The Global Game Jam research committee is proud to announce our acceptance of the following research proposals. The authors of these proposals have a chance to survey the GGJ community during Global Game Jam 2013 in a pre-event and a post-event survey, and submit their findings to the GGJ Workshop at FDG. Congratulations to all.

• Gender and Global Game Jam Participant Motivation; Carly Kocurek and Arlen Moller; Illinois Institute of Technology; USA                               
• Experiential Learning in a Game Jam; Jeff Chastine, Ali Arya, Allan Fowler and Jon Preston; Multiple Institutions; USA, Canada, New Zealand
• The Latin American independent communities of creators of electronic games compared to the large-scale industry; Germán Dartsch, Valeria Fernández Hasan and Sebastián Touza; National University of Cuyo; Argentina
• Team dynamics and development processes of the Global Game Jam; Jay O'Toole and Michael Ciuchta; Multiple Institutions; USA             
• Investigating the lack of accessibility in game design; Joseph Mansour; Phi Laboratories, USA
• Level Up- GGJ Catania Chapter; Marta Mingrino, Ambra Bonaiuto, Salvo Fallica and Salvatore Mica; E-ludo Lab association, Italy      
• Game Design Processes in Rapid Game Development; Alexander Zook; Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
• Enhancing experience with digital design and production tools in high pressure, rapid prototyping environments; Foaad Khosmood; Cal Poly; USA

Global Game Jam™ Set To Break Its Own Record 
On January 25-27 Over 300 locations & Thousands of Developers Will Jam!

SAN LUIS OBISBO, Calif. - January 22, 2013 - Global Game Jam, Inc.™(GGJ) announced that it expects to break its own record with next weekend’s 5th annual game jam. Worldwide, over 300 locations are getting ready in 60 countries to gather tens of thousands of participants who will take part in the 48-hour long game creation marathon taking place January 25−27, 2013.

Many new countries and locations have joined the jam this year, from all around the globe, as the event continues to grow in popularity amongst designers, programmers and developers. The tremendous variety of talented participants breeds innovation, while the theme and variety of diversifiers will generate even greater experimentation within the game creation landscape. GGJ continues to be a proven incubator for creating connections between game industry professionals, educational institutes and related fields, and vibrant game development communities worldwide.

It's almost time! After months of preparation Global Game Jam is almost upon us! With over 300 registered locations this year and just a couple of days left before the jam kicks off starting in New Zealand, we have officially closed registrations for local hosts.

This means that there will be no more new sites added, of course participants can still sign up (if the local site still has openings left).

The Global Game Jam team is proud to present a message from the legendary Sid Meier to all participants and friends of GGJ. Sid Meier gives a short, but tongue in cheek advice on how to become a great game designer.

World Record Breaking Event to take place January 25-27, 2013

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. – January 15, 2012 - Global Game Jam Inc.™ today announced an incredible line-up of speakers for this year’s keynote. The Global Game Jam™ annually presents cutting edge speakers and this year’s line-up promises to keep with that tradition. On board to motivate this year’s jammers are Erin Robinson, award winning indie game designer and Bret Victor, inventor & designer of experimental UI concepts at Apple.

The video keynotes are being translated into more than 15 languages to be shown in over 300 locations in 63 countries around the world. The keynotes go live in every location at 5pm January 25th, shortly thereafter the package will be posted to the Global Game Jam YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/globalgamejam If you go to the channel now, you can see the GGJ teaser trailer which was created by Adam Barenblat & Amanda Ligman from Cause and FX - A Creative Workshop.

The Global Game Jam encourages all kinds of games: Computer, console, smartphone, boardgames, card games, and pretty much everything else too, including geocaches! 

This week Elonka Dunin, one of the Global Game Jam Directors, and an avid geocacher herself, is interviewed on the largest geocaching podcast in the world, Podcacher. Geocaching is a rapidly growing worldwide game which started in May 2000. There are currently nearly two million geocaches hidden around the world, and five million people playing the game, hiding and finding these caches.

In this interview, Elonka explains to the geocaching community what a game jam is, how jam sites can potentially be organized, and how geocachers may want to join game jams to create complex geocaches such as multi-caches and digital GPS adventures known as Wherigos.

On January 25-27 hundreds of game makers around the world

will create games for social impact in a single weekend

New York - January 9, 2013 - Global Game Jam Inc.™ (GGJ) today announced a new partnership with Games for Change (G4C), to celebrate G4C’s 10^th anniversary and allow GGJ13 participants from all over the world to visit sites that focus specifically on positive social impact.  Jesse Schell, renowned game designer, author and Carnegie Mellon Professor will deliver a special video keynote to launch this unique effort on January 25^th.

Through this partnership, GGJ site organizers will be offered the opportunity to register their site as a “G4C” site, and invite participants to create innovative digital games that go beyond entertainment. G4C has a purpose to raise awareness around real-world issues, promote learning, change behavior or recruit other players to support a cause.

With a record 275 sites already registered, the annual event has successfully enlisted new “G4C”-dedicated sites including the MIT Game Lab, the School of Visual Arts in New York, the Art Institute of Portland, George Mason University in Virginia, Bento Miso in Toronto Canada, Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego in Warsaw Poland, the University of Sao Paulo Brazil.