Game Jam Titans in its second year kicked off with a bang in Delhi with more than 450 students and 80 teams participating for the event. An initiative by MindBox and NASSCOM, school students were given an opportunity to create games around the themes of Prisons and Germs.
Modern School Principal Dr Vijay Datta, NASSCOM Gaming Chair Rajesh Rao and Ark Infosolutions CEO Rishi Khemka flagged off the event encouraging kids and providing them with a much needed morale boost before judges started reviewing their games. With kids from class 5 to 12 participating in the event, each team was provided with licensed game engines and softwares to build and develop their games by MindBox who also trained kids one week prior to the Game Jam allowing them to explore their creativity and problem solving abilities.
“Game Jam Titans has been a very good platform for these children and now in its second year, the student turnout has been phenomenal. There are students from grade 5 and it is very encouraging to see the future of the industry. With children now having access to internet and facebook, catching up with everyone here is very simple and we would be seeing more students collaborating on different games after this,” said Rao.
The jury comprised of SuperSike Games founder Amit Goyal, Hashstash Games founder Kinshuk Sunil, SmartVizX head – virtual reality Chandan Singh, and BlackLight Studio Works co-founder Sumit Soni went across to each of the 80 participating teams and played & tested the games over the next four hours, before finally coming to the conclusion that there would be a mention of the top fourteen teams in the school category which will go on to the next round.
Finally, after much discussions and brainstorming, the jury came to a conclusion that St. Mark’s Senior School students had a better game on the given day followed by Amity International School, Gurgaon. The winners were elated to receive the trophy and certificates from the judges and tickets to NASSCOM Game Developers Conference 2015 happening in Pune.
On winning in the school category, the team members jointly said: “It was an awesome experience for us. We really would like to thank the organizers for coming to our city and giving us an opportunity to not just participate in this contest, but also be trained in using the various game engines allowing learning and creating a game. We also learned how to work in a team and help each other complete this game. We can’t wait to come to Pune in November for the NASSCOM game developers conference and show our game to other members of the gaming industry.”
The action now shifts to the City of Nawabs – Hyderabad on 21 August followed by Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. Watch this space to catch all the news and updates on GameJam Titans.