Creative teams generated over 20 action-packed games at the University of Southampton as part of the world’s largest game jam.

Around 80 students, alumni and professionals from game studios gathered at Electronics and Computer Science’s (ECS) David Barron Computing Laboratory at the start of February as they joined close to 50,000 developers in over 100 countries taking part in the Global Game Jam.

The teams planned, built and showcased series of video and board games in just 48 hours, with their creations now available to download and play on the Global Game Jam website.

Dr Tom Blount, ECS Research Fellow and Southampton Game Jam co-organiser, says: “The jam is a chance for people to meet, work together, learn new skills and have fun creating something. It isn’t a competition and one of its biggest draws is taking pride and joy in building something to share with others.

“There’s always an interesting mix of games created as a result of the jam but frantic, multiplayer games are always a very popular choice. We had an amazing 23 games submitted this month, which brings our grand total to 156 across the event’s six years.”

This year’s global theme was ‘repair’ and Southampton entries included airship action strategy game Isle of Sky, platformer puzzle Larry the Worm and World War I arcade title Medic!. Point and click special Nuclear BopIt! was voted the 2020 Southampton People’s Choice for its playful take on twisting, tapping and entering passwords to halt a nuclear reactor explosion.

Participants watched a video of keynote speakers from the Global Game Jam on the Friday evening before groups were formed to discuss ideas that could be programmed at pace in the computer labs. Some teams worked through the nights before a Sunday afternoon showcase when everyone could try each other’s games and vote for their favourite.

This year’s teams largely consisted of Southampton Electronics and Computer Science students but also included visitors from the universities of Portsmouth and Bournemouth along with professionals from Climax Studio. In previous years, experts from the Bitmap Bureau, Boss Alien, Freejam and Studio Gobo have also attended.

A new national competition sponsored by academics from the University of Southampton is diversifying the recognition of research excellence by celebrating all who contribute to its creation.

Professor Simon Hettrick, Deputy Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, has marked the launch of the hidden REF with an article on Research Professional News, outlining its objective to credit overlooked achievements from the arts to zoology.

The Research Excellence Framework, or REF, is a widely viewed assessment of the quality of research in UK universities, however its submissions are often dominated by academic publications.

“The research community’s myopic fixation on publications as the metric of research excellence means that the REF overlooks many skilled people who are essential to the conduct of research but do not get authorship of papers,” Simon says.

“Research is about more than publications. By raising awareness of the full range of different and vital outputs, I hope the hidden REF will lead to greater recognition of the variety of people that make research possible. Ultimately, we’re running this competition because we believe a fairer research environment is a more effective one.”

The competition’s first phase, which runs to July this year, is seeking suggestions for categories of research outputs that are currently unrecognised. The second phase will then receive submissions for newly identified research categories and judge them through expert panels before winners are announced in November.

Simon’s opinion piece, Hidden REF reveals unsung heroes, is available in full from Research Professional News.