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Top teams of journalists, developers and students have been recognised at this weekend’s JournoDevSwap event, which ended moments ago with the gathering’s award ceremony.
The event, presented in the 48 hour games jam format, challenged developers and journalists to swap roles, meaning established scribes spent the weekend developing a game, while their counterparts covered the event as press, posting stories, previews, reviews and opinion pieces here on Develop.
The theme for the game jam was ‘Swap’, and the titles created were Gi Joyce, Double Droids, Just Like Real Life and Split Destiny.
Lionhead staffer Mark Backler won the award for best developer-turned-journalist (pictured), recognised for his quality of writing and dedication to the task in hand.
"I really didn’t expect this," said Backler (top), taking to the stage to accept his award. "All the writing by everybody from this weekend was great."
Meanwhile Guardian games journalist Keith Stuart and his development student coding partner Theo Chin (above) scooped the prize for best game made by a journalist, with their dual-play auto-running game Double Droids.
"I really owe it to Theo for all his help," insisted Stuart.
Despite the victory of the winners, everybody involved contribute a huge effort. You can read all the news written by the games developers here, and keep an eye out on Develop for playable versions of each game.
The JournoDevSwap event was organised by UKIE CEO Jo Twist (above) and games consultant Will Luton.
The journalists-turned developers were CVG’s Rob Crossley, RockPaperShotgun’s Dan Griliopoulos, Lewie Procter of RPS and Savvy Gamer, and Keith Stuart from The Guardian,
The developers serving as journalists were Spilt Milk’s Andrew Smith, Peter Theophilus-Bevis from Blitz, Mark Backler of Lionhead, and Jim Griffiths from Media Tonic.
Huge thanks must go to the event’s starts, a group of games development students from the University of Derby, who assisted with the development process throughout the weekend. They were Karn Bianco, Jake Woodruff, Chris Barnes, Luc Shelton, Kevin chandler, Theo Chin and David Jones.
Some of the student developers with Sports Interactive’s Miles Jacobson
