TBM_Christopher
Semi-pro Game Dev
- 448
- Posts
- 14
- Years
- Age 30
- Lincoln, NE
- Seen Apr 12, 2018
Hey guys,
One thing I see a lot is a lack of interaction in our fan game community, outside of asking for critique on material. This is definitely a way in which I feel the community could improve. At DigiPen, there are times when students will get together on a long weekend to do what's called a game jam, in which students have a fixed timeframe in which to create a game, sometimes on very different constraints than they are used to. Personally, I'd love to organize such an event, but would others be interested in participating in a game jam? I'd love to hear any ideas on the subject.
A couple ideas I had for possible game jams:
How It Would Work:
Where We're At Presently:
One thing I see a lot is a lack of interaction in our fan game community, outside of asking for critique on material. This is definitely a way in which I feel the community could improve. At DigiPen, there are times when students will get together on a long weekend to do what's called a game jam, in which students have a fixed timeframe in which to create a game, sometimes on very different constraints than they are used to. Personally, I'd love to organize such an event, but would others be interested in participating in a game jam? I'd love to hear any ideas on the subject.
A couple ideas I had for possible game jams:
Spoiler:
The Gym Challenge - This game jam would be all about a gym milestone. Using an engine of choice, participants' goals are to build a gym. Catching and training Pokemon is not the concern - the designer would pre-make a team appropriate for the player to begin the challenge. The focus would be on the gym itself. For a competitive aspect, the jam's results could be judged in categories such as theme(how appropriate the gym is to the types as listed), puzzle(how interesting the gym's puzzle is), and difficulty(if the trainers/Gym Leader are challenging but defeatable).
The Safari Zone - Similarly to the Gym Challenge, this game jam would be solely about the Safari Zone - making an interesting ecosystem to explore and populating it with unique and diverse Pokemon, as well as possibly rethinking the Safari Zone's mechanics(Compare Fr/Lg's iteration of the original Safari Zone to Ru/Sa or Diamond/Pearl's). For a competitive aspect, the jam's results could be judged on environment(the theme/location), ecosystem(the Pokemon encountered and how they coexist within the environment), and mechanics(how Pokemon are caught, as battling Pokemon in the Safari Zone has always been a no-no, barring X/Y)
The Safari Zone - Similarly to the Gym Challenge, this game jam would be solely about the Safari Zone - making an interesting ecosystem to explore and populating it with unique and diverse Pokemon, as well as possibly rethinking the Safari Zone's mechanics(Compare Fr/Lg's iteration of the original Safari Zone to Ru/Sa or Diamond/Pearl's). For a competitive aspect, the jam's results could be judged on environment(the theme/location), ecosystem(the Pokemon encountered and how they coexist within the environment), and mechanics(how Pokemon are caught, as battling Pokemon in the Safari Zone has always been a no-no, barring X/Y)
How It Would Work:
Spoiler:
A game jam is a pretty simple event: at a certain time, all participants would be given the information needed to get started on their game(be that a downloadable pre-packaged project to start from, information on the theme of the Jam, etc.), and have until a specified end time to submit their finished entry. At which point the games would be made publicly available in some form of showcase.
To make this as involved as possible, I'd like to make this game jam into a bit of a competition. With myself and hopefully 2 others as judges, when all entries are turned in for the Jam, the judges would then rate the entries based on different criteria(I've mentioned in my game ideas some different ideas for criteria an entry could be judged on).
To make this as involved as possible, I'd like to make this game jam into a bit of a competition. With myself and hopefully 2 others as judges, when all entries are turned in for the Jam, the judges would then rate the entries based on different criteria(I've mentioned in my game ideas some different ideas for criteria an entry could be judged on).
Where We're At Presently:
- We don't presently have a theme - I've listed a couple potential themes above, and am open to suggestions.
- We presently have 1 judge - I'd love to make this a competitive event, but we'd need at least one more judge, so that I wouldn't be alone in evaluating entries. If you'd like to volunteer, I'd really appreciate it, though keep in mind that as a judge, you probably wouldn't be allowed to submit an entry.
- We don't have a concrete date set - I've suggested a date(May 24th - May 25th), but I'm open to just about anything. I'd recommend something on a weekend and later in the month so that younger members can participate without school or work being a concern.
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