We were up until about midnight last night getting started on our game.  We headed home from the ETC so Little Gary’s younger brother Peter could help as well.  They came up with a really cool idea for the game:

You see, every night Sarah and I invent a bedtime story for our three boys that begins “Once upon a time there were three boys:  a big boy, a medium boy, and a little boy…”  They go on all sorts of daring adventures—it’s a collaborative imaginative process between us and them each night.  Anyway, we wanted to base our game for the Global Game Jam on the adventures of the three boys.  Here’s the story they came up with (which will also be incorporated into the game’s intro):

When we woke up this morning Little Gary was pretty sick.  He was coughing a lot last night, and things only got worse through the night.  But he’s a trooper, and he pulled through to make a lot of really great art for our game:

It took a while to get started, but Little Gary passed the time drawing concept art and drinking Orange Soda.  Now we’re ready to make games!

We had a primer about game-making in an intense 48-hour stretch.  It’s a time to push the envelope, take risks, and not be afraid of failure.

Then, after much anticipation, the top-secret theme of the Game Jam was revealed.  There are jammers in Hawaii who may not have started yet, so I can’t reveal it quite yet.  I’ll give you a hint though… it rhymes with “car.”

We grabbed some grub and then rushed off to create some awesome art for the game.

It’s a rockin’ volcano

Rain Forest, baby!

And then, after a few hours of feverish work, we activated a feature that most professional game developers don’t have:  Bedtime.

Sleep tight… we have a lot of work ahead of us tomorrow.

Little Gary and I arrived at the ETC a bit early so we had some time to explore before the Game Jam started…. lots of cool stuff here to get the creative juices flowing.

The food was a little late in getting here, so Little Gary went straight to work with his shiny new pen from Schell Games and a big stack of paper we brought.  Most of these drawings aren’t for the game we’ll be making… they are from Star Wars:  The Clone Wars.  Little Gary is working on his portfolio… he wants to consult with Disney on the new Star Wars movies.

I don’t usually blog about personal events, but this weekend is worth an exception.

This weekend professional artists, designers, programmers, and game designers from around the world will gather for the Global Game Jam—an intense 48-hour game-making session.  Some folks show up as teams, others arrive and hook up with people they meet at the jam.  Then they stock up on pizza and spend the next two days working feverishly to complete whatever their sleep-deprived caffeine-infused imaginations can dream up.  It’s wonderful!

What does all this have to do with Dream Flight Adventures, you ask?  Well, the answer is quite simple.  I’ll be attending it—with my seven year-old son.

This is Little Gary.  Long ago, when I was seven years old, I made my first video game with my father.  Now I’m going to do the same thing with my son.

A lot has changed since I made my first game.  I used HyperCard (which I still miss dearly) on my family’s old Mac Classic (which I don’t), and my game—dubbed Gary’s Adventure—lasted as long as the ol’ machine’s hard drive.  Today, my son and I have a huge expanse of great tools at our fingertips, and with a bit of elbow grease we can publish our creations on a variety of platforms and share them with the entire world.  But one thing remains the same:  a child’s dream will come to life.

So stay tuned to this blog over the weekend.  We’ll be broadcasting from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, posting our progress as we go.

And who knows, maybe it’ll do to Little Gary what Gary’s Adventure did to me:  set me on a path to dream big and then get to work making those dreams come true.

Buckle up.  It’s going to be a weekend to remember.