As we continue to work to make the jam better EVERY year, your feedback is of utmost help to us!

There will be other updates along throughout the coming months, e.g. media updates, thus be sure to stay subscribed to all our channels .

Though the jam is now over for 2012, it really never is quite over . Thank you very much for the help!

We have been experiencing some practical dificulties the past years when executing voting. First of all 300+ participants take up alot of space, and the method of having people place a single token on a game of their choice has its flaws. Just to mention a few:

• Some games are better exposed than others because they are in front.
• The voting process is in plain sight, which can affect the result because of strategic voting.
• The method suffers from the spoiler effect, meaning similar games share votes and sink into oblivion.
• People are rushed to make their choice.

The fuckup

When building software many things can go wrong therefore testing is very important and testing needs to happen in an environment as close to “the real thing” as possible. We implemented the voting feature in a hurry, and basically just barely had it “working” before the jam. Testing was limited to 30 users, and that was nowhere near the load we experienced during the voting ceremony. But to cut a long story short here is what went wrong.

1. Overload, our server was overloaded and produced a bug we ad not experienced with 30 users. (We were still on the Sqlite3 backend, next year we will go PostgreSQL)
2. A serialization bug ment that secret keys were sent to each client while voting. Essentially letting people vote as other people if they copied and pasted them. (Fixed, serialization module has been punished.)
3. A semaphore was not working as intended, leading to the “who are you bug” many experienced. (Minor rewrite of voting code needed)

We again were the largest single site in the Global Game Jam, thanks to you all joining and registering on the global game jam site .

For those that were unable to make it, here is a list of games that made it into the next round. For more games, be sure to check out http://www.globalgamejam.org and search for Nordic Game Jam, cause there are some gems in there .

The 12 Finalists – 9 voted by the participants and 3 that were selected by the jury.

AAAAAAAARRRGGHHH!!!!! – Tim (Youtube link)
Boing Wauw (Youtube link)
Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
Eskil’s Adventure – [Placeholder] Studios (Youtube link)
Infinite Swat – Infinite SWAG (Youtube link)
Mein Panzer – Robocat (Youtube link)
Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
Spläsh Dämäge - Team Mothership  (Youtube link)
Switch Naga Go! – Adorable Nagablob (Youtube link)
Who Took The Apple – Laus Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

Jury’s Choice Awards:

David McCarthy from GREE: Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)

Jeppe Carlsen from Playdead: Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
Manveer Heir from Bioware: Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
Ole Teglbjærg from Press Play: Boing Wow (Youtube link)

Winner of the Nordic Food Game Competition:

Jumping Suzy (YouTube link)

Board game competition winners:

1st: Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
2nd: Blue Print – Hexagonians (Youtube link)
3rd: Ring the Gong – The Brotherhood – Part1, Part2 (Youtube link)
4th: Who Took The Apple – Lau’s Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

Winners of the Nordic Game Jam 2012

1st: Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
2nd: Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
3rd: Who Took The Apple – Lau’s Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

A big thanks to Anders Lystad Brevik (@norwigi) for assembling and summarizing all the voted winners for the NGJ12.

Last but not least…

A huge thanks again to Martin Jonasson and Pernille Sihm for creating the T-shirt designs for both the organizers and the participants! Both did an excellent job and there are still some left for those that still haven’t gotten around to purchasing them .

Spread the word on these games and retweet these babies, so that everyone else you know can get a chance to play them .

More news to appear here on the blog shortly… keep posted

Doors: The only doors that are guaranteed to be open 24/7 are the two doors opening to the parking lot in the east.

Smoking: Smoking is not allowed inside the building. Smoking outside in from of ITU is only permitted in from of the side exit opposite of Scrollbar.

Beer: Beer is sold exclusively at Scrollbar and in the cantina when meals are served.

Resting area: The resting area is located in Auditorium 3.

Clean up: Pleas clean up after you self. If everybody helps out, it’s way easier for us in the end, and you have a nicer jam. (as mandated by the Danish Minister of Culture!)

