The 36 hours Game Jam event ends with announcing 5 winners instead of stipulated 3 as the organizers were unable to decide on top three due to the quantity of high quality games developed during the event. In addition to BDT 50 Lac launch booster, the winning teams will get BDT 3 lac from Grameenphone.

The closing ceremony of Game Jam, a hackathon event aimed at crowd sourcing, developing, and launching the next big mobile game for, by, and in Bangladesh, was held on Sunday (May 7) at GP House.

Game Jam is a joint initiative of Grameenphone and White-Board in association with ICT Division, Government of Bangladesh. During the “Jam”, participating teams were tested in a highly competitive environment by an expert panel of judges.

The winning teams are Team Reboot with their game action game “Infected”, Team Bhutum Pecha with their cricket game “Goli Cricket”, Shadowlit with the traditional nokshi-katha art styled game “Nokshi”, Team Triforce with their puzzle game “Shobdo”, and Unequal Soldiers with the unique sketching/racing game, “Sketch Journey”. The games developed by them will be made market-ready by July of this year, and will be launched exclusively through Grameenphone.

Present at the event were Petter Furberg, CEO, Grameenphone; Yasir Azman, CMO, Grameenphone; and Dr. Mohammad Kaykobad, professor, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and fellow, Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.

‘Game Jam is one of many initiatives by Grameenphone to provide the Bangladeshi youth a platform to showcase their talent and work on their ideas going down the line. Just like in this event, over the years we have witnessed the immense talent the digital youth of today fosters that will definitely help them guide Bangladesh towards comprehensive digitalization in the coming days,’ said Yasir Azman.

The call for application for Game Jam started on March 23, 2017 and was closed on April 13, 2017. 25 game development teams participated in the 36-hour session or ‘Jam’, where they competed against each other on assigned tasks.

The top 5 winners will receive comprehensive support from Grameenphone to present themselves on a global platform. The support that the winners will receive includes funding and expert support to make the games market-ready and reaching target customers globally; inclusion of the games among Grameenphone’s rich array of digital products and exposure through Telenor’s global connections.

The ICT Division will provide necessary resources to nurture and mentor the applicants to build their game. Other partners of this initiative are Mlab (Strategic alliance); Samsung (Resource support); Opera (Industry Partner); WowBox (Digital support); and Appnometry (Community engagement).