Goshen College became a miniature Silicon Valley for 48 hours as the Global Game Jam took place in the Union building this past weekend.

The event started on the night of the 26th of January and spanned until the afternoon of the 28th.

Each team of game-creators had 48 hours to plan, build and finish a game, whether that be a board, card or video game.

Students and alumni from the college took part in the event, as well as some members from high schools in the area.The Game Jam is in its fourth year at Goshen College and for the event as a whole, this is the tenth year.

Jeanette Shown, associate professor of computing science and information technology, was the person who first started the Global Game Jam when she first came to Goshen four years ago.

Shown said the purpose of the event is “to get people to understand how a game is put together, to get them to realizes what actually goes into a game, and just to have fun.”

The event itself was held in the computer lab and collaborative space in the basement of the Union building.

The first night of the weekend of games was kicked off with a keynote speaker, the announcement of the Game Jam’s theme for this year, and pizza.

“This [was] very geek. Lots of pizza and other foods similar to that,” said Shown.

The theme for this year’s event was “Transmission.” All of the teams had to come up with a game that somehow related to the theme of “Transmission.”

During the kickoff, participants were encouraged to get to know each other and learn about each other’s skills. This was to help participants find others to team up with.

This event was mostly, though not solely Computer Science majors, with a few ASL, art, biology and chemistry majors showing up to take part in the Game Jam.

There were four teams who made it all the way to the end of the Global Game Jam, which meant there were four final games as well.

The games were “Immunity: Cosmic Destruction,” a card game where the player is one of six planets trying to transmit diseases to other planets. “Radio Control” a game where the player’s mechanic has wired the radio to the steering wheel of their car. “The Little Radio Who Could,” in this game the player moves a radio around to help it get signal. “The Promised LAN,” where the player moves around in an open world finding radio towers to keep their phone alive.

At the end of the competition, all of the teams were given time to present their games to the rest of the participants. After the presentations were over, everyone had one vote to cast for their favorite game.

The game titled Radio Control, created by Nick Walter, Bryce Yoder and Christian Gehman, all sophomores, won the competition.

Yoder said, “The Global Game Jam was really fun and more people should sign-up next year.”