January 26, 2021
San Luis Obispo, Calif. – The Global Game Jam is now powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub), powered by AWS, and Global Game Jam, Inc. announced a major sponsorship of the Global Game Jam Online (GGJO) international event starting today through January 31, 2021.

GGJO is the first, all-online version of the Global Game Jam event, itself the largest game jam in the world operating since 2009 and active in 130 countries. A game jam is similar to a hackathon, but focused on creating games in small groups for a fixed amount of time. The Global Game Jam is typically 48 hours, involves a global theme, and a keynote address with advice from leading game developers. Participants come together in some 1,000 official locations around the world, form small teams and work on a game idea. 50,000 jammers participated in GGJ 2020. The resulting games are uploaded to globalgamejam.org by the end of the jam. The Global Game Jam stimulates collaboration, and empowers individuals worldwide to learn, experiment, and create together through the medium of games. There is no barrier to participation.

In 2021, teams will form virtually and cooperate remotely.

The DxHub is donating digital services in the form of AWS resources to power the major infrastructure of the GGJO and additional Global Game Jam projects in 2021. DxHub will work with the San Luis Obispo based nonprofit to support GGJ hosting, scaling and compute resources for the upcoming event.

“We are serving tens of thousands of jammers in a short period of time, so we absolutely need expert partners with solid understanding of scalable infrastructure,” said Foaad Khosmood, Cal Poly professor and co-founder of Global Game Jam. “Supporting GGJ advances our mission by providing students with real-world experiences with a nonprofit focused on learning through experimentation and international collaboration,” said Paul Jurasin, Director, Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub.

The Cal Poly Game Development club has been organizing the local GGJ site for the past few years. About 30-50 local developers typically participate. Previous games created can be viewed here.

GGJ 2021: https://globalgamejam.org/2021/jam-sites/cal-poly-slo-virtual-site-2021

GGJ 2020: https://globalgamejam.org/2020/jam-sites/cpgd-2020

GGJ 2019: https://globalgamejam.org/2019/jam-sites/cal-poly-ifixit

GGJ 2018: https://globalgamejam.org/2018/jam-sites/cal-poly-ifixit

About the Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub

The Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub) is a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is the world’s first cloud innovation center supported by AWS on a University campus. The primary goal of the DxHub is to provide real-world problem-solving experiences to students by immersing them in the application of proven innovation methods in combination with the latest technologies to solve important challenges in the public sector. The challenges being addressed cover a wide variety of topics including homelessness, evidence-based policing, digital literacy, virtual cybersecurity laboratories and many others. The DxHub leverages the deep subject matter expertise of government, education and non-profit organizations to clearly understand the customers affected by public sector challenges and develops solutions that meet the customer needs.

Global Game Jam Online: https://globalgamejam.org

Cal Poly Game Development Club: http://cpgd.org