Young Game Makers to Get Serious about Stretching Their Creativity for More than Fun

SEOUL, South Korea — More than 50 college students from South Korea,Netherlands, Japan, and China are flocking to Pohang, South Korea, this week to participate in a 48-hour game development challenge hosted by Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH). The event, entitled Global Applied Game Jam 2016, runs for three days from Wednesday August 24^th to Friday August 26^th in the C⁵building on the POSTECH campus.

Within a span of 48 hours, participants will be challenged to plan, create, and develop playable applied games that “can help change the world through digital health care solutions,” in line with the theme of this year’s contest. Applied games, also known as serious games, are primarily designed for purposes other than pure entertainment. They are often used by industries such as education, health care, and defense to tackle real-world problems and raise social awareness.

The game jam celebrates its fourth year since first given life in 2013 by the Department of Creative IT Engineering (CITE) at POSTECH, one of the top research universities in Asia, to provide a platform for innovative and interdisciplinary engineering education. CITE has been partnering with University of the Arts Utrecht (HKU) in the Netherlands from the beginning for their rich knowledge and experience in game development.

Along with the founding member colleges, POSTECH and HKU, several Korean universities, such as SeoulNational University, Korea National University of Arts, and Hongik University, will take part. Students from Nihon University of Japan and Jilin Animation Institute of China are joining the challenge for the first time this year.

The young game developers from over ten universities have diverse disciplinary backgrounds in game development-related fields such as game studies, programming, graphic and sound design, and storytelling. They will form a team of five participants to compete through their ideas and game-making skills for 48 straight hours under the coaching of professors and expert developers.

In addition to awards and prizes, free consulting services for business development will be offered to the winning team(s). The winner(s) will also be sponsored to participate in a game contest to be held in the Netherlands this coming December.

Galit Gordon

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I'm a published author and proud US Army veteran who happens to be a gamer, so I decided to combine the two and love every minute of it! Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments and I'll be sure to get back to you.