Submission: In order to submit a game in the end you have to go through a few steps:

• Register at NGJ12 (which all of you have probably already done)
• Register at globalgamejam.org as a user until Saturday noon.
• Make a preliminary entry for your game at NGJ12 before Saturday 2pm. This will help us make the preparations and calculations for the final presentations.
• Make your final submission at NGJ12 and globalgamejam.org before Sunday 2pm.
• Half an hour after the deadline rooms have to be cleaned out before the final presentations can start.

Submission Requirements:

• game title
• instructions
• credits (you team, you pets, Elvis, …)
• technologies used (flixel, unity3D, unreal, etc..)
• requirements (special hardware, controllers, …)
• source code url, pointing to the source at globalgamejam.org
• playable url (obviously not required for boardgames)
• image url, importing for the voting process, so that people know what they are voting for
• video url (ideally youtube)

Finding a Winner:

• All groups will present their game in one of the four presentation track running in parallel. In each of these tracks the top 3 games plus one jury selected wild card game advances to the grand finale.
• In the grand finale, the 16 finalists give their final presentation and after that voting is conducted online through NGJ12.
• The award ceremony then concludes the competition.

Sound Expert: You can find the sound expert in one of the cubes on second floor, room number is 2A05.

Logo Shop: The logo shop is located on the ground floor, in the design lab.

We realize that you’ll be very busy during the NGJ weekend producing your own game concepts, so we have decided to postpone the deadline for contest submissions – giving you time to create cool stuff for Crafty Creatures after the Game Jam.

Here are the rules for the contest:

• To participate, you will need to send a mail by Wednesday February 1st to crafty@nordiskfilm.com
  You will then receive a mail response with info on how to sign up for the competition.
• You can participate as a group or as an individual. If you participate as a group, you will need to assign a group leader who sends the mail. If you win a prize, the prize will be sent to the group leader, who will be responsible of sharing or splitting it among the group.
• The first 20 people/groups, who sign up will take part in the competition. As the competition is running as a closed beta, there will be no extra spaces available, so be sure to sign up quickly.
• To participate you will need to have access to an iPhone or an iPad (iPad is recommended).
• Participants will receive a playable beta version of the game to download for their device.
  The game will contain a level editor complete with a user friendly tutorial.
•  Participants will have to submit their game levels by February 10^th.
• The winners are selected by a jury from Nordisk Film and Progressive Media (the game developer).
• Winners will be contacted by mail and the winners will be announced on the NGJ website.
• The prizes are:

1st prize: 1 PS3 console + 10 PS3 games
2nd prize: 10 PS3 games
3rd prize: 5 PS3 games

Last year there was a documentary crew at the Nordic Game Jam filming the event and following teams and characters. Some of the footage will be used in an interactive documentary funded by the New Danish Screen. The director Suvi Andrea Helminen and two of her assistant photographers will be filming again at the game jam this year, making establishing shots at the event. Their primary focus is to capture the mood, atmosphere and ambiance at the event. During the registration everyone will be asked to sign a release form (if you didn’t already do this last year).  If you are very ‘camera shy’ and do not want to be in the picture – please let us know at the registration desk and also try to make the photographers aware of this during the event.

It’s the eve of the 2012 version of the Nordic Game Jam, and we’ve managed to contact Anchel Labena, a previous participant of the Nordic Game Jam who can’t wait to see what we have in store this year.

What is your personal background?

Anchel: Before starting ITU’s Master in Game Design I studied a Bachelor’s in Radio, TV and Film production at the University of Navarra in Spain.

Tools of your trade?

Anchel: My number one tool is my camera. Be it video or photo, it’s what I use to capture my source material. Then after that it’s the computer: be it Word, Photoshop or Premiere. And, of course, the web. That endless source of inspiration.

Describe your experience attending last year’s NGJ.

Anchel: Last year was an amazing experience for me. It was my first time at an event of this type and also the first time I was doing a videogame outside of any courses. At first I was pretty nervous, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to do much, not being a programmer.

