The Indie Game Jam is an effort to rapidly prototype video game designs and inject new ideas into the game industry. Started in 2002 by a group of game designer-programmers, the event features a shared game engine technology worked on by other designer-programmers for a single long weekend. The games resulting from that weekend are then published, open-source, on the IGJ web page.

Overview

IGJ is an important event for indie game

Indie game

Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. While large firms can create independent games, they are usually designed by an individual or a small team of as many as ten people, depending on the complexity of the...

 developers that allows them to develop and present ideas without publisher

Video game publisher

A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....

 restrictions. Hosted in Oakland, California

Oakland, California

Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

 just before the Game Developers Conference

Game Developers Conference

The Game Developers Conference is the largest annual gathering of professional video game developers, focusing on learning, inspiration, and networking...

, the IGJ runs on sponsorship and donations.

IGJ is known for innovation and rapid prototyping of new gameplay ideas. After third IGJ, Doug Church

Doug Church

Doug Church is an American computer game designer and producer. He attended MIT in the late 1980s, but left and went to work with Looking Glass Studios, when they were making primarily MS-DOS-based first-person adventure/shooter/roleplaying games, including Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld II,...

 comments "[..] it's kinda true that nothing works, but you just throw everyone into the middle of the fire and things come out." He comments that small experiments can lead to big developments in the field. He also notes that while IGJ may not itself revolutionize the mainstream video game industry, but may inspire individuals to innovate. Justin Hall explains that "roots of electronic entertainment life [lie in such] collaborations".

Numerous well known indie developers and other game industry figures have participated, including Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow is an independent video game developer. His game Braid won the "Game Design" award at the Independent Games Festival in 2006. He is currently developing The Witness, to be released in 2012....

, Doug Church

Doug Church

Doug Church is an American computer game designer and producer. He attended MIT in the late 1980s, but left and went to work with Looking Glass Studios, when they were making primarily MS-DOS-based first-person adventure/shooter/roleplaying games, including Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld II,...

, Chaim Gingold

Chaim Gingold

Chaim Gingold is noted for his work with the computer game Spore, where he designed the game's creators, including the Spore Creature Creator. Chaim was also a key member of Spore's design and prototyping team...

, Justin Hall

Justin Hall

Justin Hall , is an American freelance journalist who is best known as a pioneer blogger , and for writing reviews from game conferences such as E3 as well as the Tokyo Game Show....

, Chris Hecker

Chris Hecker

-Biography:Hecker was a student at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, studying the fine arts towards work as an illustrator. An article in Byte Magazine sold him on programming and he dropped out of school to begin work on graphics and games....

, Austin Grossman

Austin Grossman

Austin Grossman [b. ] is a writer and game designer who has contributed to the New York Times and a number of video games.He is the author of the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible, which was published by Pantheon Books in 2007....

, Marc LeBlanc

Marc LeBlanc

Marc "Mahk" LeBlanc is an educator about and designer of video games.LeBlanc attended MIT where he received a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science....

, and Randy Smith

Randy Smith (game designer)

Randy Smith is a game designer who has worked extensively on the Thief series with both Looking Glass Studios and Ion Storm Austin. In addition, Smith has participated in the Indie Game Jam....

.

The IGJ was considered an inspiration for later game jams including the Nordic Game Jam and the Global Game Jam

Global Game Jam

The Global Game Jam is an annual event in which participants design and create digital and non-digital games over the course of one weekend. Inspired by the Nordic Game Jam, and organized by the International Game Developers Association...

.

Yearly Game Jams

Each year, Indie Game Jam poses different questions about innovation of new settings, genres, and controls.

• The first Indie Game Jam (IGJ) named "0th Indie Game Jam." was held between March 15–18, 2002. The idea for the event came from Chris Hecker
  Chris Hecker
  -Biography:Hecker was a student at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, studying the fine arts towards work as an illustrator. An article in Byte Magazine sold him on programming and he dropped out of school to begin work on graphics and games....
  
   and Sean Barrett, who originally presented Dogma 2001 challenge for the 2001 Game Developers Conference
  Game Developers Conference
  The Game Developers Conference is the largest annual gathering of professional video game developers, focusing on learning, inspiration, and networking...
  
   (GDC), which strived to create games without relying on technology. For the IGJ, the opposite approach was taken. Hecker described the attempt as encouragement for experimentation with technology-driven design and pointed out that video gaming industry lacked innovation being restricted by publisher
  Video game publisher
  A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
  
   expectations for returns. He proposed to use 10,000 sprites
  Sprite (computer graphics)
  In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
  
   to produce a game. During the jam 12 new games were developed by 14 programmers and designers. All games used the same engine, which Hecker noted took considerable time to produce. The engine was optimized and strived to stress the hardware. He also noted that "great programmers" had to be chosen due to limited time and complex coding tasks. The resulting innovative games, while in no way complete, were presented at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop session at the 2002 GDC and were well-received. The event was funded by donations, for example Intel supplied the team's personal computers.

• The second Indie Game Jam held in March 2003 used Zack Simpson's Shadow Garden technology, which used a human shadow projected on the wall as the primary interface. The IGJ again had 14 programmers and designers participating.

• The third Indie Game Jam was held in March 2004 and two dozen programmers participated. In the invitation letter, Hecker proposed to explore physics engine
  Physics engine
  A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics , soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film. Their main uses are in video games , in which case the...
  
   integration into gameplay. The engine chosen was Atman Binstock's 2D physics engine with a framework for experimentation with various physical properties and object interactions. The engine presented a challenge, because the real world physics did not necessarily correspond with the engine's features. The jam explored level deformation and chaotic results from player's interaction with the physics engine. It proved difficult to focus on game design rather than physics themselves. The jam also invited a number of support stuff and artists to polish the games. Almost all games produced used PlayStation 2
  PlayStation 2
  The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
  
    DualShock controller
  DualShock
  The DualShock is a line of vibration-feedback gamepads by Sony for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. The DualShock was introduced in Japan in late 1997, and launched in the North American market in May 1998...
  
  s. While unfamiliarity with the engine and certain technical difficulties provided a challenge, in the end the team succeeded at producing working games. In the end, the physics were seen as a field of potential innovation.

• The fourth Indie Game Jam held in March 2005 explored human interaction using 3D characters from The Sims
  The Sims
  The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
  
  video game. The IGJ attracted professionals from various fields – art, sound design, game theory and education. By this time new IGJ had developed – in Lithuania, Toronto, Dallas, Boston, Ohio, and Nordic.