Jammer Filipe Borges, a graphic designer who joined in-person at the Helsinki site, said, ''This was amazing! I learned a lot at this event, and I connected and worked with some amazing people who I would never have met if not for events like this.”
Yahaha Studios, founded in 2020 by a pioneering group of Unity veterans, is on a mission to democratise 3D content creation. Committed to supporting its growing community of creators, YAHAHA offers them the tools they need to bring their visions to life in a 3D world. In line with this philosophy, the platform is proud to partner with GGJ to enable young game developers to take their first steps into the industry.
Pengfei Zhang, COO at Yahaha Studios, added, “It was a real pleasure to work with GGJ this year and to see so many game developers’ ideas blossom in YAHAHA. Being able to provide a physical, as well as online, space for jammers really created a sense of community amongst everyone, and we’re excited to continue our work with GGJ in the form of a long-term partnership to keep bringing YAHAHA to people around the world and pursue our mission to democratise 3D games content creation.”
GGJ is the world’s largest game-creation event, and this year’s event took place from January 30th - February 5th, with 40,000 jammers from around the globe creating a combined 7,600 games together. This year’s theme was revealed as ‘roots’, in a ceremony which included speakers from GGJ Ukraine and Code to Inspire, an organisation dedicated to bringing STEM education to women in Afghanistan.
GGJ Executive Director, Tim Cullings, said of the partnership with YAHAHA: “We were happy to work with YAHAHA on the 2023 Global Game Jam. GGJ is all about giving everyone the opportunity to make games and the YAHAHA platform enables anyone with an idea to get it working quickly with minimal training and experience. We saw over 100 games created with YAHAHA world-wide this year and I only expect that number to grow as the platform becomes more robust and people learn how it can be an extremely useful tool for game jams, prototyping, and building fully featured games. We look forward to a long-term partnership between GGJ and YAHAHA going forward and hope that our community will continue to use and support the platform after the jam.”
In the closing months of 2022, Yahaha Studios announced it had secured an investment of $40 million to further build upon the Early Alpha success of YAHAHA, a creator-focussed user-generated content social platform. Now with the added convenience of the new Asset Ovi platform, YAHAHA is currently open in Early Alpha, offering anyone the opportunity to be among the first to test the platform and share feedback as it continues to grow. This early community has an important role to play in how YAHAHA will evolve, influencing the shape the platform takes and building its digital world.
The full list of completed games at YAHAHA’s hybrid-site can be found here, including AwesomeW’s “Jump From The Root”, which has been played close to 34,000 times.
For more information, contact: Dimoso on behalf of YAHAHA
Ruchika Ganesh: Account Executive, chika@dimoso.com
About YAHAHA
Yahaha Studios was founded in 2020 by a pioneering group of Unity veterans, with a mission to democratise 3D games content creation and consumption. Establishing a pioneering world-class user generated content (UGC) no-code creation platform for 3D interactive content, YAHAHA empowers both developers and players at all levels to build, publish, host, and operate multiplayer games. With one click publishing available for all to play, making games and content creation easy and the metaverse accessible to all.
Headquartered in Finland and with offices in Korea and China, the team holds a unique perspective on growth and prioritises inclusivity, diversity and innovation in an open culture. To extend the parameters of the gaming industry is no easy task, but with the billions of pieces of content emerging in various forms across the platform, YAHAHA is steadily gaining traction among developers. Supporting a virtual world with cutting edge technology, the YAHAHA community is building and serving millions of creators to enable the continued explosion of the metaverse.
YAHAHA is an organic ecosystem of user-generated content that seamlessly integrates reality and virtuality, providing a space that harnesses the freedom and limitless possibilities of creation. YAHAHA gives users the power of a game engine without the need to be a creative expert, with its low-code editor, ready-built asset library and all the tools needed to integrate 3D art and animation. With YAHAHA creators can generate multiplayer 3D interactive content quickly and easily.
YAHAHA is ushering in the next generation of entertainment.