Praise
This year’s back to school global game jam was a success in my opinion because me and my team were able to make a solid game with amazing artwork in it. This was my first game jam and I felt like I learned a lot and can use what I learned and apply it to the next one in January. The first thing I learned is that you have to stay positive throughout the whole process of making a video game and believe that it will happen. I also learned to be patient while trying to figure out how to code and make the code work the way I want it to in the game. This experience at the back to school game jam has given me a lot of knowledge and I feel as though this has given me a little bit of preparation for the future when I go on to work as a game developer.
Overview
The game jam that I participated in was the back to school game jam that was sponsored by photon and that was hosted by all the universities across the US. In this game jam you had 48 hours to make a game and submit it to itch.io where the judges can play and judge the game. The theme of this game jam was multiplayer because photon is a networking framework for realtime multiplayer games and applications with no punch through issues. At the end of the game jam when we finished our builds, we had to present it in front of everyone and even had volunteers to play test our game. We lastly had to submit a trailer for the game as well on youtube for the judges to see as well.
Issues
The main issues that I had with the game jam that I was in was that we did not have any more time to make the game as solid as possible. The game me and my team created was a very solid game especially for only having 48 hours to do it but, I just would have liked more time to be able to add in more mechanics. Our main mechanic of the game which was magnetism was not able to be added to the game because we were just trying to get a playable build out so we can be judged. My last issue about this was GitHub. Github is not the best to use in a group project because you can have a lot of errors which me and my team experienced causing a little bit of a stoppage in work. Luckily we were able to overcome those shortcomings of GitHub but it took communication from everyone to know when things were being pushed into each branch.
Strategy
Improvements could have been made to the game jam by first maybe giving us a little bit more time instead of 48 hours because we teams are technically not using the full time because people need to rest up. Other improvements by us that we could have made is that we could have communicated a little bit better when it came to pushing and pulling changes from GitHub. Other improvements can be made such as not having us make a multiplayer game using something most people have not used or touched before or if we make it in a different way at least do not take points off. Lastly, knowing how to use GitHub better so we can not have a stoppage of work like we did.
Encouragement
This was my first time doing a game jam and overall the experience was a success. I loved the way that my team clicked and were able to quickly put something together. The funny thing about my team is that we were two different teams at one point and were combined together which worked out really well for us in the end. We all learned a lot through the experience such as staying positive and realizing that you will do it. We also learned the struggles of github but we know how to get through it now. This game jam has given us all experience and will help us all prepare for the future as game developers that is looking to work in the industry.
Kylen Dilligard 