Creativity - Curiosity - Collaboration

The 49er Game Jam is a semesterly open collaboration event hosted by us, Game Developers at UNC Charlotte much similar to a relaxed "hackathon" environment. Our mission it to challenge students to create a game based on a one or two-word theme picked randomly in a total of 49 hours in a diverse, inclusive, creative, and enjoyable learning environment. Our next game jam (Spring 2019) is from April 26th to April 28th.

The game jam structure composes of students and peer mentors across many different disciplines such as future artists, psychologists, game designers, programmers, storytellers, writers, musicians, researchers, architects. Alumni are welcome to join our event and typically bring in a lot of insight to students who are just starting.

The structure of our game jam starts with introductions of everyone participating, creating teams, and making sure no one is left behind without a collaborative experience in the beginning of our creative journey.

Typically, in our Fall semester, students are exploring and experimenting new ways to approach and learn game development. During the last hour, teams and present and demonstrate their prototype or fully built game for feedback. In spring semester, however, things get a bit more serious as participants & students receive the opportunity to also play their game with children at our NC Science Festival Expo booth for feedback before final presentations [link].

With a growing amount of interdisciplinary collaboration in our student organization in the past couple years at 49er Game Jams, we've seen amazing things created made in Unity, Game Maker, Unreal Engine, and custom built engines: from simple games that make you laugh to innovative games for education & social good, as well as physical games with IoT devices, lasers, nerf darts, and board games.

Best of all, all the prototype games from our Game Jams are available to play and for you to give feedback on!