MORRISVILLE — For more than a decade, SUNY Morrisville has helped participants come together in the Global Game Jam to make a game in 48 hours, all around one central theme. This year’s central theme was “Roots.”

“We have students participating who are in our newly formed Game Programming degree that started this fall,” Professor Richard Marcoux said. The new degree is unique among SUNY schools, with Marcoux saying that while other SUNY schools have game design or development degrees or studies, SUNY Morrisville is the only one with a Game Programming degree.

“And that’s partially a result of the Game Jam,” the professor said. “Students demonstrated an interest that not only started the Game Jams, but the game programming courses here.”

Grace Fowler was among those students attending. Fowler said it was her second semester at Morrisville and was majoring in Game Programming.

“My childhood was full of gaming because I was between a lot of schools,” Fowler said. “Gaming was a constant in my life. It’s something really close to my heart.”

Fowler said they’d love to work for a large company like Valve, famous for its popular video games from the Portal series to Team Fortress 2 and the highly successful virtual reality game Half Life: Alyx.

“If I find an indie team, I’m not going to say no,” Fowler added. “But [working for Valve] is the ultimate goal.”

Fowler’s responsibilities on the team involved game art and design.

“It’s my first Game Jam, but I’ve known my team for two semesters now, so I don’t have anything to worry about,” they said.

Alex Woods, a sophomore at Morrisville, laid out the idea for the team’s game, using Roots as the game’s theme.

“We’re making something like a botany simulator that deals with growing and breeding plants,” Woods said. “You can breed plants together to get larger flowers, different colors, taller, and then sell them for money to purchase items like fertilizers and soils that can make them grow faster.”

When asked what the biggest challenge would be, Woods said it would come down to figuring out how to store all the information for the plants the game would use and interact the way they want.

“The thing is, we’re thinking of making the flowers scriptable objects,” Woods explained. “But there’s only one scriptable object, so if we make changes to it, then it’s permanently changed.”

On the team as well was Chino Beach, a senior majoring in application software development with a minor in game programming.

Like other students pursuing game programming, Beach said she wants to go on to work for a game studio in the future.

“And the Game Jam gives me good experience for that,” she said. “It brings like minded people together for a fun time while getting experience in the programming and game world.”

Marcoux said that games are a shared experience that is often time social and can bring people together.

“Games, in one form or another, have been around for as long as people have been around,” the professor said. “They can offer a shared experience that can bring people together and we’ve seen that. We had a keynote speaker for the Game Jam that’s from Ukraine and they talked about how the Game Jam was bringing the entire country together.”

And it doesn’t just bring people together, it can bring the best out of someone.

“I’ve seen students change from quiet and shy, coming out and showing talents that no one knew that they had,” Marcoux said. “I’ve seen people come out of their shell. There are people who think of [video games] as an escapism, but I think it’s something that lets you try something different or experience something different.”