React announces its first game jam for late July

The React community announced today that it plans to hold its first game jam — called React Jam, fittingly — for July 20-30. The web development platform intends to use React Jam to help developers create their first game, leveraging the millions-strong community built around the platform. The jam will offer the devs criteria around creating their game, though it hasn’t specified what those are yet.

React is currently the leading framework for web development and powers websites for Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb and others. It’s also used to create games that are playable across platforms and easily shareable, though that’s not as common. React hopes to attract more fledgling game developers to the platform, as, according to the FAQ: “As web technologies have evolved and become more powerful, the concept of creating games with web-based technologies like React has become increasingly more feasible.”

The game jam features several prizes for winners, both in the category of Best Game — the game which scores the highest across ratings of Fun, Theme and Presentation — as well as the Multiplayer Challenge — the game with the highest playtime in early August among testers. React Jam’s sponsors include online asset store CraftPix and indie gaming community Rune.

React Jam’s finished games will go to a panel of four judges: Carl Vitullo, community manager at Reactiflux; Verekia, creator of WebGameDev; Sebastien Lorber, publisher of newsletter This Week in React; and Sanjay Guruprasad, CEO and co-founder of Rune. Lorber said in a statement, “With recent innovations, it’s a great time to become a React game developer, but only a few have tried their hand at it. I’m excited to see React Jam change this!”