4 Things I Learned From My First Game Jam
By: Mathieu D'Aquin
Tags: Gaming, Game Development, Game Design, Coding, Videogames

4 Things I Learned From My First Game Jam

Competing with thousands of developers to make a game in 48 hours

Being able to develop your own games might feel like a dream. Games are complex things mixing technical prowess with a lot of imagination. There are not many other activities that mix so many different forms of creativity: Coding, graphics, storytelling, music…

But where to start? Tutorials are great, but you really want to get your hands dirty.

Game jams seem a good way to get ideas for short and challenging projects, get feedback, and see what others can do. But let’s be clear: Game development requires skills and as with anything that does, there is no shortcut.

What’s a Game Jam Anyway?

A game jam is a game development marathon. There are lots of possible formats, but mostly, it is about developing a game in a short amount of time (a few days) on a theme that is often communicated right before you get started. The game should be playable since, in most cases, the winner is decided based on scores from people (public, other participants, judges) who are playing the game.

The one in which I participated was the GMTK 2020 Game Jam. It is not the biggest, but it is quite big (5,368 participants). It was a way for my team (me and my 12-year-old son) to learn to make a game from start to finish without committing months into it (only 48 hours).

We didn’t do horribly bad. In the end, we got assessed by 49 people. Because you get assessed mostly by other participants, the atmosphere tends to be friendly and the comments constructive. We ranked 1,630th overall, with quite a high mark on originality. We did rather badly on presentation though, which leads me to the first lesson.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash.

Ideas are Cheap

As soon as the theme was released, “out of control", we were on the case. We started brainstorming things that would not only fit the theme but would actually do that in an interesting way. Having watched the videos from the same game jam from previous years, it was clear that:

Well ranked games were the ones that cleverly interpreted the theme in an unexpected way to create something unique. Many, many entries had gone for an obvious interpretation, meaning that many games ended up being similar.

We did start with the obvious ideas. “Out of control” could mean not being able to control the character, or the character going off in unexpected ways. Or it could mean for the goal to be to regain control over something that had gone haywire.

Not very surprisingly, we saw absolutely every idea we talked about in the first two hours of the game jam done in one way or another in several games from other participants, except for the one we finally adopted. We scored well on originality remember, but not on presentation.

After 48 intense hours of building on an idea that we believed to be a great foundation for a game, we realised one thing:

A great idea on its own cannot carry a game project.

We simply were not able to realise it within the time we had. We would probably have done much better with something simpler and greater polish.

Our idea was that our character had the power to transfer its consciousness to other characters (here, enemy mutant bunnies), but while he did that, his own body was going on aimlessly, randomly, out of control (and therefore could get killed by just running off to the wrong place). I still think it could make a great game. It would have to be perfect though, which is very far from what we were able to do with our limited skills.

That brings me to the second lesson.

Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash

Practice your Skills

Well, that might sound obvious, and for us, that was also the point of participating. However, there is a balance to be found. Creating an entire game in 48 hours, or even a week, means that every part of it has to be done quickly. Participating in a game jam is a great opportunity to try something new, to push yourself, and test ideas. But not everything can be new at once. To push new ideas, the basics have to be in place.

If you are looking for an opportunity to try something new, everything else has to be almost automatic: Clear, quick and tested.

We wanted to try a fun new kind of thing: The idea that we could transfer control to other characters as the one way to get past enemies. We were also trying to do our first 3D game, creating 3D models on the fly, making animations, audio, effects; all things we had never done before at any scale. The result was what you might expect.

What we should have done is practice the basics. We should have, prior to the game jam, practiced doing all the things that are a necessary part of game development, multiple times over, until we could do them confidently without much thinking, so we could concentrate on the real innovation.

And because not everybody should specialise in everything, that leads us to the third lesson.

Photo by Takahiro Sakamoto on Unsplash.