But after talking to a few of the participants, meeting new people and basically mingling with everybody I felt more at ease, seeing that many come to the game jam to LEARN. Either new techniques, new strategies or simply gather new ideas and let their creativity flow. And that’s what I got out of this experience: I learned a lot and I gathered many new ideas that I would use later on.

Have you attended any other game jams? If so, which?

Anchel: After the NGJ the only other game jam I’ve been to is the Exile Game Jam. Similar idea to the NGJ, but at a much smaller scale, which was also awesome in its own way because you got to know everyone on a first name basis. This helped me network with more people in the industry.

Why did you choose to attend this year’s NGJ? What are you expecting out of it?

Anchel: After the great experience of the previous two game jams I’ve been to it was totally obvious I was going to go to the NGJ 2012. I have gained a lot of experience in a year and I’m very much looking forward to putting myself to the test and see what I can do with it.

Describe an awesome game idea in 3 words.

Anchel: An awesome game idea for a game jam has to be, in my opinion, something with simple game mechanics and high replayability. In three words that would be “Very Simple Replayability” I guess.

Ninjas, zombies, pirates or cowboys?

Anchel: Zombies rule. Always. And some companies have shown the world that zombies doesn’t necessarily have to mean violence, blood and gore. Even zombies can have fun and pole jump! Besides, zombie stories are always cool. Will take many more decades before the theme grows old.

Anchel’s work, as well as the game he made for the 2011 version of the Nordic Game Jam, can be found on his website. He will also be tweeting about the 2012 version of the Nordic Game Jam on his Twitter profile.

The challenge stays the same: Make the best game about Nordic Food and win 10 000 kr for a trip to GDC in San Francisco!

Nordic Game will be cooperating with its sister program of the Nordic Council of Ministers, in creating a special event during this year’s GDC in San Francisco. The event is planned to contain a special Nordic dinner as well as the infamous Nordic Party with New Nordic Food.

As part of this, a competition is being launched for the Nordic Game Jam 2012 participants. The goal is to create a game about Nordic Food within the next three weeks before the NGJ12 starts.

The competing creations will then be reviewed by Jacob Riis of Nordic Game and Charlotta Ranert of New Nordic Food, and a winner will be selected and announced at the NGJ12 Award Ceremony on Sunday, 29th of January.

The winner will receive 10 000 kr. to use for a flight ticket to SF and a admission pass for GDC. If the game is of appropriate quality, it will be displayed during the event in San Francisco.

The deadline for submissions is 14:00 on Sunday, 29th of January.

Email all submission to competition@igda.dk. The submission email should contain the following information:

- about the creators of the game,

- description, instructions and link to the game,

- optional, but recommended is in-game video (especially if the game runs on other platforms but PC and requires game accessories).

Best of luck to you all!

Jeppe Carlsen

Jeppe Carlsen is a Lead-Gameplay Designer at Playdead Games. Jeppe is a coding and design hybrid, his expertise is designing and implementing simple brain teasing puzzles, examples of which could recently be experienced in the award winning game LIMBO.

David McCarthy

David McCarthy is a member of the EMEA Developer Relations team at GREE. GREE is Japan’s leading mobile social networking service, home to thousands of games and millions of users. And it’s going global, aiming to build the leading mobile social gaming ecosystem for users and developers worldwide. David has over ten years of experience working in the videogame industry and has previously worked for Edge magazine, Rockstar games, and Salomon Smith Barney’s telecom and media investment banking team. He is also the author of Game On!: From Pong to Oblivion – The Greatest Video Games of All Time.

Manveer Heir

Manveer Heir is a Senior Designer at BioWare Montreal. He is currently working on Mass Effect 3. In relation to his work on Mass Effect 3 – he has some interesting insights to how diversity can help us make better storytelling in games. Read our interview with Manveer here.

Ole Teglbjærg

Ole Teglbjærg is a Game Director and a Game Designer at Press Play. He loves ideas, experiments, big ambitions, and coffee. He has worked on well known titles such as Max & the Magic Marker and Tentacles.