Last weekend, I attended my second Global Game Jam. Last year, down in North Carolina, I went with a friend and we ended up working with just him, at his apartment. This time, the circumstances were entirely different; I’d moved to the Seattle area just days before, and I knew no one in the area. I knew it’d be a challenge, but I was resolved to head to the Academy of Interactive Entertainment alone and find a team.
Wow, am I glad I did. After 48 hours, only 8 of which were sleep, we made a game that I think all of us were proud of. Here’s a short article detailing what I think went right and went wrong.
First, a bit about the game we made. Its title is Habitual Sacrifices, and you can play it here (download is at the bottom of the page). It’s a bit like Warioware, in that it’s a game of minigames. When you start, you’re presented with a minigame, and you perform it to the best of your ability. If you fail the task, you lose a life. If you win, you gain some points. You keep going until you fail three minigames.
The big reason as to why we chose this type of game format was the size of our team. Our team was made up of 8 members, which is almost unheard of in a game jam. A normal team size would be 2 to 4 people; anything more is usually too hard to manage. However, with the many-minigame structure, we could divide people up according to the game they would work on.
The other element that made the team size workable was our fearless team lead. Normally, in a jam, I’d just go right off and start working on the game. However, this time was different. One of our members really knew how to organize a team; the first thing he did was corral us all to a whiteboard. We started clarifying the game mechanics, making milestones, and writing an asset list. This helped immensely to clarify exactly what we needed to get done, as well as to cut scope and prioritize tasks. This was a big, big reason why we succeeded, and I can’t thank Robert Ramsay enough for the experience.
That’s not to say we didn’t have problems, though. This was the first game jam that several of our team members had participated in. We were able to stay well on task during Friday night and most of Saturady morning, but by early on Saturday afternoon, many of us were burning out. Our plans didn’t quite take this into account, and some of the features we planned didn’t get done. Much of Sunday afternoon was spent rushing to get last-minute changes in before the deadline.
This was the first game where I’d worked with any artists. Normally, at game jams, there is a glut of programmers and a few artists. However, being set at a technical school, this one was totally different. One team, during team formation, couldn’t even find any programmers! On our team, we had four artists and four programmers, and the experience was, personally, pretty awesome. It was cool to see actual art workflow taking place, and it felt good to implement real art assets in a game rather than my crappy programmer art.
Speaking of team formation - this was another thing that could have gone better. After the GGJ keynote, we all walked back to sign in to the GGJ. After that, however, it was just chaos. Should we just form teams? Is there a place where we should be congregating? Is there an organized pitch process happening? No one knew. It turned out that there was not an organized process, that we were just suppoed to figure it out on our own. We’ve already spoken to the organizer about this, so I won’t rag on it too much, but really - it was total luck that I ended up with a good team.
Desipte the problems, this year’s GGJ was still an amazing experience. The game is fully functional, and even somewhat fun - though it could use some balancing. Plus, I learned a ton from the people on my team. I’m hoping to stay in touch with some of the team members and maybe continue to work on other stuff in the future.