Hi! My name is Jess and I graduated last year with a first-class degree in Computer Games Design and Development. The whole idea of the Jam the Mess ‘Game Jam’ event was to design and prototype a game that could be used to ‘untangle the messy mechanics of cancer’. At first, it seems a strange pairing; cancer is very serious and life-changing whilst games are usually more light-hearted and are played for fun. However, as video games evolve, they are becoming more than simple time passers and can be used to inform and educate audiences, and that was exactly what this project was aiming for.
At the beginning of the Jam the Mess Game Jam, there were talks from cancer biologist Professor Matt Smalley from Cardiff University, and Cardiff Met’s very own game development expert, Professor Paul Angel. These talks gave us a feel for the mechanics of cancer and video games respectively, allowing us to begin formulating ideas for how we could gamify cancer. We were then split into two groups, and our group decided to call ourselves Team CanSir (because yes we can, sir!). We had a great mix of game developers and programmers, graphic artists, and cancer experts. We quickly got to work discussing the different ideas that we had for our game and it was very quick and easy to settle on our final idea. During Professor Smalley’s talk, he had used the metaphor of the body being like a factory making cells, and we really clung to that.
The premise of our game was that the player is a new white blood cell worker at the ‘Cell Factory’ (the human body). The player is tasked with quality control, watching as the newly produced cells come along a conveyor belt (the bloodstream). Some of these cells are perfectly healthy, but others have some sort of mutation that the player must flag up. Each of these bad cells has a cancer scenario to go along with it, and the player must choose the best treatment option for that specific type of cancer cell (surgery, chemotherapy, etc.). Allowing too many bad cells to pass by will give the player a game over, which we had to think about a lot to make sure that it wasn’t in any way insensitive or harsh. Our game was then named CanCelled, a perfect mix of cancer, cells, and ‘cancelling’ the cancer by quality controlling and fixing bad cells.
As I mentioned before, all of us within the team had our own strengths, and given my background of games design, my main contribution was helping with the coding of the game, making sure that the mechanics worked as intended and that the experience would be both fun and informative for players. It was a really fun project to be involved with and I encourage anyone to take part in a Game Jam; no matter what your background is, I’m positive it will be a worthwhile experience for you!