Be in a Team, Know Your Team

Our team was small, only 2 people, but it is obvious that neither of us would have produced anything even close to a game separately. The simplest reason is that there is no time for one person to do everything, but more importantly, the entire game, from start to finish, is the result of a 48 hour-long conversation. You can’t pull ideas out of your own head, and the quickest way to seed, evolve, and decide on new ideas is through back and forth discussions between at least two people.

That’s valid for the ideation and design bits, but as mentioned above, the realisation is what really makes a difference between a great game and one that’s not so great.

That’s where you need to know your team because you need to trust them.

The only bit I have significant experience in is coding. Except that was also the bit my son wanted to do because after all, that’s what he wanted to learn. I ended up doing the 3D models, of which there were a few. Whenever he was starting something new, I needed to be ready to provide the right model, from the enemies to the books used to decorate the room. He had to trust that I was going to be able to deliver whatever model was needed, and I had to trust that what he was coding matched what we wanted the game to do. I couldn’t spend my time watching over his shoulder, and he didn’t have the time to look over mine. Of course, sometimes we had to be working together, especially for the tricky bits of game mechanics we didn’t really know how to do. That actually might be part of the reason why we could not spend time on polishing things (or even making them right to start with).

That being said, it is also one of the reasons why it is important to be in a team. You have to force yourself to take a step back, leave others to work, be responsible for your part, and focus on delivering what’s needed quickly.

The other thing about being in a team is that they are the first critics of the game and of what you contribute to it. Since time is at the essence, you need to know how to deal with feedback efficiently: Take in what is given and use it to do better.

That leads us to the fourth lesson.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash.

Score Others

The brilliant thing about game jams is that you are reasonably sure that somebody will play your game, and there is a good chance they will tell you what they think. Some of the best game developers will look at what you did, people who know what they are talking about, people who have gone through the same process.

I have to admit I was a bit worried. The comment section of the internet does not really have a reputation for being child-friendly, and I was putting something I made with my 12-year-old son out there, to be commented on by any random stranger and competitor.

I was very wrong to be worried. Comments on itch.io, at least for that particular game jam, are not anonymous and the platform tells you when the commenter is also a participant, and what game they made. Nobody has any interest in being mean.

Someone spending time to give you honest, friendly and useful advice is the best reason for you to go and see what honest, friendly and useful advice you might give them.

There are other reasons to do that though. We had just spent long, intense hours thinking about the theme, how to make our idea work, how to make something complete enough in a very short time, and what shortcuts we needed to make. What we realised quickly is the immense value of having at our disposal thousands of examples of what others made from the same process. It is fantastic to see another game pulling off something we didn’t think could work. We could also see things we struggled with, and how other games found solutions, some better, some worse than what we did.

And yes, when you go through dozens of games made in 48 hours on the same theme, there are cases when you think: Wow, that’s just crazy, how did they do that? One day, we might get there, if we practice, focus, and build up a great team.

Photo by Tachina Lee on Unsplash.

So, Should You Try It?

I don’t regret participating in a game jam, but what we agreed after doing another one is that, maybe, we should leave game jams aside for a while. If you are serious about learning game development, there is a question of finding a balance between the small learning tasks that will teach you the basics and the investment required to build a full game. Game jams might be one thing to do somewhere in the middle, but they cannot replace either of the other things: You still need to learn the basics, and you still need to put in the effort.

The other challenge is that it can be a bit demotivating. You put your heart and soul into something, you barely sleep for two days, and in the end, what you made is only one among thousands. It is not amazing. It is not even good.

What do you do after? What’s the next step? It depends. You might be like us and go back to learning and practising. You might be more competitive and look for the next game jam, aiming to do better. Or you might be like the developers of Hollow Knight, who were sufficiently convinced by their game jam idea that they made it an actual game. What they did for that game jam was ranked rather poorly. What they made from it is one of the most beautiful and enjoyable games I have played. So, however you do in the competition, it is all in the journey: The game jam is only one step.