My First Ever Game Jam
Sharon Khalo’s Women Game Jam 2022 Story
A first-time jammer, a new team, a new engine, and one very stubborn computer.
“I don’t have experience in the game development field. This was going to be my first time participating.”
For some developers, their first game jam is the beginning of a long journey into game development.
For others, it is simply an opportunity to try something completely outside their comfort zone.
For Sharon Khalo, Women Game Jam 2022 was both.
Sharon came into the event with experience in IT, mainframe development and self-taught web development, but very little experience in game development. She had experimented with JavaScript game development using Phaser 3, but had never participated in a game jam before.
Then she discovered Women Game Jam.
What followed was a weekend of learning, teamwork, uncertainty, experimentation — and a game about a computer that stubbornly refuses to do anything.
This is Sharon’s story of her first ever game jam.
👩🏽💻 Meet Sharon Khalo
Sharon describes herself as a “jill-of-all-trades, mistress of none.”
Her background was in IT, where she had worked as a mainframe developer, alongside teaching herself web development.
Her web development experience included:
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
She was comfortable learning new technologies, however, and that curiosity eventually led her toward game development.
At the time of Women Game Jam 2022, Sharon wasn’t working in the IT field, but she continued developing her technical skills.
She describes herself as a Soweto girl, living in Soweto and taking advantage of being close to Johannesburg’s technology events — somethingthat became particularly valuable as the COVID-19 pandemic changed how communities gathered.
And online events had one major advantage:
“You can meet people from all over.”
🎮 How Sharon Found Women Game Jam
Sharon’s journey to Women Game Jam started with a Facebook article about game jams.
The article had been written by Ronica Singh, who had experience organising game jams.
Curious about what a game jam actually was, Sharon reached out to Ronica.
After learning more about the concept, Sharon decided that she wanted to participate in the next game jam she could find.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long.
Women Game Jam 2022 was scheduled for August 20–22, 2022.
And Sharon decided to take the plunge.
😬 First Game Jam Nerves
Although Sharon had previously participated in hackathons, game development was new territory.
She had experimented with learning JavaScript game development using Phaser 3, but had eventually put it aside because she didn’t get much opportunity to continue working with it.
Her original plan was to enter Women Game Jam as a solo HTML5 Canvas developer. That plan didn’t last very long. She ended up joining a team. And suddenly, her first game jam wasn’t just about learning how to make a game. It was about learning how to make a game with someone else.
👩🏽💻 What Do You Bring to a Game Jam?
One of Sharon’s observations from the jam is something that remains relevant to game jams today:
Game development isn’t just programming.
At the time, Unity was the engine of choice for her team. Sharon didn’t have Unity experience. That could have easily become a reason to feel like she didn’t belong. Instead, she realised that there were plenty of other ways to contribute.
Game development also involves:
- Sound design
- UI design
- Creating assets
- Level design
- Game design
- Researching resources
- Testing
- And, of course, programming
As Sharon put it:
“There are other aspects to game development besides coming up with a game idea and programming.”
Her eventual team consisted of two people: Sharon and Dannie.
Sharon contributed to the game idea, UI design and finding audio resources, while Dannie — who had more experience and qualifications in game development — handled much of the development work.
And that was an important lesson. You don’t necessarily need to now everything. You need to know what you can contribute.
🫱🏽🫲🏽 Finding Your Game Jam Team
Anyone who has participated in a game jam knows that the beginning can be chaotic.
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People are looking for teammates. Ideas are being thrown around. People are trying to fiure out who knows what. And everyone is asking themselves:
“Who should I team up with?”
Sharon describes this as one of the challenges of the game jam:
“Finding the right team members is important, after all these ladies are going to be your new comrades-in-arms.”
There is inevitably some awkwardness at first.
But as the jam progresses, teammates begin to understand one another’s strengths, working styles and personalities.
The trick is finding people whose skills complement one another. For Sharon, that was particularly challenging because she didn’t have what she considered the “correct” combination of game development skills.
But instead of being left without a contribution, she discovered other areas where she could help. And that became part of her game jam education.
💡 Lesson #1: Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
This may be one of the most important pieces of game jam advice Sharon took away from the weekend:
“In a game am you must bite off only what you are able to chew.”
It sounds obvious. It isn’t. Game jams encourage ambitious ideas. You have a theme. You have a limited amount of time. Suddenly, someone says:
“What if we made an open-world RPG with procedural generation, multiplayer, branching dialogue and…”
And before you know it, you’re four hours into the jam with absolutely nothing playable. Sharon learned that game jam ideas need to be: Small. Executable. Testable. And, most imporatntly: Finishable.
The goal isn’t necessarily to build the biggest or most complicated game. The goal is to finish something. That leaves enough time to test the game and fix those inevitable bugs.
🖥️ Breaking the Rules with… Error 404
The Women Game Jam 2022 theme was:
Breaking the Rules
Sharon and Dannie brainstormed several ideas before settling on something deliberately simple.
Their game was called:
Error 404
This is not a game. Leave the computer alone.
The premise?
There’s a computer sitting in a room.
And it does…
nothing.
The player’s challenge is to try to break the computer’s rules and get it to actually do something.
It’s a wonderfully fitting idea for the theme.
Instead of creating an elaborate game world, the team took a relatively simple concept and focused on making it achievable within the jam’s constraints.
And that decision paid off.
They actually had a game to submit.
🎯 Lesson #2: Your First Game Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
Sharon’s first game jam wasn’t about producing a commercial-quality game. It wasn’t about mastering Unity in one weekend. It wasn’t about becoming an expert game developer overnight.
It was about participating. Learning. Contributing. Working with another developer. And finishing something.
She came away from the experience grateful for a teammate and for everything she had learned.
“I benefitted a lot from this experience.”
And perhaps most importantly:
“I hope to hone and broaden my skills to be an effective participant.”
That’s a fantastic mindset for anyone entering their first game jam.
You don’t have to arrive as an expert. You arrive ready to learn.
🌱 From First-Time Jammer to Future Jams
Sharon ended her testimonial with something that I think captures exactly what a community game jam should achieve:
“I look forward to upcoming game jams. I hope they are just as educational as the Women Game Jam 2022.”
A game jam can be a competition. It can be a challenge. It can be a frantic weekend of debugging at 2 AM. But it can also be a classroom. A networking opportunity. A place to discover skills you didn’t know you had. And, sometimes, the place where someone makes their first game.
Sharon’s Women Game Jam experience reminds us that you don’t need to arrive knowing everything. You don’t even need to arrive knowing exatly what your role will be. Sometimes you just need to show up. Find your team. Figure out what you can contribute. Make something small. And finish it.
🕹️ The Game
Sharon and Dannie’s game was:
Error 404 — This is not a game. Leave the computer alone.
The game was created during Women Game Jam 2022, under the theme “Breaking the Rules”.
Play / explore the game: Error 404 on itch.io
👩🏽 About Sharon
Sharon Khalo is an IT professional and self-taught web developer from Soweto, South Africa, with experience in mainframe development and web technologies including HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Women Game Jam 2022 was her first ever game jam and her first significant experience working collaboratively on a game development project.
At the time, Sharon was exploring game development and broadening her technical skills, with the hope of becoming a more effective participant in future game jams.
You can find her online through:
Twitter/X: @shazzdata
GitHub: github.com/itumel
