Liberal Arts for Game Design: W&M Club Creates Tradition
From Thursday March 20th to Sunday March 23rd, the William and Mary Game Design Club took part in the Virginia Collegiate Game Jam, which they organized collaboratively with five other Virginia universities. The game jam was the first ever intercollegiate game-making event to be hosted by students in Virginia.
A game jam is a competition between participants, who often team up to create a video game within the constraints of the competition and the timeframe of the event. Game jams often draw participants from a wide variety of disciplines, not just traditional computer science students.
“It’s a very open and creative process,” Bennett Matuszewski ‘27, a participant said. “It’s not just for programmers, you can be an artist, a musician, really anyone is welcome.”
The VCGJ was unique in that participants had the opportunity to take part both online and at the on-campus meetup that the William and Mary Game Design Club hosted.
At the start of last semester W&M Game Design Club president Justin Cresent ‘25, had contemplated starting a campus wide game jam as a way to engage the college community in the interdisciplinary nature of game-making.
“At first we were trying to throw a game jam, and then it turned into an intercollegiate thing, and so that’s how it developed,” Cresent said. “It was going to be a ‘here’ thing, with the school community, almost like a hackathon, but obviously on a bit of a smaller scale, because it's more of a niche area. But, we started working with other schools, and just decided that, you know, rather than asking them for help, it would be better to just collaborate.”
For Justin, who had not organized a game jam before, having the support and expertise of other universities’ clubs turned out to be a great asset to the event, as other schools host these events every semester.
“We had officially 127 people participating in the game,” said Elena Ceravalo ‘25, Game Design Club Vice-President.
The on-campus component of the event proved to be an enjoyable experience for the participants, who came to not only work on their games, but also to socialize.
“Most of the other game jams I’ve done have been online, so you don’t actually meet in person with anyone,” said Matuszewski. “This one was cool because you actually got to meet up with other game developers at William and Mary, and you could also chat with [developers] from other schools on the discord.”
This monday, the results of the game jam were announced on a live video stream, and the competition’s itch.io site. The winner of “Best Overall” game, “Crab It,” was made by a William and Mary student, as were the winning games in the categories of “Most Enjoyable” and “Most Creative.”
For the William and Mary Game Design Club, the success of the event marked a major turning point. Since the club’s reestablishment last Spring, membership has remained sparse with Cresent and Ceravalo, both seniors, working to establish a stronger community that will keep the club going in their absence.
In the time since the game jam, the club has noticed increased participation and interest, giving the club’s current executives hope for the future survival of the organization.
“I’ve seen new people coming to our weekly meetings even though they are at a kind of inconvenient time now,” Ceravalo said. “I put out a form [for club elections] and immediately got a response in the span of one minute, when I hadn’t even finished making the acceptance thing for it; we have a lot more people joining the club because of [the game jam].”
With the future of the club secured, and a successful event in the books, Cresent and Ceravalo can safely hand the organization down to a new generation of student game developers at William and Mary.
“I think [the game jam] could be something that actually makes the game design club a well known club, rather than just the husk of a club that’s come back from the grave,” Ceravalo said. “I’m just looking forward to seeing what kind of game jams they’ll host in the future.”