Hopping from Hyderabad, GameJam Titans reached the ‘Detroit of India’ – Chennai for another mega session of game jamming. One of the biggest turnouts, GameJam Titans has seen in the two years of its existence. SBOA School Auditorium was filled with energy and enthusiasm of close to 800 kids from 62 schools were seen, wanting to showcase their games to the jury members.
The themes given to the school kids to create a game were ‘treasure’ and ‘recycle’ – wherein they could choose to develop them using either of the themes or both. School Principal Radhika Unni along with Ark Infosolutions CEO Rishi Khemka, opened the day’s proceedings for the Chennai leg. The huge turnout also required some reinforcement in the number of jury members to judge these games and the jury members included Lino Stephen founder Centaur Digital, PR Rajendran co-founder Next Wave Multimedia, Abhi Maruthu CEO Valari Studios and Akil Game Designer Madras Games.
“This is a great initiative for kids and its heartening to see so many of them turn out. Gaming as an industry has seen a lot of changes in the past decade and kids nowadays are more open to experimenting playing on different platforms as well. Such events will only foster more confidence in young kids to take up gaming as a serious career,” said one of the jury members Lino Stephen.
Each of the 150 participating teams went to jury tables to showcase their games and the jury members played and tested the games over the next seven hours and they were surprised with the games at the display, and the thought that went behind each game.
Finally, after much discussions and brainstorming, the jury came to a conclusion that Loyola International Residential School students had a better game on the given day followed by Chettinad. Third spot was picked up by Velammal Vidyasharam which was winners last year. The winners received gold and silver trophies respectively along with certificates and medals from the judges. Winners took home the tickets to NASSCOM Game Developers Conference 2015 which is happening in Pune.
On winning in the school category, the team members jointly said: “We really would like to thank the organisers for coming to our city and giving us an opportunity to not just participate in this contest, but also be trained in making and creating a game that we believed in. We can’t wait to come to Pune in November for the NASSCOM game developers conference.”
The next chapter of GameJam Titans takes us to the IT hub of the country Bangalore on 4 September. Watch this space to catch all the news and updates on GameJam Titans.
