Gonna wrap up my Global Game Jam 2014 writeups by talking about how I’m going to approach my next game jam, which will probably happen this summer. Usually I don’t decide on an approach until the jam is about to start or shortly after the theme is announced, but in this case, it’s relevant that I’m deciding early.
I have tried to approach each of the four game jams I’ve been to with a different mindset. As someone who tends to do game jams solo, I have many roles to fill on my own — programmer, designer, modeler, composer. What I’ll usually do is really push myself and take a lot of risks with one role, and work just in my comfort zone in the other roles. So for example, in this last game jam, I made way more complex models than I usually do, but designed the project in such a way that I’d only have to do programming tasks that I was absolutely comfortable with.
The goal here is to focus on one skill and try to learn as much as I can about it during the jam. It’s basically calculated risk-taking in a controlled environment.
But for my next game jam, I will drastically reduce the amount of risk-taking I will make, everywhere. I will make the highest-quality, most complete product I can, only using skills I’m completely comfortable with. That might sound silly; one might assume that creating a quality product is always the goal at a game jam. But it’s never been my goal before. And the implications of setting that as my goal, now, are kind of huge. It means the game jam is a test, not so much of a learning experience in and of itself.
The learning must happen in the months leading up to the jam: I am going to try to force myself to keep working on all of my skills, on a consistent schedule.
If I want my game to have good music, I need to start improving my composition skills now.
If I want my game to have good graphics, I need to have good, efficient modeling and texturing practices down cold.
If I want my game to have a fun mechanic, I need to get comfortable experimenting with new mechanics in self-contained test environments.
And wherever my skills are when the next jam starts, I’m going to play it safe and do things I am reasonably certain I can do.
I don’t know how I’m going to feel about all this once the next game jam starts. I may very well find it all less exciting than previous jams, less intense, less fun, because of the reduced risk-taking during the jam proper. But I’m willing to try this approach.
Because I think that potentially squandering one game jam by playing it safe is a risk worth taking.
I like to try different approaches to game jams. There are many valid approaches. I like to challenge myself to do something I haven’t done before each time, but as time goes on there’s going to be fewer and fewer things like that that I can attempt. Besides, there’s no sense waiting for that weekend to do experiments. Jamming gave me the idea that I could do lightweight projects in a short amount of time ANY time, so that’s what I’ve been trying to do lately. Then I can get all the experimentation out of the way, and be really prepared for the audience that accompanies the jam, and hopefully create something enjoyable, memorable, and complete. That’s my goal this year — if I can do that, I’ll feel like I’ve gained a level:)
I too would like to do more lightweight, experimental projects between jams… I only had that whole hey! I can do game jam like things at other times! realization within the last couple days. Sounds like you’re a couple steps ahead of me. 😉
I’d love to share notes on how that’s going once I’ve actually done some of that.