No pain, no game: as dificuldades e boas práticas do desenvolvimento de jogos durante game jams, um estudo de caso

Abstract

With the evolution of technology and popularization of digital games, the gaming market has been growing over the years and consequently reaching billionaire revenues. It is estimated that the gaming industry is valued at approximately U$154 billion. Aiming to fulfill the dream of working with games, added to the appeal of financial return, more and more people are attracted to develop their own games. However, creating a game is a multi-step process, which can be underestimated in terms of its difficulties, especially for independent developers. Thus, the scenario of a game jam can help developers to train their skills and improve game creation. In this context, the objective of this work is to investigate whether it is possible to develop games with good results in a game jam, by analyzing difficulties and good practices found in the development of known games and raised in literature. Also, find out what can be done to make solo game jam development more efficient. Based on a bibliographic review, the difficulties and good practices encountered by independent developers and game companies during game production were identified. For the application of the research, the author participated in game jams, in order to apply the recommendations of good practices found during the previous stage, having participated in a total of four different game jams. As a result, it was possible to observe a significant evolution at the end of each game jam, since the difficulties encountered during each of the jams were corrected during the execution of the next jam. Finally, a satisfactory result was obtained in the execution of the last game jam, delivering a complete game that went through all stages of the development process.