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So I'm pretty excited.

I was reminded that I signed up – way back in October – for the Global Game Jam this weekend at UBC. At the time it was, ‘Pfft, I’ll totally do that – I’ll have tons of time in January.” Now that January’s here, I’m way busier than I thought I would be, but the weekend sounds far too exciting to back out.

The way the Global Game Jam works is that groups of people across the world get together for a 48-hour period and just “jam,” collaborating and creating some sort of playable product by 5 p.m. on Sunday. There are some 139 locations in 39 countries around the world participating.

As the official site for the event says “It is not easy building a game that is fun to play (especially in 48 hours), it is a complex system of ideas that interact together and result in a unique player experience.”

And it’s really that challenge that’s the appeal to budding game designers. The ability to share ideas, build new relationships and actually work efficiently towards a tangible product in just one weekend.

GNWC hosted its own 48-hour Game Jam back in the first semester, but I backed out at the last minute, not thinking I’d have much to offer the programmers and artists who would be doing a large bulk of the work.

But since then I’ve upped my sound design and project management skills, gotten more comfortable with Photoshop and Flash, and am generally more confident in what I can offer a small, rapid prototyping team.

The way it works, I’m told, is at the start of the weekend (Friday at 5 p.m.), people go up to the front of the room and pitch game ideas to everyone else. People align themselves by the idea they wish to pursue, then brainstorm and flesh out the idea some more.

There are several noteworthy indie titles that have come out of rapid prototyping and code-cramming such as this – Crayon Physics was developed in five days during a monthly event through the Experimental Gameplay Project, while the excellent World of Goo was created by two ex-EA developers who’d meet up at a coffee shop and share code via their free Wi-Fi.

Those are ingenious exceptions, of course, and both those titles have a greater development time than we’re allotted. So I’m not expecting the world, just to have a good time and meet some fun people.

Then again, if I don’t end up making Madden 10 meets World of Warcraft meets Steamboat Willie, I’ll be mad pissed

Nick Lewis is a 1st year MDM graduate student. His hobbies include rapid prototyping and kicking himself for not seeing The XX when they were here two months ago.