News

Game Jam Competition at ESC!

On Friday 24 January, Game Design students at East Surrey College took part in a Game Jam, an event where participants get together to create a game from scratch. 

The competitive three-day jam challenged classmates to plan, develop and finally demonstrate a new game in front of their peers and employees from Supermassive Games and DPS Games. 

The quick turnaround tested not only their practical skills, but also their ability to work and collaborate, which was echoed by Mike Burnham, Studio Director for Supermassive Games, ‘We’ve seen some great learnings around communication and teamwork. While they’ve been focusing on their games, they’ve learned so much about working together’.  

After all the groups had presented their projects, the Supermassive and DPS Games Teams had the opportunity to trial the games themselves and provide some feedback. Mike McDonald, lead Lighting Artist at DPS Games said ‘It is great to see the love of making games, not just playing them. Working together and showing that to game professionals takes some guts!’ 

Programme Leader Daniel-Ian Smith, presented awards for the best games developed with prizes generously donated by our visitors. Congratulations to the following teams:  

1st Place: Team Blue, Alfie Gledhill, Joe Silverman, Stephanie Medina, William Baldry.  

2nd place: Team Cyan (left), Caleb Taylor, Logan Ritchie, Daniel Hatt, Thomas Spence.

3rd place: Team Green (right), Johnny Worley, Jack Kimber, Yaseen Ahmed 

The awards were followed by a Q&A session with the game developers which allowed students to ask their questions and seek advice from the industry professionals on progressing their careers in the gaming sector. The visit was certainly a great inspiration and thoroughly informative for all the students who took part.   

Thank you to our visitors at Supermassive and DPS for taking the time out of their day to visit our Game Design students, and to Daniel-Ian Smith for organising the visit! 

If you are interested in studying Game Design please visit the course page by clicking here.