and maybe some t-shirts for everyone?)

I’d like to run this out of the Fortune Cat game studio incubator, it’s on Albert street in the exchange.

If you’re interested, please leave a comment and let us know what you think a good time would be! (December -> Summer? [our poll plugin broke])

The prototype has the basic input phases and physics in place. What’s missing are the game rules (teams taking turns, scoring, etc), more refined physics, sound effects, and other details. We had a lot of fun playing around with visual effects, like depth of field, changing camera angles, motion blur and animating the camera’s field of view when the rock fires. I think our prototype is pretty impressive for about 2.5 days of work. (we both stayed up for about 40 hours straight near the end) Big ups to “Shawn”:http://capnrat.com/ for lending us his post processing script!

Overall TIGJam was a lot of fun – I only wish it’d lasted a few more days. We had a webcam streaming from the office for most of the jam, and it was entertaining (and slightly creepy) to interact with the rest of the TIGSource community online. You can check out some photos from the jam here and here.

But most recently, Derek and a few other folks have been organizing a TIGSource community gathering called TIGJam. At the end of September, a bunch of us are going to get together in Phoenix for a few days to collaborate and bust out some awesome games. I’m really looking forward to this, because I’ll get to hang out with some of my American friends who I only get to visit whenever there’s some kind of game development convention.

There will also be super rad T-Shirts, natch.