At the start, it went wonderfully. I arrived at the Horncastle building in Hull for the start of the jam with a desktop pc in one hand and a computer monitor in the other with a bag full of cables and peripherals on my shoulder. I now have a desktop PC! I should make a blog about that.
Anyway, as soon as I got there I was already as a disadvantage. My first lesson is I learned is...
Be prepared/Assemble a team
This is where I really messed up. During the week I was building my desktop but at no point did I do my homework and read more about programming for making games. I'm kinda sorta good at XNA but I haven't really touched Unity or any 3D engine properly. My best skill right now is 3D modelling and would have been a great asset to a team requiring that.That relates to my other problem. I had no team. I didn't really want to work with people I had with Three Thing Game because I'm excited to meet new people in the area still. As a learning experience and a chance to meet people it's great to do what I did but makes for a weak bond within the team. We were creative and full of ideas but we weren't realistic with what we could do and when we came up with simple brilliant ideas we thrown them them away because they were too obvious. I was completely guilty of this so my lesson learned is...
Don't avoid an obvious idea if it sounds like a fun game
Oh boy, personally, I really messed things up. One of the keynotes talked about how you should not go for something old and obvious but I took that advice and applied to the other extreme. Anything that sounded conventional was quickly thrown away and when I thought of those kinds of ideas I didn't bother bringing them up. One of our ideas was to have a character switch colour or shape to allow them to pass different kind of obstacles. As a rough idea it felt too conventional and done before, as if were capable of reinventing classic game design in 48 hours.
Instead of going for that we went for an emotional driven game about a person growing both mentally and physically to overcome life's challenges with abstract representations of these challenges. I'm sure some team could make a fantastic game out of the spec we made but not our team. We should have went with the simple idea.
What really gave me this message was when a team in the top six for the Hull Global Game Jam had an idea very similar to the one about changing shape to pass obstacles. The game was simple yet really effective and had potential to be a really fun published title. Just because their game was grounded in reality didn't mean it was any less creative, in fact that gave them space to use their creativity more when making the game.
Sorry if my writing style dramatically changes from now on. I left this draft for a week to give some more thought about the post. Moving on...
Have a vision behind the game/Avoid the committee
I don't how to say this without sounding a little bit arrogant but I think sometimes one person's vision behind a game is better than a whole group of people's. What I think would have worked better is if one person had one big idea of a game and everyone else added components to that idea to give a more refined game. Instead what we did was all add up our ideas and in an attempt to be fair we added as many ideas as we could. What came from that was an ultimately pointless title.
My ThreeThingGame team worked perfectly by the end because it was only two of us and we had very defined roles. I was design and art and he was the programmer. I knew the basic concepts of what you can do with C# XNA and he understood what I was asking for in the game. He wasn't a gamer but he is a terrific programmer so I would really like to say we needed each other.
Keep it simple
At the beginning of the ThreeThingGame I was a mess. It was the day after a Halloween house party. Yet even then I had my head in the right place more than for the Global Game Jam. I did take a lot of creative lead in the ThreeThingGame because I enjoy managing a project and I made simplicity one of the core points of making that game. Simplicity. Just make something people would enjoy and then work from there and make it better.
In the Global Game Jam we went for a project so ambitious it was probably impossible to make and the biggest problem is even if we did make it the player would probably have no idea what we made. I still can't explain exactly and perfectly what we were going to make and we did a lot of drawing out what we wanted on a whiteboard we had handy.
Have a prototype finished early
This goes with the last point. If we don't have anything real to show in 24 hours then we have pretty much failed the next 24 hours too. It was that failure to show something cool, unique and fun that gave the team no reason to continue and a lot of the enthusiasm for the project quickly fell after that milestone I'd say. Have something to show ASAP, let people see it, build it from there.
Don't let programmers do 12hour+ shifts
This is definitely a death sentence to the project. Not only did we have a really bad design, no vision and a short time to make a game but we had the worst team management ever. What we asked of the lead programmer was ultimately unrealistic and I was not skilled enough to pick up the pieces. These kinds of things are made to test people but as a team not as isolated individuals. With no support and a large dependency on one person all we ended up with was a burnt out programmer.
Bring a pillow + earplugs
Sleeping on-site isn't always possible and it probably isn't a good idea or a healthy decision and certainly shouldn't happen outside of game jams and university deadlines. However, if you're in that situation and the time to go home, sleep get back to working is too long at least come prepared with a pillow and something to help you sleep. I don't like leaving the project so I stay around in case I'm needed, awake or asleep but I live for these kinds of things. I would not recommend it to anyone who isn't as weird as me. Get sleep somewhere good.
Always show something
I remembered this! Before the person with all the files left to get some well earned sleep I managed to convince him to make something quick I can show. Doesn't matter if it sucks, we still have something to show for the time we put in and I think I understand why the judges were happy to see something because I love seeing any work people make. I have no regrets showing what I did, I only wish I didn't do it alone.
Go to the pub after
I was left in the unfortunate situation where it was just me from my team but I think any time that managed to stay together by the end deserves to have a couple of pints after all that is done. What people manage to do at these things is amazing and everyone should keep an eye out on all work made or, even better, participate. It's worth it.
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