The Evolution and Significance of the Global Game Jam

The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world’s largest game development activity (game jam). Every year since 2009, thousands of computer game enthusiasts participate in this forty-eight hour challenge to make games around the same theme. While game jams, hackathons, and game festivals existed before GGJ, and continue to proliferate, GGJ 2009 was perhaps the first time such events were held in multiple physical spaces (23 countries) at the same time. In this paper, we track the growth of GGJ using multiple