Another great EPIC-WE Cultural Game Jam has come to an end! Time to look back at the week of Monday September 9th the Friday the 13th. During this week, over 60 high school students dove into the world of game making, taking inspiration from the Media Museum of Sound & Vision, set in Hilversum (NL).
The game jam kicked off with a lecture on Game Design 101, introducing the lively week the participants were embarking on. When the basic ingredients of a game were crystal clear, the 15 and 16 year olds were set on a treasure hunt through the museum to gather inspiration on how media influences our everyday lives, because in today’s world, almost everyone is a media user and creator. For this Game Jam, the participants explored this dynamic relationship and focussed on two central themes for their game creations: media & democracy, and media & social injustice. These themes challenged students to consider how media influences democratic processes and addresses inequalities. Fuelled by the Media Museum, the participants began brainstorming, coming up with the most creative concepts for their games, which beautifully came to life during paper prototyping.
Pictures: Participants in the Media Museum at Sound & Vision
Highlighting the games
Through magnificent teamwork, a total of no less than 15 games were created during the EPIC-WE Game Jam, a mix between those made digitally and others made with physical materials.. Let’s highlight a few of them!
In Evies World, with a board game type setup, the main character is fighting global warming. While struggling to survive, the game shows how little social equality there is when it comes to global warming; the richer you are, the easier it becomes to keep your head above water. The team working on this game showed real motivation and collaboration, coming up with a beautiful and playable prototype.
Picture: paper prototyping of the game Evies World
In the digital game Epic Politician Make-Over! a city is blown to the ground, hit by a tsunami. Playing the game, your job is to rebuild the city by giving your favourite politicians a make-over. Do it wrong, and they’ll be cancelled. With the money you earn, you can rebuild and expand the city.
Picture: the game Epic Politician Make-Over! on a laptop
Expert feedback and pitches
Behind the scenes a team of experts provided the different groups with feedback and play tested the games. What made it feel all the more special, was that some of the experts were former EPIC-WE Game Jam participants; since they were immersed in the process of cultural game making during the first game jam, they were able to really understand and help the participants to integrate cultural heritage into their games. We aim to involve former game jammers even more during our next game jams as part of the Youth Advisory Board, because who can provide better feedback on youth empowerment than youth themself!!
On the last day all games were presented in a huge market, where participants, teachers and the expert jury could play the prototypes and listen to the pitches prepared by the teams. The best games were awarded in several categories, like most playable game, most out of the box game, and most daring game.
Looking at the future, we are very excited about the next game jams coming up! We look forward to upcoming iterations of the Cultural Game Jam format, confident that they will continue to empower youth to engage with their cultural heritage and to think critically about complicated social issues in innovative ways.
Check out some of the results of the second Cultural Game Jam in Hilversum here.
