JAMCHESTER 2017,

About the event

Now in year two, JAMCHESTER is an annual, weekend-long video game & VR creation competition. It will take place on Friday 19th May through to Sunday 21st May 2017 at The Studio event space in the heart of Manchester, UK.

Teams of professional developers (and a sprinkling of up-and-coming student talent) compete onsite to create the best games in a weekend.

Our first year sold out 100% of tickets to 140 jammers and we will be increasing this capacity for 2017. Including guests the 2016 event attracted over 200 people.

The event is run by HackManchester and Gameopolis (Greater Manchester’s professional video game developers association).

Who will take part?

Teams will be 1 to 4 people, which is a great number to create games in a Game Jam environment. In 2016 our “Best VR Game” award also meant we were one of the biggest ever VR Jams and we will build on that this year.

The event is aimed at professional developers and we encourage existing large game development companies to send teams along and compete. Our goal is for companies to flex their creativity outside of their usual working environments.

As we also wish to encourage the next generation of developers we assign a percentage of tickets to student entrants and have a “Best Student Game” category.

What do they make?

To level the playing field the overall theme will only be announced at the start of the weekend and selected by the organisation team.  There will be an overall main prize for game of the weekend and other smaller prizes based different categories.

Our main prize categories will be:

• Best Game

Sub categories will be:

• Art and Visual Presentation

• Design and Gameplay

• Audio Design

• Technical Achievement

• Innovation and creativity

• Best VR Game/Experience

Other awards:

• Best Company Game

• Best Student Game

Why should you sponsor?

JAMCHESTER is a celebration of developer ingenuity, creativity & collaboration.

Manchester is a great place to make games and three major release titles have come out of our regular local game jams in the last 18 months alone. Titan Souls (Acid Nerve) was famously talent-scouted by Devolver, Sublevel Zero (SigTrap Games) was picked up by Mastertronic, and Super Rude Bear Resurrection (Alex Rose Games) is being published by Sony.

At JAMCHESTER 2016 we had 39 games submitted from the competing teams and you can view and play all the games created at https://jamchester.devpost.com/

HackManchester CIC is a registered community interest company and the companys activities will provide benefit to:

Manchesters technical community by promoting, celebrating and teaching technical skills through competitions, workshops and events in Manchester and the North West region. If the company makes a surplus then it will used as educational donations to schools or museums. 

Claire Foster

I like to make events as awesome as they can be!

I am output focused and not motivated by money hence why I work for a Community Interest Company.

I'm on Twitter @squarejazz

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