  In less than a year's time, March 2022 will mark the twentieth anniversary of
the first documented game jam, the Indie Game Jam, which took place in Oakland,
California in 2002. Initially, game jams were widely seen as frivolous
activities. Since then, they have taken the world by storm. Game jams have not
only become part of the day-to-day process of many game developers, but jams
are also used for activist purposes, for learning and teaching, as part of the
experience economy, for making commercial prototypes that gamers can vote on,
and more. Beyond only surveying game jams and the relevant published scientific
literature from the last two decades, this paper has several additional
contributions. It builds a history of game jams, and proposes two different
taxonomies of game jams - a historical and a categorical. In addition, it
discusses the definition of game jam and identifies the most active research
areas within the game jam community such as the interplay and development with
local communities, the study and analysis of game jammers and organisers, and
works that bring a critical look on game jams.
