Game Jamming into Production with James Everett of Magic Leap

James Everett is a lead game designer at Magic Leap in Wellington, New Zealand. Since 2001 he has worked at studios across Canada as a designer on everything from first person shooters to tactical RPGs to brawlers. From 2008 to 2010 James called Wellington home for the first time, working with the talented crew at Sidhe (now PikPok) to ship titles like the award winning Shatter. He returned to Canada to join Ubisoft Toronto where he was a designer on Splinter Cell Blacklist, honing all of Sam Fisher's abilities. At the beginning of 2015 James moved south once again to join the Wellington Magic Leap team.

Game Jamming into Production

A Game Jam is often seen as a 48 hour, one and done activity. But what happens if you make it the basis of your pre-production? I got to do just that with a small team at Ubisoft Toronto. With a small team we rolled out a two week jam cycle which (repeated over a few months) led to thousands of ideas, dozens of pitches, and many successful prototypes. Through intentional constraints and pro-actively involving every member of the team we had a lot of fun. I'll go over the process and how it can be applied to leverage that Game Jam goodness outside of a sleepless weekend.

Beersies

As usual we'll be going to Southern Cross afterwards for Beersies and a chat. If you've got any games that you're working on, bring them along!