Summer Game Jam 2024
Looking to add a fun game to your portfolio? How about earning some serious bragging rights in the process? Join TheXPlace and Unity this summer and let's beat the heat of job-searching together.
📆 Mark your Calendars
Jam Event: June 13 - June 19 (1 week)
Theme reveal: June 9th
Submission Due Date: June 19 Noon Pacific time
Games spotlight and reviewers’ session: June 25
☀️About Summer Game Jam
• Summer game jam is for all gaming professionals - whether experienced or entry level, - where teams create a game within just 7 days.
• We welcome 18+ year-old jammers from around the world at any game development skill level.
• Teams must be at least 3 people but can be as big as you want
• Seasoned veterans are available as mentors and we will feature keynote presentations each day.
➡️ Why Summer Game Jam? Why Now?
The game development industry often presents challenges for early career professionals:
• Students graduate from education programs with limited practical experience, and companies often set unrealistic experience requirements, even for entry-level positions. This gap can make it difficult for newcomers to break into the industry.
• Typically 5% of all jobs cater to early career professionals. This year, with ongoing layoffs and thousands of experienced professionals struggling to find work, the landscape seems even more challenging.
Proud to Partner with Unity
We’re honored to be partnering with Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and growing real-time 3D (RT3D) content. Their community brings incredible expertise and fosters a certain spirit of learning and innovation that will enable teams to create complex yet creative games within the tight timeline of a game jam. Participants will also have access to Muse, Unity’s newest AI innovation that superpowers game development and creativity.
🖇️ TheXPlace also welcomes additional partners and vendors to the jam and as a result will offer the most innovative tech to our participants.
👯Teaming Up
💫 Take this game jam as an opportunity to team up with professionals across the globe and broaden your professional network! Check out the attendee tab to see who has signed up for the event and their discipline and background. Use the search feature to filter attendees who are still looking for a team or have already joined a team and who makes up which team.
🌠 The Games Tab provides a snapshot of all the games being created and the teams responsible for them. Teams can be filtered by what kind of talent they’re still looking for based on discipline, time zone, and team names, so you can custom-pick who you want to work with or what kind of talent to attract.
🎇 Of course, the Games tab is also where you’ll find all of the important information for each game, including its genre, what skills and tools the team is using, and most importantly, post-submission, its play link! Don’t see one you fancy working on? Start your own game space: tell others what you envision building and list the disciplines you’re still looking to join your team.
🔨Tools
Unity, Unity-Muse, SideFX Houdini, Radical, Genies, Discord, Github.
🔑Keynote Presentations
As they say, good things happen to those who wait...
We're working on it and will have exciting updates to share with you soon!
💡Mentorship and guidance
In addition to the keynotes, TheXPlace + Unity will offer office hours and mentorships from experts covering a variety of topics like Production, Narrative Design, Audio, Technical Art, QA, UI/UX, Unity, 3D modeling, 3D animation, and more.
👋Want to meet face-to-face before the jam?
Coffee chats offer a great opportunity to meet fellow jammers, TheXPlace, and Unity staff who will be supporting this session and networking!
It's a great way to kick off this intense week of professional development and game-building!
We have several Coffee Chats scheduled on:
☕ June 9th 7pm Pacific time, 10pm Eastern time, 4AM CET
☕ June 10th 8am Pacific time, 11am Eastern time, 5PM CET
☕ June 11th 9am Pacific time, Noon Eastern time, 6PM CET
☕ June 12th 6am Pacific time, 9am Eastern time, 3PM CET
Speed Networking session:
☕ June 12th Noon Pacific time, 3pm Eastern time, 9PM CET
To join a coffee chat or a speed networking session, find the specific one that best suits your schedule, on the Events portal and click join.
Discord is vital to this jam, hop on in!
In Discord you can collaborate with your teammates, recruit new ones, and interact with all of our mentors!
With our mentors, we cover Audio, Technical Art, Production, Narrative Design, QA, UI/UX, Production, Unity, 3D modeling, and 3D animation (and more).
🔗 Join our Discord to gain camaraderie and mentorship throughout this summer game jam.
❓Got Questions?
How can I get assigned a mentor?
✅ First, you need to create a game page or join a game! Second, you'll need to join our Discord server. From there, TheXPlace staff will assign your dedicated team-mentor based on your time zone. You'll be able to talk to your mentor in Discord and ask other participants questions.
We will also have Discipline-mentors who volunteered office hours to share their expertise with our jammers! Looking to improve the UI/UX of your game? Want to consult on how to strike a balance between enhancing gameplay and evoking emotions through audio? Sign-up for office hours.
Where can I find the office hours of staff and mentors?
✅ Our Discord and our Blog will have a link to a Google sheet called Jam Schedule with all of that information! You can see when to expect the Summer Game Jam moderators to be available, mentors, and email inbox support.
Got more questions about the Summer Game Jam?
• Check the FAQ (available soon 😳)
• Reach out to us here or in our Discord server
🤗 Community-first Inspired Events
At TheXPlace, we want to inject some good into the world. More than ever, we need to join together and celebrate why we all love this industry. Let’s share some joy and create some amazing games together.
We maintain a 0% tolerance for harassment and hate speech at all TheXPlace events. If you witness this on our platform, please report it here.
