The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is a 48 hour game development competition, which will be held simultaneously at a number of locations around the world. The South African leg of the event will be staged at the Computer Science Dept of the University of Cape Town, and will be co-sponsored by Afrigraph and the CS department.

Additional information can be found here. A nominal fee (R50) will be charged per entrant to cover basic access costs. About 30 Windows workstations will be available for participating teams to use. Details of development API's will be released closer to the time. At the moment, XNA and Java3D will be available for development, as well as OpenGL/GLUT. Only free software will be used. Users will be assigned an account on the system and will have internet access.

There will be a unifying theme to the GGJ and a location specific constraint which will differ for each hosting site. These will only be made known on the morning that the event begins. Participants will sign-up beforehand and may bring their own laptops to the venue. There is, however, a limit to free network points so only one laptop per group will be allowed on the network and assigned an IP address.

In keeping with other events of this nature, the GGJ encourages networking and team-work by preceding the event with a "game pitch". After the theme is announced, participants are allowed time to chat amongst themselves and to discuss various ideas around the theme. Then, anyone (or a newly formed group) who feels confident enough can "pitch" a proposal for a game to all the participants and those who can contribute something to the effort are free to join that group. This continues until all those wishing to pitch have done so or joined another group. Everyone who attends must end up in some group, however, since everyone can contribute to the success of a group - even if they assume a role such as testing.

Watch this space for updates and additional information.