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War Child game jam attracts 343, Creative Assembly, more

Global charity event will result in sale of "Help" game compilation, with proceeds going to War Child charity

343 Industries, Creative Assembly, Hinterland and many other developers will take part in the game jam to raise money for War Child, a charity dedicated to helping the young victims of wars all over the world.

The game jam will operate under the "Help" banner, the same name used for a series of albums created by some of the leading musical artists of the Nineties. Those albums, which featured contributions from Radiohead, Blur, Paul McCartney and The Stone Roses, raised £1.5 million for War Child's activities in the Balkans.

Now, a group of game developers wants to emulate that spirit by forming a game jam, which will span a variety of locations around the world over the course of six days. In addition to the developers already mentioned, Bossa Studios, Sports Interactive, Spilt Milk Studios, Hardlight, Curve Digital, Brave Plan, Team 17 and Torn Banner will all participate, and more will be announced in the coming weeks. Unity, Unreal and Gamemaker are all backing the project by allowing the use of their technology on a "no cost and no royalty" basis.

The resulting games will be released and sold as a digital compilation in early 2016, with the proceeds going to War Child.

"War Child's work revolves around a simple premise... no child has started a war, so no child should be affected by one," said Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive and founder of the global games jam committee, in a statement.

"Whether it's rehabilitating ex child soldiers in Democratic Republic of Congo, creating child helplines in Afghanistan, providing safe spaces for Syrian refugee children, or the work in so many other countries - wherever they are they make the world a better place for children forced to live with war.

For so many studios to have got involved in this project at such an early stage is really humbling. I hope many more join the cause and get involved in something that will be fun, rewarding and make a huge difference in children's lives across the world."

The War Child games committee is made up of the following: Alex Chapman (Sheridans), Ciarán Brennan (Sports Interactive), Elisabeth Little (War Child), Imre Jelle (Bossa), John Clark (SEGA), Miles Jacobson (Sports Interactive), Rupert Loman (Gamer Network) and Stuart Saw (Twitch).

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Matthew Handrahan

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Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.